Sidebar
Socialist History
archive.org
cross‐posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/377427 > >Documentary film in three parts: The *Insurrection of the Bourgeoisie* (1975), *The Coup d'état* (1976), *Popular Power* (1979). It is a chronicle of the political tension in Chile in 1973 and of the violent counter revolution against the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende. It won the Grand Prix in 1975 and 1976 at the Grenoble International Film Festival. In 1996, Chile, *Obstinate Memory* was released and followed Guzmán back to Chile as he screened the 3-part documentary to Chileans who had never seen it before. > > ([Mirror of part one.](https://yewtu.be/watch?v=_69sNztBFSM) [Additional mirror.](https://archive.org/details/TheBattleOfChileTheInsurrectionOfTheBourgeoisie) [Mirror of part two.](https://archive.org/details/TheBattleOfChileTheCoupDEtat) [Mirror of part three.](https://archive.org/details/TheBattleOfChilePopularPower))
This is from John Fischer's book "Why They Behave Like Russians". He is not a communist but spent a lot of time in Ukraine directly after WWII. This book came out in 1947. "There's a Tavern in the Town" is the original tune of "Heads, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes"
>The Intergovernmental Agreements with Cuba were signed on 5 May 1978 by Czechoslovakia and on 19 April 1980 by Hungary. Officially, they constituted one of the forms of scientific and technological cooperation, as the project involved, besides the temporary employment of Cubans in Czechoslovak and Hungarian companies, also their training. The main, long‐term objective of the agreement was to improve the workforce of Cuban workers who, after returning to Cuba, were to contribute to the development of their economy. > >An important argumentation rôle was also played by the so‐called ‘demographic complementarity’, a term used mainly by the Cuban party (Entrevista a Carlos Rafael Rodríguez, 1980, 9) for an ageing society and slower growth of the population in Eastern Europe compared to Cuba. > >[…] > >Estimates of the total number of (mostly young) people sent from Cuba in the 1970s and especially in the 1980s to work in the so-called socialist camp countries are around 80,000 by some authors (Ocaña, 2009; Pérez‐López & Díaz‐Briquets, 1990). However, there are no official statistics. Throughout the project’s lifetime (1978–1990) in Czechoslovakia, it is estimated that 23,000 Cuban citizens were recruited, temporarily employed and trained in the country (Boušková, 1998, 36). > >According to Böröcz (1992, 10) ‘between early 1985 and the end of 1987, altogether 3,200 Cubans arrived in Hungary’ with a four‐year work contract. Melegh and Sárosi (2015, 240) calculate with a cumulative inflow of 4,232 Cubans for the period 1980–1989 — including both guestworkers and university students — based on data from the Hungarian Central Statistical Office. Nonetheless, no separate, yet comprehensive statistics are available on guestworkers. > >[…] > >First of all, the Czechoslovak party informed the Committees about the possibilities of training in the desired professions in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic and about companies which could accept Cubans. Havana then provided a selection of workers. The result was, as in all other areas of intergovernmental science and technology cooperation, the so‐called ‘annual protocols’ containing lists of Czechoslovak organizations and numbers of Cuban citizens with their existing or planned specializations and arrival dates. > >As early as May 1978, when the agreement was signed, the first group of about 300 workers arrived from Cuba.^8^ In December, there were already about a thousand young Cubans, men and women, employed in ten textile companies, spending their Christmas in Czechoslovakia.^9^ The plan then envisaged the recruitment of another 2,000 Cubans by the end of 1979 and further increases in the following years (3,500 new workers were to be recruited each year). > >However, the number of Cuban workers in Czechoslovakia did not grow so quickly. At the end of 1980 there were some 4,600 Cubans training and working in the companies, around 5,000 in 1984 and nearly 10,000 in 1986 (the numbers include running and new contracts together).^10^ > >It can be estimated that in relation to other Central and Eastern European countries, Czechoslovakia employed by far the highest proportion of Cubans in the labor program. According to Cuban sources (*Granma daily*), for example, during the period 1984–1985 the labor program in Eastern Europe was attended by 12,000 people, of which 9,000 were in the CSSR (Se capacitarán otros cuatro mil jóvenes cubanos en Checoslovaquia, 1984, 5; Tesoro, 1986, 53). > >[…] > >Applicants for a working stay had to be of legal age, they could not exceed 27 years and had to have completed basic education. Another necessary condition, theoretically, was good health and pro-revolutionary thinking. Membership in the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) or the Union of Communist Youth (UJC), however, was not a condition (Jóvenes cubanos en la RDA: Un balance positivo, 1982, 9). > >Although at present stage there is little known about the background and previous experience of Cuban guestworkers, it is mentioned in the contemporary press that some of the men used to fight in Angola (Vendégmunka, 1988, 14). It would be highly attractive and interesting to analyze the existing assumption that the participation in the labor program was, for the Cubans, a form of reward for their participation in the war.^16^ Admittedly, this paper’s flaws make it tougher for me to recommend it. For example, Eurocentrism: >the complex discourse of the ‘civilization mission’, applied in this case by the Czechoslovak state on the Vietnamese. Classic Cold War‐style reductionism: >the lack of unskilled labor — no matter how this labor shortage was, in substantial degree, due to hoarding, typical of socialist economies (Kornai, 1980, 1992). Stereotyping: >arriving Cubans must have been closely watched by the Hungarian authorities […] it cannot be expected that the CTC served as a real channel for the workers in which to express their opinions, air their problems and channel their needs. […] These figures must, however, be seen in the context of the often-exaggerated statements common to socialist economies. Bizarre, context‐free claims: >unwillingness by Czechoslovak citizens to perform some unpopular, heavy manual jobs And notice how when the authors admit something positive about the people’s republics, it is suspiciously only then that they need to add ‘balance’ to the subject (you know, just in case you doubted for a single microsecond that antisocialists were writing this): >The fact that the Cuban side was able, as we see, to step up and refuse to send the workers it had already pledged, may be saying another important thing about the character of the socialist programs and the relationships between the governments: a strong political accountability (commitment to international solidarity) of the host government to the sending government. > >Similar traits may be found in the Western labor programs: in the FRG case, an equivalent accountability was embodied in pressure exercised by the unions and shared European Economic Community membership (Alamgir, 2017a, 106–107). Coming back to the particular Cuban demands, […] I am therefore anticipating a little hostility as a result of my sharing this. With all of that being said, I would not go so far as to call this paper ‘useless’ to us—there are some useful bits of information therein—but if I knew of a better paper on this topic, I’d share that one instead. Finally, I want us all to behold this example of the brilliance of ‘decommunization’: >Racism was on the rise in Hungary in the years preceding **and following** the régime change. There were incidents against Arabs, Black people, [Roma] and Cubans. Possibly the worst one occurred on 24 April 1988, when a group of skinheads, waiting for the metro at the Kőbánya Kispest station after a concert, attacked a group of guestworkers — mostly women, employed by the Kőbányai Textilművek textile company (Apor, 2017; Zs, 2016, 103). Eight Cubans were injured, some seriously. > >The police arrested the perpetrators: eventually 15 of them, aged between 16 and 20, got a prison sentence. **Yet they soon received amnesty, among other prisoners, due to the proclamation of the Republic of Hungary, on 23 October 1989** (Angster, 1992, 10–12). (Emphasis added.) Referring to the Eastern Bloc’s neoliberalization as ‘democratization’ is without a doubt the meanest thing that I have ever seen anybody say about democracy.
