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October Revolution
and the Awakening of the East

p The victory of the October Socialist Revolution in Russia decisively influenced the course of history of the peoples of Asia and Africa. From then on the oppressed peoples continued their struggle for independence in an entirely new international situation. The colonial powers, such as Great Britain, the United States, France and Japan, and other imperialist states could no longer send their ships and troops wherever and whenever they pleased to crush revolts in their colonies, as they had done before the appearance of the world’s first socialist state. The very fact of Soviet Russia’s existence served to keep the colonial powers in check everywhere. For the first time in history the peoples of colonies and dependencies had a powerful ally. Prospects of winning independence had acquired reality.

p The October Revolution also set an inspiring example. Its tremendous revolutionising influence in Asia and Africa was all the greater inasmuch as some of its features made it particularly clear and dear to the hundreds of millions still under a colonial or semi-colonial yoke.

p The first Socialist Revolution had been won in a country spread over a vast area, bordering on the greatest and most important countries of the East. As Lenin put it, "Geographically, economically and historically, Russia belongs not only to Europe, but also to Asia".  [156•1  In passing, so to speak, the Russian revolution had radically solved the crucial problems of the bourgeois-democratic revolution, the very problems that faced the oppressed peoples of the East.

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p First in the history of mankind, it has achieved a consistent and complete solution of the agrarian problem. Its solution of the national-colonial problem showed how that problem might be solved elsewhere. It had brought independence to the outlying colonial regions of the former Russian empire and set them on the way to social progress.

p It is hardly surprising, therefore, that to the peoples of Asia and Africa the October Revolution sounded like a call to arms in the struggle for freedom and independence. Revolutionaries in Asian and African countries began to study the revolutionary theory which had brought victory to the Russian Revolution. Addressing the Seventh All-Russia Congress of Soviets in 1919 a Korean delegate spoke as follows: "In the East, including both the Middle East and the Far East, Mohammedan leaders have been saying that to them Soviet Russia and Soviet Moscow have become something like a new Mecca. For the proletariat and peasantry of Korea Soviet Russia is like an oasis, where the traveller can quench his thirst.”

p With the emergence of the first socialist state on the international arena oppressed peoples everywhere found themselves in a new situation, favourable to the achievement of freedom. More than that: once freedom had been won new prospects opened for the fight for social progress. Enjoying the political, economic and cultural aid of the Soviet Union, offered with no strings attached, the new independent nations could now take a non-capitalist path of development. Lenin urged that the Communists "should advance the proposition, with the appropriate theoretical grounding, that with the aid of the proletariat of the advanced countries, backward countries can go over to the Soviet system and, through certain stages of development, to communism, without having to pass through the capitalist stage".  [157•1 

It was quite natural, therefore, that shortly after the October Revolution there was a tremendous upswing of the national liberation movement in many countries of Asia and Africa. The revolutionary events of the next few years bore evidence to the fact that the colonial system was seriously weakened.

People’s Revolution Wins in Mongolia

p Judged by the size of its population Mongolia is one of the smallest Asian countries, but the events that transpired there under the impact of the October Revolution were of profound importance for the development of backward countries.

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p The two hundred years of Chinese suzerainty, established towards the close of the 17th century, had disastrous consequences for Mongolia and caused a prolonged pause in her economic development. In December 1911, the Mongolian princes declared the country’s independence; but its political status was determined by a tripartite agreement signed by Russia, China and Mongolia in 1915, which turned the country into a feudal theocracy, a monarchy, with the Khutukhtu (Living Buddha), head of the lamaist church, on the throne. Outer Mongolia, though formally remaining under Chinese suzerainty, became dependent upon tsarist Russia. At the end of the First World War Mongolia was one of the most backward countries of the colonial East. Serfdom still flourished, people suffered oppression at the hands of the feudal rulers, spiritual and temporal, and exploitation at the hands of Chinese merchants and money-lenders. Not a single industrial enterprise, nor a single railway existed in the country.

p Right after the October Revolution the Soviet Government pronounced itself in favour of full sovereignty for Mongolia, and its independent development. In a message to the Mongolian people and the government of autonomous Mongolia the Soviet Government unequivocally stated that no foreigners had the right to interfere in Mongolia’s domestic affairs and that Mongolia, being an independent state, was entitled to establish direct contacts with all other nations without any tutelage on the part of either Peking or Petrograd.

