scholarly journals Editorial Introduction to Louis Althusser's 'Letter to the Central Committee of the PCF, 18 March 1966'

2007 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-151
Author(s):  
William Lewis
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
Central Committee ◽  
Editorial Introduction ◽  
The Political ◽  
Marxist Philosophy ◽  
Policy Decisions ◽  
Theoretical Context ◽  
Philosophical Project ◽  
French Communist Party ◽  
The Way

AbstractAs an accompaniment to the translation into English of Louis Althusser's 'Letter to the Central Committee of the PCF, March 18th, 1966', this note provides the historical and theoretical context necessary to understand Althusser's 'anti-humanist' interventions into French Communist Party policy decisions during the mid-1960s. Because nowhere else in Althusser's published writings do we see as clearly the political stakes involved in his philosophical project, nor the way in which this project evolved from a 'theoreticist' pursuit into a more practical one, the note also argues that the letter is of importance to Althusser scholars, to historians of Marxist thought, and to those interested in the relevance of Althusser's work to contemporary Marxist philosophy.

The Communist Party and Peasant Mobilization, c.1932–48

2020 ◽  
pp. 140-155
Author(s):  
Neil Macmaster
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
Trade Union ◽  
Union Leader ◽  
Class A ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Primary Base ◽  
French Communist Party ◽  
Guerrilla Movement ◽  
The Way

The Algerian Communist Party (PCA) played a particularly important role in the anti-colonial movement in the Chelif region, a prominence that explains why it was chosen as the primary base for the ‘Red Maquis’ guerrilla force in 1956. Chapter 7 looks at the way in which the PCA, dominated by the French Communist Party, initially opposed nationalism and followed the orthodox Marxist doctrine that the peasantry could not constitute a revolutionary class, a vanguard role that could only be assumed by an industrial or urban proletariat. In the Chelif region the veteran communist and trade union leader Mohamed Marouf reflected this position and focused propaganda work on the farm labourers of the plain while neglecting the mountain peasants that were seen as a form of seasonal, blackleg labour. However, from 1932 onwards a minority movement began to emerge in the PCA that was favourable to a peasant-based strategy, and in 1944 this led to the creation of the Syndicat des petits cultivateurs (SPC). The peasant-based movement that developed in the Aurès, Tlemçen, and Chelif mountains during the late 1940s and prepared the ground for a later guerrilla movement.

scholarly journals Cinema for the “Soviet East”: National Fact and Revolutionary Fiction in Early Azerbaijani Film

Slavic Review ◽  
1997 ◽  
Vol 56 (4) ◽  
pp. 645-678
Author(s):  
Michael G. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
Motion Picture ◽  
Central Committee ◽  
Simple Expression ◽  
The Political ◽  
Moving Frames ◽  
Human Knowledge ◽  
New Concepts ◽  
The World ◽  
The Many

Before the eyes of the vast, ignorant masses of the eastern nationalities, the fast-moving frames of cinema will reproduce the many achievements of human knowledge. For the illiterate audience, the electric beam of the magic motion-picture lamp will define new concepts and images, will make the wealth of knowledge more easily accessible to the backward mind.Bakinskii rabochii, 18 September 1923Pictures, so the first Bolsheviks believed, speak louder than words. Visual propaganda was essential in their campaign to reach the illiterate and poorly literate masses, to engage them in a new Soviet style of life. By the end of the civil war, every leading member of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party valued the political uses of film. As commissar of nationalities, Iosef Stalin recognized its potential; in his simple expression, film was “the greatest means of mass agitation.” Like cinema, the Bolsheviks appeared at the confluence of two worlds, the traditional and the modern. For them, film was the perfect medium by which to critique the old and celebrate the new. Film viewed the world as they did, with one measure of hard realism, another of soft utopianism.

Orthodox Prose Poetry

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nick Admussen
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
Prose Poetry ◽  
The Political ◽  
Study Group ◽  
State Socialism ◽  
Prose Poem ◽  
Prose Poems ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Way

This chapter opens by studying the two most seminal prose poets of the 1950s, Ke Lan and Guo Feng. It shows that by faithfully ventriloquizing state socialism, they effectively subjectivize it, putting the words of the collective into the mouth of the individual. It demonstrates the way in which the political pressures of the 1950s provoked acts of definition and organization on the part of prose poets. The second half of chapter three reads the prose poetry community itself as a key text of orthodox art. It finds that an intentional modeling of prose poetry communities on the structures of the Communist Party has produced a set of dynamics that are hierarchical, inter-organizational, and self-reproductive. These dynamics influence the composition of prose poems through the interventions of educators, editors, and study group administrators, leading to the conclusion that many people participate in the writing of each orthodox prose poem.