Pictured: Charles Debarge, one of the saboteurs that we lost. Quoting Steve Cushion in *On Strike Against the Nazis*, pages [33](https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10159400/1/On-strike.pdf#page=37)–[5](https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10159400/1/On-strike.pdf#page=39): >Charles Debarge, “Charlie”, was a thirty‐one year old miner who lived in Harnes in the Pas‐de‐Calais, thirty kilometres south of Lille. He went on the run after his activity in the miners’ strike of 1941 put him on the wanted list. He was arrested on 6 August 1941 having already organised an attempted train derailment and blown up two electric pylons. He managed to escape that same evening from the *Feldgendarmerie*, 36, rue de la Liberté in Lille. >>*It was the beginning of a manhunt, life or death. They had been ordered to shoot us on sight. But if these gentlemen had decided to attack us, we had also decided to sell our hides dearly.*^64^ > >In 1942, the underground leadership of the PCF in the Pas‐de‐Calais charged him with the task of organising widespread sabotage in the region, which he did with foolhardy courage. On 12 January 1942 he unsuccessfully launched an attack on the prison at Looslès‐Lille, where his wife Raymonde and numerous other resistance fighters were imprisoned. **He organised a group of twenty young activists who blew up pylons, derailed trains and raided mines for explosives, as well as attacking [Axis] soldiers and [their] collaborators.** > >Eusébio Ferrari was a very different character. Son of an Italian immigrant family living in Fenain, he was ten years younger than Charles Debarge. An electrician in the Aniche glass works, he was very serious and well read, a self‐taught Communist intellectual who carefully prepared each attack, leaving little to chance, the complete opposite of Debarge, the improviser. > >At the beginning, the OS groups in the Forbidden Zone used explosives which had been abandoned by the French army following its collapse in June 1940. However, **they soon moved to stealing dynamite from the mines, like the attack on the *Compagnie des Mines de Drocourt*, which Debarge organised with twenty‐seven others on 3 September 1941, making off with 247 kg of dynamite and 578 detonators**.^65^ > >However, sabotage is not easy and c[an] be very dangerous for the participants. On 11 October 1941, the premature explosion of a device that an OS group had just attached to a gasometer severely wounded René Denys and Béna Olejniczak and killed Paul Henke, a young German Communist. **The help of railway workers and civil engineers was extremely useful in the early learning process. Two railwaymen from Amiens acted as consultants having perfected the best way to derail a train.** > >It seems that you set off the explosive charge under the fifth wagon so that the train drags the engine backwards off the track, thereby causing maximum damage to the trains contents while giving the driver and fireman the best chance of survival. > >**A group of Yugoslavian immigrants specialised in the destruction of electric pylons, while Eusébio Ferrari, always the perfectionist, developed his “cigar box” to detonate explosives just at the moment when the train arrived.** But much of the sabotage was much less sophisticated and involved using pick‐axes and sledgehammers to destroy roadside transformers. > >The early sabotage activity was political, to encourage the population and to sap the moral of the [Axis] authorities and [their] collaborators but, as the war progressed, the economic aspect grew in importance. **France was by far the most important supplier for the [Third Reich’s] war‐machine and French industry worked flat out to supply [it].** Thus, for the [Axis], social peace in France was a matter of strategic importance, so sabotage was a serious problem. > >**Faced with frequent attacks by Communist saboteurs**, the [Axis] authorities launched a man‐hunt.^66^ Félicien Joly, leader of the young Communists and one of the first to take up arms in the mining country, was also the first to fall in September 1941, followed shortly after by the Yugoslav group from Lens. > >The [Axis] had dismantled the entire original OS network by August 1942 and had imprisoned or shot nearly all the militants. Eusébio Ferrari and René Denys fell in February 1942 and Charles Debarge was killed in a gunfight on 23 September 1942. His epitaph was written by his main enemy, the collaborationist préfet, Fernand Carles. >>*Instigator and author of outrages against members of the occupation authorities, he was certainly the most formidable terrorist chief in the region and perhaps in all France. His death is a serious blow for all those who are living illegally.*^67^ > >**If these young men and women, equipped with only an old bicycle, an archaic revolver and some stolen explosives could achieve so much, one can only imagine their destructive capabilities if they had been well supplied with arms explosives and money.** However, the Allied high command did not want to encourage working class resistance and preferred aerial bombardments of doubtful efficiency. (Emphasis added.)