p Mongolia’s position was rendered difficult, however, as a result of foreign intervention. Early in 1919, Semyonov, a white Russian general in the pay of the Japanese, attempted to set up a puppet state to be known as Great Mongolia, but his plan fell through. The Chinese feudal landlords and compradors next tried to re-establish their rule over Mongolia, and in November 1919 Chinese troops entered the capital city of Urga (now UlanBator). The Mongolian princes and higher lamaist clergy treacherously capitulated. On November 22, the president of China announced Mongolia no longer autonomous. From then on the country became a staging area for armed incursions into the Soviet Union. In the autumn of 1920, after the forces of Baron Ungern had been decisively defeated by the Red Army, they retreated to Mongolia and ravaged the country.

p The events of 1919 and 1920 in Mongolia had created a revolutionary situation there. Several factors were responsible for this, such as the continued oppressive colonial regime, serfdom, and the heavy hand of the lamaist church, all of which doomed the country to economic backwardness and stagnation. After the country lost its autonomy, a regime of military dictatorship was imposed upon it by the Chinese war-lords. In an atmosphere of 159 general insecurity and suspicion people were indiscriminately seized and tortured, and many were executed. The forces under garon Ungern engaged in depredations, heaping further sufferings on the people. While economic and cultural development was an urgent task and required an end of serfdom, a still more urgent task was that of national liberation, and that meant the ousting of the Chinese troops and the Ungern forces from the country.

p Discontent was rife all over the country. The driving force behind the growing national liberation movement were the toiling arats (herdsmen), who were joined by the feudal gentry and lamas, as well as a segment of the official class; but the latter, though stimulated by patriotic sentiments, mainly intended to use the movement in the interests of their respective classes.

p An extended common frontier with Russia and the economic and cultural relations that existed between the two nations were factors which contributed to the influence of the ideas born of the October Revolution upon the herdsmen and soldiers, as well as on the emerging Mongolian intelligentsia.

p By 1919 two revolutionary groups were functioning in Urga; and in June 1920, these merged into a single revolutionary organisation whose declared purpose was to achieve the national liberation and social emancipation of the Mongolian people. A delegation of Mongolian revolutionaries was sent to Soviet Russia, which arrived in Moscow in September. The delegates were received by G. V. Chicherin, People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs, and S. S. Kamenev, Commander-in-Chief of the Red Army, whom they acquainted with their wishes. They were also received by Lenin, who pointed out to them that the Mongolian people had no choice but to fight for their political and economic independence.

p The Mongolian revolutionaries made Lenin’s counsels the basis of their policy line. Thus, partisan detachments began forming in the northern areas in the spring of 1921. On March 1 the abovementioned revolutionary organisation met with the representatives of these partisan units for consultation, and the consultation developed into a Constituent Congress of the Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party (MPRP). The Congress elected a Central Committee and passed a resolution to accept leadership of the popular revolution aimed at ridding the country of foreign intruders and setting up an independent people’s state in which the state power would be vested in the toiling arats, who constituted far and away the bulk of the population.

p On March 13, 1921, a conference of delegates from the revolutionary armed forces and the civilian population set up a Provisional People’s Government, which was directed to clear the country of Chinese troops and Russian whiteguard military units. 160 The revolutionary Mongolian armed forces joined to form a People’s Army under the command of Sukhe-Bator, and the Chinese troops were driven out of the country’s northern regions.

p On April 10, 1921, the Provisional People’s Government asked the Soviet Government for military aid against Ungern. On the strength of that request and considering it expedient to deal with the whiteguard threat to Soviet Siberia, the Soviet Government dispatched an expeditionary force into Mongolia, which, in cooperation with the People’s Army of Mongolia, routed the Ungern forces, and on July 6 entered Urga. The Khutukhtu government, which had collaborated with Ungern and thereby discredited itself, found itself in a position of isolation. Nevertheless, the Central Committee of the MPRP, aware of the power wielded by the lamaist church, preferred to allow the Khutukhtu to continue in the role of a monarch, though without the right to interfere in the activities of the central government. The official transfer of authority from the Khutukhtu to the permanent people’s government took place on July 10, 1921.

p The victory of the people’s revolution in July 1921 had brought the country national independence. It remained to achieve its second important aim, that of throwing off the yoke of feudalism. This second aim, however, was to be achieved by the Mongolian people in a new political situation, as created by the October Revolution in Russia. The Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party worked in close contact with the Communist International and the Russian Communist Party, applying the principles of Marxist-Leninist theory. This was actually a case of class union between the Russian proletariat and the Mongolian arats, and the Mongolian revolution assumed the quality of a people’s democratic revolution, which set the country on a non-capitalist path of development, with the building of socialism and communism as its long-range aim.

