“Solidarity is Something you can Hold in your Hand”

This article tells the story of an organization based in Copenhagen, Denmark, which supported the Liberation struggle in the Third World from 1969 until April 1989. It focus on the support to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (pflp). The story is told in a historical and global context. The text explains the strategy and tactic behind the support-work. It explains how the different forms of solidarity work developed over two decades (for a more detailed account of the history of the group, see Kuhn, 2014). Finally, the article offers an evaluation of the past and a perspective on the future struggle for a socialist Palestine.

The Yiddisher Kultur Farband in Argentina: Progressive and Communist Jews (1917–1956)

Progressive and Communist Jewish identity in Argentina flourished between the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Cold War. In 1937, during the Popular Front period, Jewish Communist intellectuals organized an International Congress of Yiddish Culture in Paris. Twenty-three countries were represented, and the Congress formed the Yiddisher Kultur Farband (YKUF). In 1941, this Congress was replicated in Argentina, where the YKUF sponsored an important network of schools, clubs, theaters, socio-cultural centers, and libraries created by Yiddish-speaking Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. The Ykufist or Progressive Jewish identity reflects a particular construction that is as ethnic as it is political. As “Jewish,” it aimed to transmit the secular heritage of the Yiddishkeit devastated in Europe during World War II, but as “progressive,” “radical” or “Communist,” it postulated its yearning for integration into a universal socialism led by the Soviet model. Progressive Jewish identity was shaped in the antifascist culture and by permanent tensions between Jewish ethnicity and the guidelines of the Communist Party. Above all, it was framed by a fervent aspiration of the immigrants and their children to integrate into their Argentine society.

Azerbejdżan pod rządami Alijewów

In previous years Azerbaijan experienced only a few of leadership changes following independence in 1991. In 1992 Abulfaz Elchibey, the leader of the Popular Front, won first fairly contested presidential election. However the beginning of the current phase political life took place in 1993. As a result of the ensuing war, Armenian armed forces occupied then 14–16 percent of Azerbaijan (20 percent according to Azerbaijani sources), including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts. The collapse of the Popular Front government led to Heidar Aliev’s former communist party boss return to Baku as national leader. During his presidency (1993–2003), Aliev ensured political order, economic stabilization and peace, but suppressed political pluralism. At the time Azerbaijan has positioned itself on the international scene as an increasingly important actor, but in domestic politics system crafted by Aliev political power was concentrated in the hands post-Soviet cadres and regional clans. Ilham Aliev became president of the country in 2003. The period immediately preceding and following his reelection for a second term in October 2008 was marked by further steps towards the consolidation of the semiauthoritarian and authoritarian regime established by his father – Heidar.

The state and Protestant Churches in Hungary in 1948 – 1989

The purpose of the article is to characterize the activities of the largest and most influential Protestant churches in Hungary: Reformed (Calvinist) and Lutheran (Evangelical). These religious denominations along with the Catholic denomination belong to the so-called historical churches of Hungary. The chronological framework is the following: 1948 – the year of the communist regime’s rapid attack on the political, economic, educational activities of the Reformed and Lutheran churches and the signing of a compromise cooperation agreement with them, which lasted until 1990. 1989 – the liquidation of the State Administration for Churches, socio-political transformation in Hungary, which resulted in gaining absolute freedom. Based on Hungarian historiography, the relations between the Protestant churches and the state during the reign of Janos Kadar (1956 – 1988), called by Hungarian researchers the Kadar era, and are analyzed. It was Janos Kadar, the leader of the “soft dictatorship”, who managed to turn the Hungarian People’s Republic into “the funniest barracks in the socialist camp”. The background for the successful policy of the Hungarian government after the revolutionary events of 1956 was the achievement of social harmony, including through great tolerance and flexibility in the religious sphere. The article notes that representatives of the Reformed and Lutheran churches did not take an active part in the preparations for the events of 1956, but pastors and congregations supported the revolution. It is stressed that the relations with the Protestant denominations were settled specifically during the 50s of the twentieth century; the authorities managed to turn part of the clergy into their allies. Based on the analysis of the scientific literature, it is identified that relations were compromise in the 60s and 70s of the twentieth century, as the leadership of the Reformed and Lutheran churches helped the government to pursue the policy of the Popular Front in the struggle for socialism. Owing to it, no one was persecuted for their religious beliefs. In the 1980s, the state’s influence on historical churches gradually weakened, and processes leading to socio-political transformation in the late 1980s started, and as a result, churches in Hungary gained absolute freedom.