Will Podmore’s [*The War Against the Working Class*](https://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=DE5A30A76B6C850A5B1C951568DAFA3C), [page 138](https://books.google.com/books?id=QaDVCQAAQBAJ&pg=PP138): >Between 1949 and 1978, food production rose by 169.6 per cent, while the population grew by 77.7 per cent. So food production per person grew from 204 kilograms to 328 kilograms. Grain output increased by 2.4 per cent a year from 1952 to 1978. By 1977, China was growing 40 per cent more food per person than India, on 14 per cent less arable land, and distributing it more equitably to a population which was 50 per cent larger.^61^ **China had become self‐sufficient in food**.^62^ As Y. Y. Kueh pointed out, “by the close of Máo’s period China's historic food problem was basically solved.”^63^ (Emphasis added.)
academic.oup.com
>Subsequent visual arts *bolseiros* included Pais Ernesto Shikani (1934–2010) and Samate Machava (1939–2012), who in 1982 both undertook six‐month fine art courses in Moscow. Dias Machlate (b. 1958) followed, spending six years studying art in Dresden from 1983, along with another Mozambican artist, Francisco Maria Conde (b. 1957), and seven Ethiopian students.^19^ > >Pedro ‘Dito’ Jeremias Tembe (b. 1960) also studied visual art in the German Democratic Republic (GDR), arriving with 150 other *Madgermane* labourers in 1985 to work at the Lederwaren Suede Factory in Schwerin, Mecklenburg. There, he negotiated with the Mozambique Embassy to attend a three‐year visual arts course at the Russia and Germany Friendship House in Schwerin, from 1987 to 1989.^20^ > >Following their studies at ENAV, Pompílio ‘Gemuce’ Hilário (b. 1963) and Bento Mukeswane (1965–99) were sent with two others to study art in Kiev in 1985. After a year of language tuition, Gemuce completed a BA in Fine Art at the Institute of Fine Arts of Kiev, and then an MFA at the Ukrainian Academy of Fine Arts, returning to Mozambique in 1993.^21^ The final Mozambican art students to take up bursaries through socialist channels were Carmen Maria Muianga (b. 1974) and Marcos Bonifácio Muthewuye (b. 1972). > >Both students at ENAV, they were selected for bursaries by the school’s director Estela Teixeira, and travelled to Cuba to study at the Instituto Superior de Arte in Havana, from 1991 until 1995.^22^ Carmen specialized in printmaking, and studied with artist Belkis Ayón (1967–99) and printmaker Agustín Bejerano (b. 1964). Muthewuye also recalled two dance students from Mozambique (Augusto Coveillas and Maria Elena Pinto) and two music students (Jonathan Zamba and Amelia Matsinha), as amongst those who studied in Havana.^23^ > >**Cuban and Soviet policies of internationalist solidarity with leftist and anti‐colonial movements in Africa also enabled artists from other parts of the continent to secure training within these programmes. Many Angolan artists studied in Cuba, for example, including Jorge Gumbe (b. 1959), who graduated in Painting and Design at the Escola Nacional de Arte in Havana in 1989, and art historian Adriano Mixinge (b. 1968), who studied on the island for fourteen years, ultimately graduating in Art History at the University of Havana in 1993**.^24^ > >Ethiopia’s diplomatic links with Russia predated the October Revolution, and art students had travelled to Moscow from the 1950s. Geta Mekonnen records that, between 1961 and 1974, fourteen out of 119 students enrolled at Addis Ababa School of Fine Arts were sent to study in Eastern bloc countries.^25^ These numbers accelerated rapidly under the Derg’s Marxist‐Leninist government (1974–87). Bekele Mekonnen, Director of the Art School in Addis, studied at the Surikov Academy in Moscow for six years, beginning in 1987. > >[…] > >[A]lthough many Mozambican artists remember the socialist moment in ambiguous terms, the Tashkent *bolseiros* shared an enduring commitment to ideals of solidarity and equality. **While the end of socialism might have allowed for more diverse forms of artistic expression, it also fostered increased power inequalities.** > >Raimundo fondly recalled the utopian [*sic*] promises of Soviet socialism, and in his 2008–9 series *Kuwoca* addressed the theme of solidarity, his finely worked watercolours depicting intimate moments of community: a woman helping a bereaved friend with her laundry (*plate 11*), a group of fisherman carrying a boat (*plate 12*). ‘I’m talking of socialization and cooperation’, he recalled, ‘how neighbours help each other, and look after each other’. Cejuma also valued the egalitarianism of the socialist moment: >>I liked the political system of communism […] it gave more value to life […] **People would join together to make a social life, separated from consumption. Your salary would cover all your expenses — clothes, food, water, gas to cook anything, a house to live in, electricity, even for those people who lived right out in the remote forests — everybody had those things. It was marvellous […] In a capitalist country, they don’t want to know. It’s a fight of power — win if you can — while I have my big sack of money, that person over there who has nothing to eat can die. It’s not just**.^84^ (Emphasis added.) I should warn you that since a noncommunist clearly wrote this, typical antisocialist clichés abound. For example: >The strictest Marxist‐Leninist approach held that nations, like classes, would dissolve with the onset of communism,^50^ but the idea of the nation remained embedded in Soviet thought and the very notion of a homogenous Uzbek identity was in fact Soviet in origin. […] In many respects the Soviet Union’s brand of colonialism was significantly different from European models, […] the red Soviet flag inaugurates a utopian ‘new life’ in Mozambique, If you can bear these flaws, though, this is an otherwise fine reading.