p In November 1921, there was signed in Moscow a Soviet-Mongolian treaty, which became the corner-stone of real friendship between the two countries. On the day the treaty was signed Sukhe-Bator and the other Mongolian leaders were received by Lenin to discuss the problems that their country had to face, and in the course of the discussion Lenin stressed that it was possible and necessary for Mongolia to follow a non-capitalist path of development.  [160•1 

p Following the revolution of 1921 the Mongolian arats and their party did, in fact, face a manifold task. The props had to be knocked from under the economic domination of the feudal gentry with a view to ending their existence as a class at a later date. 161 The development of capitalist elements had to be blocked and Chinese trading and usurious capital ousted from the country. And steps had to be taken to prevent American, Japanese and British capital from gaining a foothold in Mongolia. During the years 1921-24, as the class struggle grew increasingly acute, the government abolished the traditional privileges of the feudal gentry and the taxes levied on the population for their support; ended serfdom; and nationalised the land. With the establishment of democratic local government bodies, known as khurals, the political domination of the feudal lords was finally ended.

p In those early years Soviet Russia made a very substantial contribution to the economic and cultural development of Mongolia. Trade grew—to the mutual benefit of both countries. Financial aid was made available to Mongolia; and in 1924 the Mongolian Commercial and Industrial Bank was established with Soviet participation, which was followed by the issue of a Mongolian national currency. Soviet experts supervised the construction of a telegraph network, organised hospitals (hitherto non-existent), and initiated a veterinary service which in a preponderantly cattle-raising country was of supreme importance.

p These democratic reforms of 1921-24, coupled with the political, military and economic aid coming from the Soviet Union, made it possible for the country to adopt a non-capitalist programme of development. When the Khutukhtu died, in May 1924, the MPRP declared for a People’s Republic. The Third Congress, which took place in August 1924, adopted a resolution which said, in part, that "Mongolia must not follow in the footsteps of other nations and go through the agonies of capitalist oppression. It must develop along the lines of a true people’s democracy”. On November 28, 1924, the First Great People’s Khural proclaimed Mongolia a People’s Republic and adopted its Constitution.

Thus embarked on a non-capitalist course of development, the Mongolian People’s Republic has been able to effect the general democratic reforms envisaged by the revolutionary programme, to abolish the feudal system, and to achieve significant progress in the economic and cultural spheres. Modern industry got a start, with help from the Soviet Union, and a working class began to develop; so that when the Second World War ended the country was able to undertake a broad programme of socialist construction.

Afghanistan Achieves Independence

p One striking instance of the reverberation started by the Russian October Revolution in the countries of the East was the achievement of political independence by Afghanistan.

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p Its population comprising many different nationalities and ways of life, Afghanistan used to be an economically backward country. Feudal relations prevailed in the country, and most of the arable land belonged to the big landed proprietors, khans and tribal chiefs. Peasants who owned little or no land—and this was true of the Afghans proper and the national minorities (such as the Tajiks, Turkmens, etc.) alike—rented land as share-croppers on exorbitant terms and performed various services to the feudal lords.

p One-third of the population, mainly of Afghan nationality, were nomads or semi-nomads, and the bulk of these were exploited by the feudal lords who used the vestiges of the patriarchal tribal system to their own advantage. The Afghan tribes, and above all their chiefs, enjoyed a number of privileges, and were reckoned with even by the emirs, the absolute masters of the land.

p Industry was non-existent and there was, as yet, no working class in the country, though a sizable portion of the population—peasants who lost their holdings, as well as impoverished handicraftsmen—was deprived of the means of production, and partly either took to share-cropping or moved to the towns or else migrated to neighbouring countries in search of work.

p Unequal treaties foisted on Afghanistan as a result of wars waged against it in the 19th century by Great Britain had given the latter full control of the country’s foreign relations. Emir Habibullah did Britain’s bidding, in return for an annual subsidy.

p Afghanistan’s economic difficulties, backwardness and isolated situation called for reforms. There developed in the country a Young Afghans movement, which drew its membership from the numerically insignificant group of feudal and civil service intelligentsia and which declared for progress but were unable to formulate any definite bourgeois programme. Their aspiration to political and economic independence, however, inevitably impelled the Young Afghans to oppose Great Britain and they drew further encouragement from the example set by the Soviet Union in checkmating the British interventionists in Central Asia.

