The Origins of the Transitional Programme

2018 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 87-117 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Gaido
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Secondary Literature ◽  
Bolshevik Revolution ◽  
United Front

AbstractThe origins of the Transitional Programme in Trotsky’s writings have been traced in the secondary literature. Much less attention has been paid to the earlier origins of the Transitional Programme in the debates of the Communist International between its Third and Fourth Congress, and in particular to the contribution of its largest national section outside Russia, the German Communist Party, which had been the origin of the turn to the united-front tactic in 1921. This article attempts to uncover the roots of the Transitional Programme in the debates of the Communist International. This task is important because it shows that the Transitional Programme’s slogans are not sectarian shibboleths, but the result of the collective revolutionary experience of the working class during the period under consideration, from the Bolshevik Revolution to the founding conference of the Fourth International (1917–38).

China and Indian Communism

1972 ◽  
Vol 50 ◽  
pp. 272-294 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bhabani Sen Gupta
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Chinese Revolution ◽  
Nationalist Movement ◽  
Bolshevik Revolution ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Masses

Unlike the Bolshevik revolution, the Chinese revolution had little impact on the Indian nationalist elite. The liberation of the working class from the shackles of capitalism in Russia had stirred the minds of many leaders of the Indian nationalist movement, including Nehru. The liberation of the masses of the peasantry from the shackles of feudalism in China had no comparable impact. The Indian Communist Party (CPI) hailed the Chinese revolution as an epoch-making event, but continued to regard the Soviet Union as the fountainhead of doctrinal as well as tactical directions.

Nation, Locality and Radical Identity

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Malcolm Petrie
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
The Political ◽  
Central Control ◽  
Election Campaigns ◽  
Labour Movement ◽  
General Elections ◽  
Political Left ◽  
National Model ◽  
Selection Of

Concentrating upon the years between the 1924 and 1929 general elections, which separated the first and second minority Labour governments, this chapter traces the rise of a modernised, national vision of Labour politics in Scotland. It considers first the reworking of understandings of sovereignty within the Labour movement, as the autonomy enjoyed by provincial trades councils was circumscribed, and notions of Labour as a confederation of working-class bodies, which could in places include the Communist Party, were replaced by a more hierarchical, national model. The electoral consequences of this shift are then considered, as greater central control was exercised over the selection of parliamentary candidates and the conduct of election campaigns. This chapter presents a study of the changing horizons of the political left in inter-war Scotland, analysing the declining importance of locality in the construction of radical political identities.

The Demise of Non-Communist Parties in North Korea (1945–1960)

2001 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-125 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrei N. Lankov
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
North Korea ◽  
History Of ◽  
United Front ◽  
The 1950S

This article, based on newly declassified material from the Russian archives, deals with the fate of non-Communist parties in North Korea in the 1950s. Like the “people's democracies” in Eastern Europe, North Korea had (and still technically has) a few non-Communist parties. The ruling Communist party included these parties within the framework of a “united front,” designed to project the facade of a multiparty state, to control domestic dissent, and to establish links with parties in South Korea. The article traces the history of these parties under Soviet and local Communist control from the mid-1940s to their gradual evisceration in the 1950s.

The Trials of Arnošt K.

2017 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 320-348 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael D. Gordin
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Dialectical Materialism ◽  
Eastern Bloc ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Secret Police ◽  
Bolshevik Revolution ◽  
Soviet Authority ◽  
The Soviet Union

The Prague-born philosopher and historian of science Arnošt Kolman (1892–1979)—who often published under his Russian name Ernest Kol’man—has fallen into obscurity, much like dialectical materialism, the philosophy of science he represented. From modest Czech-Jewish origins, Kolman seized opportunities posed by the advent of the Bolshevik Revolution to advance to the highest levels of polemical Stalinist philosophy, returned to Prague as an activist laying the groundwork for the Communist coup in Czechoslovakia in February 1948, was arrested and held for three years by the Soviet secret police, returned to work in Moscow and Prague as a historian of science, played vastly contrasting roles in the Luzin Affair of the 1930s and the rehabilitation of cybernetics in the 1950s, and defected—after 58 years in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union—to Sweden in 1976. This article argues that Kolman’s biography represents his gradual separation of dialectical materialism from other aspects of Soviet authority, a disentanglement enabled by the perspective gained from repeated returns to Prague and the diversity of dialectical-materialist thought developed in the Eastern Bloc. This essay is part of a special issue entitled THE BONDS OF HISTORY edited by Anita Guerrini.