>Whilst the symbolism of tourism to Cuba was more important than its actual statistical impact, it is revealing to compare the GDR to Western European trends in this regard. Only a fraction of GDR holidays were taken outside of Europe. This was, however, part of a broader global pattern: in 1989, the percentage of West European holidays taken outside of Europe was 7 per cent.^11^ > >In terms of trajectory, however, the GDR bucked international trends. Holidays abroad as a percentage of overall trips actually declined throughout the 1970s, as the rate of foreign holidays remained stable while domestic holidays increased.^12^ Domestic holidaying eventually came to take up what Gerlinde Irmscher has described as an ‘excess of weight’ (Übergewicht) in the East German travel offer.^13^ > >As Hasso Spode notes, the amount of GDR tourists travelling abroad by the late 1980s lagged far behind comparative numbers in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), although corresponded similarly to those in France.^14^ As a destination for GDR citizens, Cuba probably never represented more than 5 per cent of all outgoing journeys. > >Heike Wolter has estimated that the number of holidays made from the GDR to fellow socialist republics in Cuba, Vietnam, North Korea and Mongolia numbered 27,000 in 1970, rising to 74,000 by 1989. These figures represent almost 6 per cent of all foreign travel in the GDR in 1970, falling to just below 3 per cent in 1988/89.^15^ > >[…] > >Cruising the socialist world system was a mix of luxury and politics (see Figure 1). The Swedish built, FDGB‐owned MS *Völkerfreundschaft* had gone into operation in 1960.^22^ At the time, GDR officials claimed it was the world’s largest operating cruise liner.^23^ On board, travellers could drink *Cuba Libre* (with Cuban Rum and GDR‐produced *Vita Cola*), attend bingo nights, dances, and film screenings, and morning exercise classes were held on deck.^24^ Alongside these events, there were also lectures given by political officers and veterans of the Spanish Civil War.^25^ > >The mix of leisure and politics was not seen as contradictory by GDR officials, but there were complaints regarding lack of attendance of the political lectures, and trade union functionaries repeatedly stressed that more effort should be put into refining ‘cultural life’ on board. In the 1960s, the ships would also deliver the physical manifestations of GDR solidarity: one ship for example took 2,500 ‘protest resolutions’ against U.S. intervention that had been written in GDR factories.^26^ On the return leg of the first journey, 10 wounded Cuban soldiers travelled back to the GDR for treatment.^27^ > > >**Figure 1.** BStU MfS ZAIG 22671, p.30. > >What was the end goal? The ships were intended to serve various functions: originally dreamt up as a response to the 1953 uprisings by FDGB chief Herbert Warnke, they were conceived of as prestige objects, that would ‘act as visible evidence of the superiority of socialism over capitalism’, as one report to Stasi chief Erich Mielke in 1959 put it.^28^ > >For the FDGB, a key focus was boosting productivity, both before the journeys and after: the FDGB holidays were conceived of as *Auszeichnungsreise*, or ‘award trips’. The central FDGB board would distribute the trips down to individual brigades which had performed well, and the holidays would then be allocated to the outstanding workers within that brigade. The FDGB hoped the trips would spur workers to work harder, and that those who travelled would return home more motivated, committed socialists.^29^ > >The cruises would also serve the growth of a unified socialist world system. Repeated *ad finitum* [*sic!*] was the statement that socialist tourism was carried out *Auf der Grundlage sozialistischer Produktionsverhältnisse*: ‘On the basis of socialist conditions of production’.^30^ Because Marxist‐Leninists believed that the relations of production determine economics and social consciousness, it was seen that each society in which these conditions reign would naturally converge.^31^ (Emphasis original.) While it is clear that a communist did not write this paper, by antisocialist standards this is a mostly mature examination and much of it is worth reading.
Pictured: Colonel Grigori Shtern (left) Marshal Khorloogiin Choibalsan (centre), and General Georgy Zhukov (right), dated 1939. Quoting *History of the Mongolian People’s Republic*, pages [345](https://archive.org/stream/HistoryOfTheMPR/page/n172/mode/1up)–[6](https://archive.org/stream/HistoryOfTheMPR/page/n173/mode/1up): >As the armed raids by [Imperial] troops on MPR frontier posts grew in intensity and assumed a more and more bare‐faced character, they aggravated the tense situation on the eastern frontier of the MPR which had been created in 1936. The peaceful existence and national independence of the MPR became directly threatened. At this dangerous moment for the MPR there rang out all over the world a declaration by the USSR Government to the effect that in the event of Japan deciding to attack the Mongolian People's Republic by encroaching upon its independence, the Soviet Union would have to help the MPR.^2^ > >This declaration furnished fresh proof of the USSR's peace‐loving policy and of the fraternal, friendly relations between the USSR and the MPR and of the readiness of the Soviet people to help the MPR protect its independence; it strengthened still further the friendship of the Soviet and Mongolian peoples, inspired the Mongolian people with new strength. The Protocol on Mutual Assistance between the USSR and MPR, signed on March 12, 1936, following this declaration, linked still more closely together the destinies of the two brother nations and formed a sure guarantee of the independence of the MPR. > >In conformity with Articles 1 and 2 of this Protocol the two Contracting Parties, in event of a threat of an attack on the territory of the USSR or the MPR by a third State, undertook immediately to confer on the situation so created and to take all such steps as might be required to guard against the danger and to afford one another every possible assistance, including military assistance. > >The Protocol on Mutual Assistance, which enlarged upon and put into legal form the [unwritten] agreement of 1934, was exceptionally important for safeguarding the independence of the MPR. This document demonstrated the unshakable determination of the Soviet and Mongolian peoples to make joint efforts to defend peace in the Far East and protect the MPR against aggression by […] imperialism. The Protocol on Mutual Assistance was a striking expression of the peaceful foreign policy of both states, which was based on the principle of equality of rights, mutual respect and friendship of the peoples. > >The Plenary Meeting of the MPRP Central Committee (March 1936) and Twentieth Session of the Little Hural laid special stress upon the growing danger of external attack and approved the steps taken by the government to reinforce the country's defence capacity and develop the economy. In order to intensify the struggle with counter‐revolutionary elements inside the country, the Meeting approved the reorganization of Internal State Security as part of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
Quoting the 1982 report, featured in [page 431 of this book](https://books.google.com/books?id=63_obglArrMC&pg=PA431): >In 1981, grain imports and other agricultural products reached almost $12 billion, or about 40% of the U.S.S.R.’s total hard currency purchases. Despite the large‐scale expansion in agricultural imports though, **the Soviet Union remains basically self‐sufficient with respect to food. These imports are intended primarily to prevent a decline in meat consumption and are not essential to maintaining an adequate quantity of food consumption.** > >At 3,300 calories, average daily food intake equals that in developed Western countries. **Grain production is more than sufficient to meet consumer demand for bread and other cereal products.** To summarize, when we say that the U.S.S.R. is self‐sufficient, we do not mean that the Soviets neither need nor benefit from trade. Imports, particularly from the West, can play an important rôle in relieving critical deficiencies, spurring technologic progress, and generally improving Soviet economic performance. > >What we mean is that **the Soviet economy’s ability to remain viable in the absence of imports is much greater than that of most, possibly all, other industrialized economies.** Consequently the susceptibility of the Soviet Union to economic leverage tends to be limited. (Emphasis added.) Imports were essentially supplementary; demanded more so for optimization than for emergencies. Nonetheless, it raises the question: why have food imports at all? The agency glosses over this issue with the excuse that central planning and administration by fiat apply poorly to agriculture. However, there is one factor that they don’t discuss: the environment. Quoting *Soviet Agriculture*, [pages 18–19](https://ia600500.us.archive.org/28/items/SovietAgricultureMorozov/SovietAgricultureMorozov.pdf#page=9): >The natural and climatic conditions of the U.S.S.R.’s agriculture are both severe and unstable. No other major country faces such serious problems in overcoming their negative influence on agricultural production. Agroclimatologists estimate that on the average these conditions are 2–2.5 times worse than in the U.S.A. […] Generally over 60% of the country’s territory is periodically subjected to droughts and other unfavourable weather influences. > >At the same time that zone normally accounts for approximately 75% of grain deliveries. The year 1972 for example featured a snowless winter that destroyed the crops of 12 million hectares of sown land, then drought affected more than 100 million hectares of arable land. This is a very large area; almost twice the size of France. > >[…] > >The drought in 1975 however was even more severe. In fact, Soviet farmers had never yet experienced such unfavourable conditions. More generally the frequency of droughts between 1963 and 1975 is matched only by that of the 1890s (when a series of harvest failures shook Russia). However (quoting pages 19–20): >The country’s average yield per hectare of land was 8.3 centners in 1963, 9.5 centners in 1965, 12.1 centners in 1967, 14 centners in 1972, and 13.8 centners in 1975. The gross grain harvests in the corresponding years were 107.5 million tons, 121.1 million tons, 147.9 million tons, 168.2 million tons, and 140 million tons [a drought year, remember] respectively. > >[…] > >In a sense, difficult years were a sort of test for our social system’s foundations, but they only show that the Soviet path of agricultural development and the agrarian policy […] which serves the needs of a comprehensive consolidation of collective and state farms, have been bearing fruit. In the U.S.S.R. the socio‐economic conditions governing the agricultural development are gradually reducing its dependence on spontaneous fluctuations in the weather as well as the work conditions’ harshness on the land.