p In February 1919, Emir Habibullah was assassinated, and his son Amanullah, of Young Afghans leanings, was proclaimed his successor, with the backing of the capital’s garrison. A manifesto was issued, in which the new monarch declared that "Afghanistan must achieve freedom and independence, and enjoy all the rights that are the attribute of sovereign states".

p From the outset, the Afghan patriots placed their hopes in Soviet Russia. In April 1919, Amanullah sent a special embassy to Moscow, bearing a letter to Lenin. And in May of the same year the Soviet Government became the first government to recognise Afghanistan’s independence. The situation favoured the 163 country’s efforts to win independence, for the liberation movement in India had begun to gain momentum, and the tribes dwelling in the frontier area between the two countries, which had been forcibly detached from Afghanistan by the British, were ready to support that country. This situation notwithstanding, the AngloIndian government refused to negotiate, confident of its ability to maintain its privileges in Afghanistan and its protectorate over it. In the war of independence which began on May 3, 1919, their modern artillery and air force assured the British decisive superiority.

p Suffering repeated defeats, the Afghan forces were compelled to retreat. The British, however, could not risk an incursion into Afghanistan. With the border tribesmen in a state of revolt and threatening her communications, many Indian officers and men deserting to the Afghans, and the general situation in India what it was, Britain was forced to agree to a compromise.

p On August 8, 1919, a preliminary treaty was signed at Rawalpindi, by which Britain recognised Afghanistan to be a free state, independent in its internal and external relations.

p Strengthening its independence Afghanistan enjoyed the support of the Soviet Union. An interchange of embassies took place towards the close of 1919. In February 1921, a treaty of friendship was signed, which provided for financial assistance to Afghanistan and accorded that country the right to ship goods in transit across Soviet territory, besides serving to strengthen its political independence. Britain was also constrained to sign, in November 1921, a treaty confirming Afghan independence and establishing diplomatic relations between the two countries.

p Amanullah’s government next proceeded to introduce certain reforms calculated to strengthen the state and promote its economic development. These reforms deprived the khans of the various Afghan tribes of their political and military privileges and tax exemptions. The machinery of central administration was reorganised as well. The administration of justice was gradually taken out of the hands of the clergy, and the Mohammedan religious law, or Sheriat, was replaced by a civil code and a criminal code modelled on bourgeois principles.

p Much attention was given to the development of national industry and trade. National private capital received government aid and a number of commercial firms were organised. Domestic duties were abolished, while high import duties on foreign goods were introduced. The law of unrestricted right to land ownership and the sale and purchase of land was passed, which abolished all remaining vestiges of the feudal system and substituted a land tax for the obligations hitherto borne to the feudal landowners. Taxes in kind and services were also made payable in money.

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p Lay schools were organised, including secondary schools for girls, and this served to break the monopoly of the Moslem clergy in the educational field. Facilities were made available for young men from among the nobility to receive training abroad for official careers.

p Curtailment of the power of the feudal lords and the church inflamed the forces of reaction against the new regime; and the imperialist powers hastened to take advantage of the situation. They knew that the reforms had failed to raise the living standard of the people at large. The peasants had gained nothing by the new land law, and the landless peasants continued to be exploited essentially as under the feudal system.

p The old feudal nobility, both lay and church, shorn of its former privileges, strove to profit by the discontent rife among the bulk of the population. In 1924 a tribal armed revolt began at Khost. The feudal reactionaries in an attempt to conceal their true aims provided the revolt with slogans ranging from rallying the people to the defence of Islam against the alleged heresies of the Amanullah government to demanding tax reductions and abolition of compulsory military service.

p The revolt was mastered by the government only in the beginning of 1925, and then only at the expense of certain concessions to the reactionaries. Thus schools for girls were closed, and the clergy were again granted the right to dispense justice in some cases subject to civil law.

p With the situation in control, however, Amanullah resumed his programme of reforms. The development of friendly relations with the Soviet Union, and particularly the non-aggression pact signed by the two countries in 1926, did much to strengthen Afghanistan’s position in the international arena. Economic relations between both countries also expanded.

p Towards the end of 1927 Amanullah, with his queen and a number of prominent statesmen, left on a foreign tour. The emir’s purpose was to establish closer relations with other countries in order to improve Afghanistan’s position vis-d-vis Great Britain. His trip through India and his visit to Egypt provoked anti-imperialist demonstrations. His sojourn in the Soviet Union, where he saw for himself what the Soviet people had been able to achieve, strengthened still more the emir’s conviction in the vital necessity of reform.

