The now neglected history of Soviet anti-colonialism
By Rohit Krishnan
September 7, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Africa is a Country — In 1920, prior to the second Congress of the Comintern, Lenin
circulated a draft of his theses on “The Question of Colonized People
and Oppressed Minorities.” The end-result of this was the inclusion in
the “21 Conditions” for Comintern membership, of an obligation to
provide “direct aid to the revolutionary movements among the dependent
and underprivileged nations and in the colonies.” While often cited by
Marxists as evidence of the Bolshevik’s commitment to anti-imperialism,
few cite the role of colonized activists in its formation.
Lenin’s theses were revisionist in two senses. Firstly, they cast
anti-imperialism as a priority of the movement, and expanded from class
reductionism and Euro-centrism on several issues. Secondly, they
contributed to the idea of labor aristocracy. These ideas, while not
entirely new, were closely linked with an Indian delegate for the
Mexican Communist Party, MN Roy, the prime source of pressure on Lenin
to expand upon his theses.Pre-1917 Marxist theory held that revolution would originate in the
industrial nations of Western Europe, or the United States, the
industrial proletariat holding the greatest revolutionary potential. By
1920, socialist revolution in Western Europe that Lenin and other
Marxists had hoped for, had either failed to materialize, or been put
down, as in Germany and Hungary. Russia, where revolution had endured,
was an agricultural nation with sluggish industrial development. It was
also a territory with extensive populations of non-Russians, many who
had come under Petrograd’s rule within the last century. During the
early years of the revolution, the question of whether Russia needed to
undergo a period of liberal-capitalist rule as opposed to a transition
directly to socialism had divided the Left. By 1920, many of the
nationalist-liberal governments that had emerged in the Caucuses, Far
East, and Central Asia had collapsed under pressure from both the Red
and White movements.While the Bolshevik government established socialism through force,
other colonies and stateless peoples of the world were under the control
of powers that had stymied political participation and development.
Colonizers had elevated an educated strata of the colonized, often
already elites prior to colonization. Despite this, many had come to
develop ideas of nationalism, and formulate critiques of foreign rule.
Of positions of privilege, these figures and their parties, were
cautiously moderate in demands and methods.Lenin, and many other influential European socialists held the view
that in colonies, “feudal or patriarchal-tribal relations were
prevalent.” Concurrently, the view that the colonial bourgeois was
opposed to imperialism was true in the sense that this class was, at the
time, the driving force in formal political anti-colonialism. Lenin’s
theses called for communists to remain independent, but to collaborate
with bourgeois-liberal nationalists. Roy met with Lenin several times
following his circulation of the draft thesis, and while the exact
nature of these meetings has escaped record, Lenin considered Roy’s
critiques to be sufficiently constructive to warrant amendment.Roy’s primary challenge to Lenin’s draft was that collaboration with
national-bourgeois would be self-defeating in the twofold struggle for
emancipation that colonized peoples would have to engage in, not to
mention the struggle of white socialists. Roy was skeptical of the idea
that the national-bourgeois would act as revolutionaries, and that if
they were to succeed, would only subject colonized peoples to continued
exploitation, while strengthening their political position, dampening
the efforts of colonized socialists. While the bourgeois did play a
significant role in nationalist movements, this did not mean that they
would pave the way for liberal political development, nor would they act
to deconstruct the intra-colonial hierarchy.Roy argued that instead of collaboration, communists should attempt
to step to the forefront and actively pursue leadership. Roy further
emphasized the necessity of colonial, and ultimately racial struggle.
Not only could white workers be ideologically pitted against their
colonized counterparts, but they could also be appeased through
reformist concessions built on colonial loot. Roy noted firstly, as
Lenin would concede, the importance of the subservience of colonies to
the metropole, in capitalism’s growth, and the rapid advances in the
industrial nations. Thus, capitalists states would be ultimately
comfortable “sacrificing the entire surplus value in the home country so
long as it continues in the position to gain its huge super-profits in
the colonies” stymying the work of western comrades.Ultimately, many of the most radical elements of Roy’s supplemental
theses were not adopted, most prominently, emphasis upon the centrality
of colonial liberation to worldwide revolution. Nevertheless, the
changes that were implemented, most importantly the necessity of
communist parties to provide support to national liberation struggles,
and the ambiguity of the relationship between bourgeois national
liberation movements and communists provided a great moral and political
boost to socialists of color, and laid the base for the USSR’s later
support of struggles from Mozambique to Vietnam. At the same time, it
established the precedent that would culminate in the Socialist Bloc’s
support, or silence towards regimes that decimated their revolutionary
left.