It was on March 7, 1921 that a collection of miners established a dictatorship of the proletariat in Istria, partly in response to Fascist violence, and partly in response to the inadequate working conditions. Sadly, it only lasted one month before the authorities forcibly shut it down. Despite its significance to proletarian history, finding detailed sources on this in English is frustratingly difficult. If you know [Italian](https://hrcak.srce.hr/file/368661) and [Serbo‐Croatian](https://hrcak.srce.hr/file/371542) then you’ll have nothing but a good time researching this, but I am not kidding when I say that much of the information on this in English is limited to tour guides. From [Libcom.org](https://libcom.org/article/republic-labin-1921): >As elsewhere in Italy, alongside worker militancy there was a wave of employer‐backed fascist reaction. > >On 1 March, 1921, miners’ union leader Giovanni Pipano was attacked by fascists and severely beaten at the Pazin train station. The following day miners found out and were furious, and called a meeting for 3 March. > >On 3 March miners gathered and decided to occupy their mine with the slogan “Kova je naša” — the mine is ours”. Peasants arrived from the countryside to support them, and armed detachments of Red Guards were organised to keep order. > >On 7 March the miners declared the foundation of the Republic of Labin, and raised a red hammer and sickle flag. They formed a central committee as a decision‐making body, with mass assemblies for discussion and complete equality between the different nationalities of worker. They formulated and presented demands to their employer, Societa Arsia, including demanding a pay increase. > >As the bosses refused to give in, on 21 March the miners decided to restart coal mining under workers’ self‐management. > >A month on, the company made the decision to cease negotiations and instead call in the army. > >On 8 April, around 1000 soldiers and police attacked the mine by land and sea. The miners, taken by surprise, retreated towards Štrmac, where they continued to put up resistance. But poorly armed and untrained they were forced to surrender. > >Two miners — Massimiliano Ortar and Adalbert Sykora — were killed with dozens arrested. > >52 miners were later charged with a litany of crimes including the establishment of a soviet régime, rebellion, possession of explosives and others. But due to miners’ refusal to testify against one another, a robust legal defence and support of the local population eventually none were convicted.
>No amount of managerial reform or incentives will bring Soviet yields up to U.S. levels because the climate and geography of the Soviet Union will not permit it. Nevertheless, contrary to the implications of Western critics the steady increase in Soviet yields has been quite respectable (Shaffer 1990:4 and Table I). On a sown area which was roughly the same (218 vs. 216 million hectares) Soviet output during the 10th plan (1976–1980) was some 48% larger than that of the 7th (1961–1965)(NKhSSSR V 1963:242;NKhSSSR V 1980:224). > >This increase is largely a result of a tripling of fertilizer application and an almost two‐fold expansion of the irrigated land area (NKhSSSR V 1980:238,240) (For 1986–90 output was up another 16% on 210 million hectares, RSEEA 1991a:8). These results suggest that over time additional investment and improvement of farm administration and practice can produce increases in output within a socialist system. > >Even with additional investment, geography and climate will always make Soviet agricultural performance volatile. Up until 1963 the expansion of Soviet output came primarily via an expansion of the sown area. Between 1950 and 1963, sown area increased by 49%. But that meant expansion into more marginal geographical and climatic areas. Since that time the sown area has remained rather stable, and because of the marginal character of new lands, levels of output have been more volatile. > >Since 1965, increases in output have come from ever higher levels of investment and material inputs, much of which attempts to compensate for the marginal character of the land. Inputs into agriculture in 1977 were up 75% over that of 1950, but output was up 145% (Diamond and Davis 1979:20). Regardless of Western perceptions, in the 1970's the combined productivity of the resources devoted to agriculture averaged more than a third greater than in 1950 (Diamond and Davis 1979:20). > >[…] > >Tsarist Russia was a net exporter of grain (NKhSSSR V 1969:669). The Soviet Union of the 1980's is a large net importer of grain (Laird 1990:11; Buck and Cole 1987:74). The Soviet Union apparently has forfeited its agricultural self‐sufficiency. Therefore, in the view of Western critics, this shows that socialist types of agriculture are clearly less capable of meeting national food and fiber requirements than are capitalist types. > >An economic system is not inefficient because it imports. The European Community (EC‐12) in 1987, for example, was a net importer of some $25.8 billion (Commission of the European Community 1990:T/139) of agricultural products, i.e., almost double the $12.9 billion (USDA 1989:40,42) of net Soviet agricultural imports. > >Even when the larger population of the EC is discounted, the net per capita agricultural imports of the EC exceeded those of the USSR by over 75%. One can't simply conclude from this that the small capitalist family farms of Western Europe are less efficient than the large socialist farms of the USSR. > >Similarly the fact that during the pre‐WW II period, as well as over the course of 1950–1960 (Statistical Abstract of the U.S. 1960:885) and during 1968 and 1969 (Statistical Abstract of the U.S. 1970:781) the U.S. was a net importer of food and live animals does not prove, by itself, that U.S. agriculture was inefficient. Nor do the facts that the U.S. is the world's largest importer of meat and currently a large net importer of vegetables, fruits