p Soon after his return to Afghanistan, in August 1928, Amanullah assembled representatives from all over the country and announced the adoption of a new constitution introducing important democratic elements into the country’s socio-political system. Thus, a parliament, or People’s Council, was created, with elections by direct secret ballot. The right to vote was granted to all 165 Afghans of 20 or over, able to read and write. All feudal privileges and titles of nobility were abolished; and several new laws were passed, including a law on universal compulsory military service.

p These reforms produced a new uprising, considerably greater in scope and force than the revolt of 1924. The emir was accused of betraying the faith, photographs of the queen in European attire and with unveiled face were passed around. The high Moslem priesthood issued a fetva (decision given usually in writing by a Mufti) on the deposition of Amanullah as an "instigator of depravity and rebellion”. The movement made the greatest gains in Kohistan, where it was led by Bacha-i-Saqao, non-commissioned officer and deserter, of Tajik nationality.

p Unrest among the Tajik peasants had begun before Amanullah’s return. It was a product of their continuing struggle both against the oppression they suffered at the hands of the feudal lords and against their oppression as a nation. To them Bacha-i-Saqao was a leader who fought for the rights of the masses, and they knew nothing of his relations with the reactionaries, internal or external. Meantime Bacha-i-Saqao headed for Kabul, and his forces were continually joined by entire units deserting the government army.

p Amanullah removed his court to Kandahar, but after unsuccessful manoeuvres calculated to bring him back into power lied the country. This was in March 1929. Bacha-i-Saqao entered Kabul and proclaimed himself padishah under the name of Habibullah. By promising to lower taxes and cancel arrears he succeeded, for some time, in passing himself off as the people’s champion, and the feudal lords and the priesthood were willing to recognise him as emir for having rescinded Amanullah’s laws and reinstated their privileges.

p As a matter of fact, however, though nominally his rule extended, by the spring of 1929, over most of the country, it was the tribal leaders, khans, who ruled the country locally and subjected the population to merciless plunder. The government in its turn increased taxation and demanded that taxes be payed for several years in advance, so that the merchants and well-to-do townspeople were hard hit, along with the masses.

p Once more unrest was on the increase. To the British, who had used Bacha-i-Saqao to overthrow the anti-imperialist regime, his position seemed insecure and they were interested in backing a stronger claimant to the throne.

p There lived in Paris, at the time, one General Nadir Shah, a member of the former dynasty, who had fought successfully in the war of independence of 1919, but who, in 1924, had refused to take part in crushing the rebellion at Khost and sought refuge in France. He seemed to be the right man.

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p Accompanied by his brothers, Nadir Shah arrived in India. In the spring of 1929, armed by the British and supported by the Afghan tribes, he made war on Habibullah. He promised the Afghan nobility to maintain their privileges. The merchants would be guaranteed immunity in respect of life and property. The priesthood were promised loyalty to the Islamic faith and abrogation of the godless laws. And the people at large were promised peace and justice on the basis of the Islamic faith.

p As the war dragged into the autumn of 1929 Habibullah’s forces became depleted and a lack of arms developed. Nationalist agitators were hard at work, and those Afghans who had supported the "Tajik emir" were now deserting him in growing numbers. Early in October Nadir Shah’s forces occupied Kabul, and on October 15, 1929, he was proclaimed padishah. Habibullah and his closest followers were killed.

While the feudal lords, aided by the British, had been able to overthrow Amanullah’s regime, neither they nor the reactionaries outside the country were able to restore the country in its old condition of backwardness and feudal reaction and turn it once more into Britain’s obedient satellite. Changes were overtaking Afghanistan: the bourgeoisie was growing stronger; the feudal nobility was evolving into a new pattern of social stratification; the propertied classes were becoming increasingly aware of the need for reforms. And Nadir Shah’s government turned all these developments to its advantage in order to strengthen Afghanistan as an independent, sovereign state. Zakhir Shah, his son and successor, continued to develop the country, strengthen its independence, promote democracy, follow a policy of peace, and develop friendly relations with the Soviet Union. And in so doing he was able to achieve even more tangible results.