Under the Party’s Wing

This chapter examines and compares the social and political history of the communist youth movement in Britain and the Netherlands between 1920 and 1956. It looks primarily at the histories of the British Young Communist League (YCL) and the Dutch Communistische Jeugdbond (CJB; ‘Communist Youth League’) and its post-Second World War successor the Algemeen Nederlands Jeugdverbond (ANJV; ‘General Dutch Youth League’). The chapter details these organisations’ relationships with their respective communist parties and explores the impact of the Class Against Class phase, the Popular Front strategy, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the entry of the Soviet Union into the war on the Allied side, and finally the Cold War on the popularity of these communist youth organisations.

Republic of Cyprus: «Old» Parties Lose Popularity

This article presents an analysis of the results of the parliamentary elections held in Cyprus on May 30, 2021. These elections were held in the context of the aggravation of the issue of the division of the island into Cypriot and Turkish parts and an increase in illegal migration to the island, an increase in the negative impact of the Covid‐19 pandemic, as well as a number of corruption scandals related to the issuance of so-called golden passports. It is shown that the leading Cypriot parties, the ruling Democratic Union and the opposition Progressive Workers Party of Cyprus, continue to lose their supporters who are dissatisfied with the existing party-political system and the inability of these parties for many years to resolve the issue of dividing the country into two states. The center-left Democratic Party (DP) and the Movement for Social Democracy, which took third and fifth places, respectively, retained their modest positions. Against this background, the influence of the nationalist «National Popular Front», which supports the federalization of the Republic of Cyprus, has grown, which came in fourth place. And for the first time, a new liberal party, the Democratic Front, was elected to parliament, also advocating an early solution to the issue of dividing the island by involving international mediators.

Intellectuals and commitment to global anti-fascism: The Second Spanish Republic according to Aníbal Ponce and Carlo Rosselli, 1935-1937

Aníbal Ponce, the highest figure of Argentine Marxism in the 1930s, was in Paris participating in the Antifascist Intellectuals Vigilance Committee, and was sent to Spain as a member of an international evaluation commission of the repressive events in the Asturias Insurrection. When he returns to Argentina after presenting a report and making an initiatory visit to Moscow, he speaks on the Spanish situation, on the political limits of the Second Republic and on the recent triumph of the Popular Front and its challenges. There he posits the idea of the events in Asturias as victorious defeat, as a prelude to the coming revolution. Since his Parisian exile, Carlo Rosselli, the leader of the Italian anti-fascist movement Giustizia e Libertà, reflected critically on the Spanish experience, eventually leading an Italian legion on the Aragon war front. Ideologically closer to the anarchists than to the communists, Rosselli warns of the limits of revolutionary action in Spain, but anticipates a similar opinion to Ponce on the momentary defeat of the working class. In both cases, the Spanish experience leads them to consider the transition from speculation to action as the greatest possible destination for the intellectual class.

Georg Lukács in the Labyrinth of Coexistence

"This text attempts to trace the evolution of the political and philosophical thought of Georg Lukács, after his magnum opus History and class consciousness, as well as the influence that historical events had on this evolution. Against the dominant consensus that dismisses Lukács’s late work as an effect of his alleged “reconciliation with reality”, I argue that the line of continuity in his thought was the idea of peaceful coexistence, derived from the objective conditions – the isolation of the Soviet Union and the stabilization of Western capitalism. So, rather than explaining his choice to defend coexistence, or “socialism in one country” as a consequence of his reconciliation with, or surrender to Stalinism, one should see his compromise with Stalinism as a consequence of this choice. His commitment to the coexistence thesis shaped his final version of Marxism in a number of ways. From a political perspective, a readjustment of the temporal scale of the transition to socialism in post-revolutionary society constrained him to advocate a more realist strategy that combined revolutionary movements with evolutionary processes – this was reflected in his option for the Popular Front strategy and later in his support for the Western pacifist movements. His late philosophical work also bears the marks of this enduring political choice. Keywords: Coexistence, Marxism, irrationalism, Stalinism, democratization, socialism "