and fish (Statistical Abstract of the U.S. 1988), prove that U.S. agribusiness is a failure. > >Imports are also not good indicators of the overall productive capacity of an economy. The Soviet Union has a big agricultural economy. In 1989, for example, it had more cattle, hogs and sheep and produced more wheat, rye, oats, barley, cotton, potatoes, sugar, wool, milk, butter, eggs and fish (among many other products) than the U.S. (USDA 1991). Imports only reflect an economy's relative resource endowments and productive capacities. > >Soviet agricultural imports have changed significantly over the course of the past two decades. During the period 1956–1970 the USSR was a net exporter of grain, exporting (net) an average of 3.5 million tons per year (Goldich 1979:144). From 1970 onward it became a progressively heavier importer. Net grain imports rose from an average of 9.88 million tons per year over the period 1970–1974 to 20.52 million during the period 1975–1979, to 30.88 in 1980–1984 and to 32.1 million tons during the four year period 1985 1988 (USDA 1989:49). Prior to 1970 Soviet net meat imports were small but by 1990 they were approaching U.S. levels. > >These rising imports of grain and meat were not triggered, as one might be inclined to infer, from declining production. Grain production rose from an average 181.6 million tons in 1971–75 to an average 206.9 million in 1986–89. Meat production rose from 14.0 million tons in 1971–75 to 19.2 million tons in 1986–89, i.e., a 37 percent increase. The imports were triggered by the rising demand for meat which accompanied rather sharp increases in income. > >Per capita consumption of meat, rose from 47.5 kg per capita in 1970 to 67 in 1989 (NKhSSSR V 1980:201–202 and V 1989: 118). In a very approximate fashion, the 5.2 million extra tons of meat produced in 1986–89 over and above the 1971–75 level required approximately 50 million tons of grain for feed, 25 million of which have come from domestic production and some 25 from additional imports. Since the increase in grain output and imports has not been sufficient to cope with the increasing requirements for domestic meat production, meat imports were increased.
link.springer.com
([Mirror.](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338369418)) Socialist solidarity did not mean keeping other states perpetually dependent on a stronger one, as the case is in colonialism, but rather helping new republics learn the skills that they needed to remain independent, a difference embodied in the saying ‘give someone a fish and you feed her for a day; teach someone to fish and you feed her for a lifetime.’ This chapter by Alexandra Piepiorka is a good example of that: this is a very mature and mostly pleasant reading for anybody interested in how the people’s republics interacted. Example: >Besides their inefficient ideological endeavors at the UEM, the GDR staff were largely respected for their professional knowledge in other fields, and their cooperative behavior in most aspects of collaboration was perceived well by their Mozambican partners.^97^ > >GDR cooperators usually looked to Frelimo’s educational guidelines for pedagogical orientation, and a corresponding mode of conduct was officially promoted by the GDR ministries of education (MHF and MfV) when sending staff to the UEM. GDR advisors working at the Faculty of Education, for instance, were instructed “not to copy GDR‐plans” and to rather do the “necessary and right” according to Mozambican conditions.^98^ > >Bearing this in mind, GDR cooperators at the UEM proved quite open to acquiring new teaching skills proposed by their Mozambican counterparts or—in some cases—by their international colleagues.^99^ Beyond this, more pragmatic factors may also have played a part in the cooperative behavior of GDR staff. Documents indicate that GDR teaching staff were not always sufficiently prepared to meet the Mozambican realities on the ground, consequently, newly arrived GDR cooperators may have been more amenable to follow Frelimo guidelines.^100^ > >In addition, experienced GDR staff members were reportedly keen to maintain a high level of recognition both at the UEM^101^ and in relation to the Frelimo Party. Therefore, experienced staff members made some effort to effectively integrate new GDR cadres, in order to prevent losses in working standards.^102^ > >[…] > >The history of the Faculty for Former Combatants, for instance, showed that **educational ideas “borrowed”^109^ from socialist partners were useful for the consolidation of the new education system (SNE) and, thereby, were conducive to the decolonization process of the newly independent country in a broader sense.** > >This faculty not only successfully promoted the education of former independence fighters within the UEM, but also qualified a certain number of Mozambican cadres to contribute to post‐colonial state building, as envisioned by the (then Socialist) Frelimo government. (Emphasis added.)
commons.wikimedia.org
>We are sure of representing the majority of the population, of representing the most essential interests of the majority of the Italian people; proletarian violence is thus progressive and cannot be systematic. Your violence is systematic and systematically arbitrary because you represent a minority destined to disappear. We must say to the working population what your government is, how your government conducts itself, to organize against you, to make it ready to defeat you. It is most probable that we too will find ourselves forced to use the same systems as you, but as a transition, occasionally… Certainly: use the same systems as you, with the difference that you represent the minority of the population, while we represent the majority. ([Source.](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/974897)) Honourable mention: Friedrich Wilhelm Ernst Busch, a German antifascist who was born today 124 years ago and fought in the International Brigades.