Music, the Political Score, and Communism in Australia: 1945–1968

Red Strains ◽  
2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Ashbolt ◽  
Glenn Mitchell
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
Folk Music ◽  
The Political ◽  
Significant Relationships ◽  
Cultural Life ◽  
Political Struggles ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Way

Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, and into the 1960s decade of rebellion, the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) developed significant relationships with cultural and artistic movements. The youth wing of the CPA, The Eureka Youth League (EYL), played a particularly important role in the attempt to forge an alliance between musicians and communism. First through jazz, and then through two folk music revivals, the EYL sought to use music to recruit members and to foster its ideological and political struggles. In the end, the EYL's and CPA's relationship with both jazz and folk was tenuous. Yet along the way, the music itself flourished. This, then, is a story of tensions between and paradoxes surrounding the Party and musicians sympathetic to it. Yet it is also a story about how the cultural life of Australia was greatly enriched by the EYL's attempt to use music as a political tool.

From Moscow to Vichy: Three Working-Class Militants and the French Communist Party, 1920–1940

2000 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sean McMeekin
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Political Participation ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Russian Revolution ◽  
The Political ◽  
French Politics ◽  
Vichy Regime ◽  
French Communist Party

‘From Moscow to Vichy’ chronicles the political trajectory of Jules Teulade, Albert Vassart and Henri Barbé, three French labour militants of modest origins who were rapidly whisked into the top ranks of the French Communist Party (PCF) in the early 1920s, but later fell out of favour with Moscow just as the PCF entered its halycon years in the mid-to-late 1930s. Each of them, though for different reasons, turned against their former Russian patrons so violently that political participation in the ‘anti-Communist’ Vichy regime became thinkable. An examination of their unpublished memoirs – long ignored by Gaullist and communist historians, to whom the recollections of ex-Communist Vichy ‘collaborators’ gave little comfort – reveals both the powerful allure the Russian Revolution had for its earliest devotees, and the profound disillusionment that could result for working-class Communists who saw their faith in Moscow betrayed. In their stories, and those of others like them, we can discern something of the devastating fallout of Moscow's invasion of French politics between the two world wars.

scholarly journals PETRO SHELEST, VOLODYMYR SHCHERBITSKY AND RICHARD NIXON: AMERICAN “TRACE” IN THE FALL OF THE FIRST SECRETARY OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF UKRAINE

2020 ◽  
pp. 34-39
Author(s):  
Yu. Latysh
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Good Reason ◽  
Central Committee ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Washington Post ◽  
The Republic ◽  
North Vietnam ◽  
The Impact

The article deals with the impact of disputes of leaders of the USSR over the visit of US President R. Nixon to the fall of the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine P. Shelest. The article was published in the ‘Washington Post’ by D. Anderson, which based on the CIA's secret materials contained information about the conflict between L. Brezhnev and P. Shelest regarding R. Nixon's visit and the support of General Secretary by V. Shcherbytsky, are analyzing. P. Shelest's position in the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee on the politics of Détente, R. Nixon's visit and his assessment of the foreign policy of L. Brezhnev is revealed. The positions of other members of the Politburo have been covered. The reasons and circumstances of the increasing influence of L. Brezhnev on the foreign policy of the USSR and the defeat of the supporters of the hard course and the class approach were found out. The role of the international factor in ending the political career of P. Shelest and ascending to the top of the political Olympus of the USSR V. Shcherbytsky was investigated. As a result of the study, it became known that P. Shelest was an conservator in the foreign policy of the USSR, demanded the suppression of the “Prague Spring”, was skeptical of the Détente and attempts of L. Brezhnev to establish personal contacts with Western leaders. The brutal bombing of North Vietnam and the death of Soviet citizens were a good reason for P. Shelest and N. Podgorny to endure R. Nixon's visit. P. Shelest's removal was due to internal reasons: his independence position, desire for economic autonomy, insufficiently decisive struggle with dissidents, complaints of other Ukrainian leaders. However, the sudden replacement of the leader of the republic on the eve of the arrival of the President of the United States in Kiev may have been caused by P. Shelest's position regarding Détente and visit of R. Nixon.

scholarly journals From Militants to Secret Agents: Ukrainian Communists under General Denikin

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Éric Aunoble
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Central Committee ◽  
Formative Experience ◽  
And Behavior ◽  
The Way

During the Civil War, the Communist Party and its activists had to constantly adapt to ever-changing situations. This paper aims to study their reaction in Ukraine in 1919 after Denikin took control of the country. It will focus on the 800 activists sent behind enemy lines from July to November 1919. Using the paperwork of special bodies created by the Central Committee (CC) of the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of Ukraine (CP(b)U) to tackle this task (Zafrontbyuro – rearguard bureau; Voenotdel – military department; Otdel Svjazi – communications department), the article will first question the way underground activists were selected. Second, it will highlight how missions behind enemy lines were designed and organized. Third, it will consider the missions themselves and the hardships endured once activists reached Denikin-controlled territory. Fourth, one has to wonder what activists tried to do, questioning what they thought about their dangerous job and what their missions effectively brought to the Bolsheviks. This will help us understand how the Civil War was indeed a “formative experience” (in Sheila Fitzpatrick’s words) for the communists, shaping their worldview and behavior.

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