High Tide on the High Plateau

2020 ◽  
pp. 121-145
Author(s):  
Benno Weiner
Keyword(s):  
Economic Development ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Chinese Communist Party ◽  
High Tide ◽  
Class Analysis ◽  
High Plateau ◽  
United Front ◽  
The Chinese Communist Party ◽  
Sudden Introduction ◽  
The Way

This chapter explores the period from summer 1955 to summer 1956, a year that saw the sudden introduction of class analysis and protocollectivization into Amdo's grasslands. Spurred by the nationwide “High Tide of Socialist Transformation,” which sought to collectivize agriculture at a sudden and startling pace, in fall of 1955, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) organized “intensive investigations” into Amdo's pastoral society, efforts meant to pave the way for the staged introduction of pastoral cooperatives. By early 1956, Qinghai's leadership had made cooperativization (hezuohua) the year's core task in pastoral areas. Under these circumstances, the underpinnings of the United Front came under pressure as socialism itself was declared the means to achieve nationality unity and economic development. With revolutionary impatience threatening to overwhelm United Front pragmatism, the rhetoric used to describe Tibetan elites began to shift as well. Rather than covictims of nationality exploitation, headmen and monastic leaders were increasingly transformed into representatives of the pastoral exploiting class.

Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
Helen Roche
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
National Socialism ◽  
Subsequent Development ◽  
Contemporary History ◽  
Educational History ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Secondary Literature ◽  
National Community ◽  
The Third ◽  
Depth Analysis

This chapter explains the Napolas’ significance within the Nazi state, laying out the main arguments of the book as a whole. It sketches the programmatic intentions of the key figures involved in the schools’ founding and subsequent development—Reich Education Minister Bernhard Rust, and NPEA-Inspectors Joachim Haupt and August Heißmeyer. It also provides an overview of relevant sources and secondary literature, as well as a brief summary of the schools’ overall aims and ethos. Put simply, we can see the Napolas as a microcosm in which many of the Third Reich’s most fundamental tendencies can be found in magnified form. The schools aimed to realize the more ‘Socialist’ elements of National Socialism by providing free or heavily subsidized places for children from working-class families, whilst also forming pupils into the avant-garde of the Volksgemeinschaft (the Nazi national community defined by race). All in all, in-depth analysis of the Napolas proves the worth of treating educational history as contemporary history, rather than leaving it languishing on the sub-disciplinary margins of historical enquiry.

Amdo, Empire, and the United Front

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Benno Weiner
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
State Building ◽  
Political Community ◽  
National Integration ◽  
Party Leaders ◽  
Epistemological Obstacles ◽  
United Front

This introductory chapter explains that the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) goal in 1950s Amdo was not just state building but also nation building, which required the construction of narratives and policies capable of convincing Amdo Tibetans of their membership in a wider political community. It argues that Communist Party leaders implicitly understood both the administrative and epistemological obstacles to transforming an expansive, variegated, and vertically organized imperial formation into an integrated, socialist, multinational state. Moreover, the ideological underpinnings of the CCP demanded the active participation of individuals and communities in this new sociopolitical order, albeit in heavily scripted ways and as part of a distinct hierarchy of power. The CCP therefore adopted and adapted imperial strategies of rule, often collectively referred to as the United Front, as means to “gradually,” “voluntarily,” and “organically” bridge the gap between empire and nation. As demonstrated, however, the United Front ultimately lost out to a revolutionary impatience that demanded more immediate paths to national integration and socialist transformation. This led in 1958 to communization, large-scale rebellion, and its brutal pacification. Rather than a voluntary union, Amdo was integrated through the widespread and often indiscriminate use of violence, a violence that lingers in the living memory of Amdo Tibetans and many others.

Repositioning of Mass Organizations in the United Front

2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 269-292
Author(s):  
Jiao Li ◽  
Muyun Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Life Course ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Chinese Communist Party ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
National Liberation ◽  
Typical Representative ◽  
United Front

After forming the Anti-Japanese national united front, Chinese Communist Party (ccp) hoped to develop mass organizations in “open,” “democratic” and “mass-oriented” ways. The National Liberation Vanguards of China (nlvc) was a typical representative of left-wing mass organizations in kmt-controlled areas. During 1936-1939, nlvc’s life course was a microcosm of ccp’s adjustment in mass work. nlvc faced ordeals between inclusiveness and insistence, testing whether ccp could stick to principles in mass work. This paper conducts a case study centered on the nlvc, to analyze how ccp repositioned mass organizations during the Anti-Japanese War and explore how mass organizations affected the Party’s vitality.

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