Pictured: A Red Army soldier in Berlin distributing food to German women at a soup kitchen. >[Amichai Eliyahu […] later argued against humanitarian aid as “[w]e wouldn’t hand the Nazis humanitarian aid”, and “there is no such thing as uninvolved civilians in Gaza”.^461^](https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192/192-20231228-app-01-00-en.pdf#page=61) Yes, it is entirely possible that most German adults in 1945 were at least slightly sympathetic to Fascism. Even so, harming unarmed civilians who probably just didn’t know any better anyway would have been excessively harsh, don’t you think? In reality, the Red Army was apparently unconcerned with whether or not it was helping hardline anticommunists when it distributed humanitarian aid to Berlin in 1945. Quoting [pages 59–60 of this 1981 issue of *Soviet Military Review*](https://books.google.com/books?id=JWnfAAAAMAAJ&pg=RA7-PA59): >On May 11, the Military Council of the First Byelorussian Front adopted the decision “On the Food Supply of the Berlin Population,” envisaging the introduction as of May 15, 1945 of a single rationing system in the city of Berlin with enhanced and differentiated provision for certain categories of workers. The daily ration, in grammes, was: bread, 300–600; potatoes, 400; cereals, 30–80; meat, 20–100; fats, 7–30; sugar, 15–25. > >A vice‐commandant of Berlin was appointed to help in organising the provision of food for the inhabitants. General A. B. Barinov was appointed to this post. The Command of the First Byelorussian Front allotted the necessary [victuals](https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/victual#Noun) out of its reserve stocks and detailed to deliver them two army motor transport regiments totalling some 2,000 vehicles, some of which were placed at the disposition of the Berlin municipality. > >The military commandants’ offices were given 386 supply officers to organise warehouses and restore the most important food industry installations such as flour mills, macaroni factories and abattoirs. **The Soviet Government sent to Berlin 96,000 tons of grain, 60,000 tons of potatoes, up to 50,000 head of cattle for meat, sugar, fats and other products.** By May 18 ration cards were distributed and the Berliners began to draw their food on them. > >Immediate measures were taken by the Soviet and German authorities against the epidemics which generally accompany famine, Nikolai Erastovich Berzarin made the district commandants responsible for restoring the medical agencies, demanding that they report to him personally on the results of measures against seats of infection. > >The medical establishments gradually resumed work. By June 21 there were working: 96 hospitals, 4 of them for children, 10 maternity hospitals, 146 chemist shops, and 6 first aid centres employing 654 doctors. About 800 medical personnel were engaged in private practice. Still the position remained serious, for some 250 thousand persons were in need of constant medical attention. There were not enough doctors, junior medical personnel or medicaments. > >The Soviet Command accordingly decided to free doctors from prisoner‐of‐war camps near Berlin for work in hospitals. The city authorities exempted medical personnel from work to clear the streets, and with the help of the Soviet Command took steps for the quick rehabilitation of pharmaceutical factories and soap works. All this allowed the medical institutions to be reinforced and the health service of the population to be improved. > >These measures, it must be noted, were very timely. When dysentery began to spread in July and 900 persons were catching typhoid fever every week, the Berlin medical services were able to prevent the spread of the epidemics. (Emphasis added. Supporting citation: [Grigori Deborin, *Вторая мировая война*, pgs. 340–343.](http://publ.lib.ru/ARCHIVES/D/DEBORIN_Grigoriy_Abramovich/_Deborin_G.A..html#002)) Distributing humanitarian aid to ordinary Germans was also logical from a tactical point of view: even if they were all Axis sympathizers, seeing or receiving help from the Red Army was likely going to cause many casual anticommunists to reexamine their beliefs, and thereby facilitate cooperation. Exterminating the populace would have been a waste of time and other resources, too, as the Eastern Allies had no plans to colonize Germany. So as much as Zionists enjoy LARPing as WWII‐era antifascists, all that they’re really doing is confirming their ignorance of [history](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2629552) (as usual).
>Furthermore, we are far too deeply indebted to the Jews. Leaving aside Heine and Börne, Marx was a full-blooded Jew; Lassalle was a Jew. Many of our best people are Jews. My friend Victor Adler, who is now atoning in a Viennese prison for his devotion to the cause of the proletariat, Eduard Bernstein, editor of the London *Sozialdemokrat*, Paul Singer, one of our best men in the Reichstag — people whom [I](https://www.marxists.org/glossary/people/soviet/german-philosophy.htm#Engels) am proud to call my friends, and all of them Jewish! After all, I myself was dubbed a Jew by the *Gartenlaube* and, indeed, if given the choice, I’d as lief be a Jew as a ‘Herr von’! ([Source.](https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1890/04/19.htm))
>Many of you will know Bela Lugosi for his portrayal of Court Dracula in the 1931 classic film *Dracula*. > >--- >What you may not know is that Lugosi was a active revolutionary during the Hungarian Soviet Republic, helping to found an actor's trade union and organise theatre industry workers in support of the revolution. > >--- >During counter‐revolutionary terror that followed the fall of the Soviet Republic the Commission of the National Theatre stripped Lugosi of his job and forced him into exile.
archive.org
>Just six years ago, when there were rumors that Stalin was dead, was dying or was going to the United States for a serious operation, the Associated Press Moscow correspondent—then Charles P. Nutter—wrote asking him for the truth. > >This answer came, signed in blue pencil in Stalin’s own hand: > >>“I know from reports of the foreign press that I long ago abandoned this sinful world and moved into the other world. >> >>“As one cannot doubt such foreign press dispatches unless he wants to be expelled from the list of civilized people, I request you to believe them and don't disturb me in the calm of the other world. >> >>“With respect, >> >>“J. Stalin.”
monthlyreview.org
cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/803365 > Mentions Samir Amin as well.
This is from an email that Grover C. Furr (whom many consider a ‘pro‐Soviet’ historian) sent to me in January 2020: >After World War 2 the study of the specifically anti-Jewish aspect of German massacres was not emphasized. Soviet Jews were targeted, but so were all communist party members. **The Soviet government had a policy not to emphasize the sufferings of any one national group over others. They emphasized that every group, all Soviet citizens, were massacred by the Nazis.** And that is true, of course. > >The Soviet writer Vassily Grossman and others composed a "Black Book of Soviet Jewry" about Nazi targeting of Jews. Soviet authorities refused to publish it because it singled out Jews, as opposed to other Soviet peoples. (Grossman was a communist who later, after Khrushchev's "Secret Speech," became an anticommunist because he believed Khrushchev's lies). > >The Soviets also had a big problem with Zionism, particularly after the formation of the State of Israel in 1948. However, the Soviets also set up the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, to raise awareness of the Nazis' attacks specifically on Jews. This was certainly acknowledgement of the specifically anti-Jewish aspect of Nazi policy. > >The problem was that the JAFC morphed into a Zionist organization. And Zionism was hostile to the concept of Soviet citizenship and internationalism. A dozen leaders of the JAFC were arrested in 1948-9, and tried for treason as American spies in 1952. All but one were executed. > >Once Stalin died, they were exonerated — by Lavrentii Beria! (assuming the documents we have now are genuine). But Beria evidently did not think that Stalin had anything to do with this. Beria blamed an anti-Semite who was a high-ranking officer[.] > >In 1948 Il'ia Erenburg, a famous Soviet Jewish writer (and one who did not like Stalin) published "Answer to a Letter" in *Pravda*. It's an affirmation of the USSR as the only real homeland for Jews and other national groups, and a critique of Zionism. Some years ago I translated it and put it on line: https://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/pol/erenburganswer.pdf > >One more point: The concept of "genocide" as we understand it today was invented by Raphael Lemkin in the mid-1940s. But Lemkin was just as anticommunist and anti-Soviet as he was anti-Nazi. Consequently, for a long time the concept of Nazi genocide was associated with anticommunism. > >So! Should the Soviets, during the Stalin period, have published *The Black Book* and, in general, encouraged or at least permitted study and publication about the specifically anti-Jewish aspect of Nazi mass murder? In my opinion, sure they should have! "Hindsight is 20/20!" But I understand why they did not. > >After Stalin's death, and especially after Khrushchev's lying "Secret Speech," the campaign to get Soviet Jews to emigrate to Israel got under way in a big way. I haven't studied this period. It's quite different from the earlier period. (Emphasis added.) In sum, the Soviets were usually shy about discussing the Shoah because they were worried about accidentally coming across as chauvinistic. It was almost certainly not, as some historians (including the otherwise respectable [John-Paul Himka](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2088054)) have suggested, the result of antisemitism. It is worth noting that despite their general timidity about the subject, the Soviets were also among the first to document and portray the Shoah. Quoting Rich Brownstein’s [*Holocaust Cinema Complete*](https://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=6F75742CE2746F6A05A9BB58590BF8E8), pages 21 and 44: >Surprisingly, half of the first Holocaust films came from behind the “Iron Curtain” […] Over 40 percent of the Post-War Era Holocaust Films (38) were produced by Soviet or [other] Eastern Bloc countries. See also: [*First Films of the Holocaust: Soviet Cinema and the Genocide of the Jews, 1938–1946*](https://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=052BC4374E4D488E84DE78AACC9F3276) and [*The Phantom Holocaust: Soviet Cinema and Jewish Catastrophe*](https://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=8BC509B98D62D7371B2B14793D532B3F).
([Mirrror.](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/309275332_Spanish_Civil_War_caves_of_Asturias_in_archaeology_and_memory) [Mirror.](https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1524097/1/IJHS%20rewrite.pdf)) >We do not know the traditional name of this cave located in the south face of the Sierra de los Collaos. It is very small and the entrance is difficult to locate. From the small entrance it is possible to gain access to a secondary tunnel that connects with a small open area (about two meters long and one meters wide) with a flat floor. > >This space was adapted by the militiaman to create an adequate space to live and sleep. The remains of hearths can still be seen in the cave, and from the entrance the main road of the Trubia Valley is visible, as well as other traditional paths and roads. At the entrance of the cave there is an inscription on the wall (Figure 6), which reads >>*La República >>La libertad >>La cultura >>La enseñanza >>[The Republic >>Freedom >>Culture >>Education]* > >[…] > >El Veiru cave is on the north side of the Sierra de los Collaos. […] Various graffiti were recorded in this cave. The first depicts the flag of the Spanish Section of the International Communist Party, showing the militia group’s political affiliation (Figure 7). The interviews revealed that the Communists were only a small group in Villanueva. > >The individuals who established the Cooperative were socialists linked with the UGT trade union and the Spanish Socialist Party the PSOE. However the popularity and membership of the Communist Party grew amongst troops on the battle fronts, with membership rising from a pre-war 80,000 to more than 300,000 by October 1937 (Hernández 2010, 356).
ifddr.org
([Mirror.](https://thetricontinental.org/?p=40114)) >In the 1950s, the large gaps in the production chain caused by the war and reparations continued to loom over the DDR’s economy. The economic isolation of the DDR led to pragmatic choices: if there was no iron coming from the West, then it had to be mined locally, no matter how poor the quality or how expensive it was to produce. If no coal or oil was available, then they used the only thing left: brown coal. > >Brown coal, or lignite, was the only raw fuel that was available in the East in significant quantities. Though using it was not environmentally friendly, there was no alternative due to external circumstances. > >The creation of the DDR’s own iron, steel, and machine industries as a basis for its industrial development was the main focus of development in the DDR’s early years. The first Five-Year Plan therefore envisaged doubling industrial production between 1951 and 1955. > >The enormous factories that were built all over the republic as a result brought young people into previously sparsely settled regions. New villages and towns were built and became home to thousands of people. In forty years, the DDR fundamentally changed the face of the formerly underdeveloped agricultural region of East Germany. > >With the gradual stabilisation of the East German economy and the growth of production, the country was able to attract an ever-increasing volume of investment. In the years between 1950 and 1960 alone, this volume increased more than three-fold. For some ongoing research on the German Democratic Republic, [see here.](https://ifddr.org/?p=1149)
We can't say Karl Marx didn't warn us: capitalism contains the seeds of its own destruction. In their chase for ever higher profits, the capitalists shed workers for machines. The higher return on capital means that the share of profits rises and the share of wages falls, and soon the mass of the population isn't earning enough to buy the goods capitalism produces. And that's exactly what's been happening over the past four years of the Great Recession: ever increasing income inequality, leading to ever weaker aggregate demand -- temporarily disguised by an unsustainable credit binge -- leading to collapse. You don't have to be a communist to see that this is so. We should all be Marxists now.
A spicy one discussing Left-Wing Anti-Communism, its faults and the origins of its misguidance.
Josip Broz (Serbo-Croatian Cyrillic: Јосип Броз, pronounced [jǒsip brôːz]; 7 May 1892 – 4 May 1980), commonly known as Tito (/ˈtiːtoʊ/;[2] Serbo-Croatian Cyrillic: Тито, pronounced [tîto]), was a Yugoslav communist revolutionary and statesman, serving in various positions from 1943 until his death in 1980.[3] During World War II, he was the leader of the Yugoslav Partisans, often regarded as the most effective resistance movement in German-occupied Europe.[4] He also served as the president of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia from 14 January 1953[1] until his death on 4 May 1980.