Bourgeois-Nationalist Revolution in Turkey

p It did not take the impact of the October Revolution long to reach Turkey. The Decree on Peace and the Soviet Government’s appeal to the Moslem masses in Russia and the lands of the East found a sympathetic audience in a people weary of the war into which the country had been pushed by the Young Turks clique. Soldiers refused to fight and deserted from the front, taking their rifles with them. Crushed by the double burden of taxation and feudal exploitation, the peasants rose against their oppressors. As early as 1918-19 Marxist groups began to appear, organised by progressive elements.

p The armistice of Mudros concluded by Turkey with the victorious Allies put the latter in control of the country, and it 167 seemed as if the door was now wide open for a partitioning of the Ottoman empire in line with the plans of the imperialist powers. In addition to Britain and France, Italy and Greece claimed their share on the strength of promises made earlier by the Entente powers in order to bring the two countries into the war on their side. The American imperialists, who had not been a party to the secret agreements, nevertheless cherished their own plans of establishing their dominance over Turkey through the instrumentality of mandates over important sections of the country, including Constantinople and the Straits zone.

p As soon as the armistice was signed the Entente powers sent their warships into the Straits and appointed their High Commissioners to control the activities of the sultan’s government. The leaders of the Young Turks party, well hated by the population, fled from the capital. Allied forces occupied certain regions in Western Anatolia, Cilicia, Izmir and other important ports.

p The forces of occupation ran into armed resistance, however, offered by peasant detachments which had been formed during the war and by new partisan detachments. The resentment of the population was now acquiring a pronounced anti-imperialist colouring. The peasants were the motive force of this national liberation movement, which explains why it was spontaneous rather than organised. The working class, still numerically feeble and as yet ignorant of the role it would be called upon to play, was in no position to lead the peasant movement. Moreover, the bulk of the working class was to be found in the towns under Allied occupation and so cut off from the growing movement. It was thus that leadership in the national liberation struggle finally passed into the hands of the Turkish national bourgeoisie.

p The national, chiefly commercial bourgeoisie of Anatolia had grown somewhat stronger during the war. Minor and mediumsized manufacturing and food-processing industries had been set up in the interior. This national bourgeoisie eyed the possibilities of further expansion at the expense of the alien comprador bourgeoisie and big foreign firms, who dominated the field of foreign trade. It was also interested in political reforms. With the threat of partitioning and complete subjugation hanging over the country, the national bourgeoisie was ready to take the leadership in the war of independence in its hands. Thus, Societies for the Defence of Rights, set up by the national bourgeoisie, began to sprout throughout Anatolia, headed by members of the civil and military intelligentsia. An energetic and talented general named Mustafa Kemal was one of the leaders.

p All during 1919 congresses of the Societies for the Defence of Rights met in various Anatolian towns. At the congress in Sivas 168 members of these Societies joined to form a Representative Committee under the chairmanship of Mustafa Kemal, whose prestige and influence grew so rapidly that the adherents of the movement presently began to be called Kemalists.

p The attitude of the Representative Committee towards the sultan’s government reflected the weakness and vacillation characteristic of the national bourgeoisie, its affiliation with the landed proprietors, and also the fact that certain elements within this patriotic movement were associated with feudal, clerical and comprador circles. As a matter of fact the Kemalists continued to use the sultan as a symbol of their struggle for independence (the sultan was referred to as a "prisoner of the foreigners”) even after his government made an attempt to break up the Sivas congress. There were many among the national bourgeoisie who were confident that they could not only come to terms with the old government but also obtain, by peaceful means, certain concessions from the victors. There were also those who hoped to realise their ambitions with the aid of the United States if it were awarded the desired mandates; the aggressive character of the American imperialists was not sufficiently obvious in those davs, since they refrained from acting in as overt a manner as did the European powers.

p At elections to the parliament, late in 1919, the Kemalists won by a great majority. On January 23, 1920, the parliament, sitting at Istanbul, unanimously adopted the National Pact, which proclaimed the territorial integrity within the boundaries established by the armistice of Mudros. The adoption of the National Pact was an act of great political significance, even though it gave no expression to the social needs and aspirations of the working people. In retaliation, Allied troops, chiefly British, occupied Istanbul, in March 1920, dissolved parliament and arrested and deported many of the deputies. This was a case, again, of the sultan’s government being used as an instrument to combat the national liberation movement.

p Thus it was that the logic of events set the national forces against the sultan’s government, a tool in the hands of the imperialists. At Ankara, where the Representative Committee had moved, a new parliament met, in April 1920, which became known as the Grand National Assembly of Turkey. A cabinet was elected, headed by Mustafa Kemal and responsible to parliament. The deputies solemnly confirmed the National Pact and declared null and void any laws or orders issued by the sultan or his government subsequent to the occupation of Istanbul. Ankara became, to all intents and purposes, the country’s new capital.

p In their war of independence the Turkish patriots gathered inspiration from the successful fight the Soviet people had been 169 waging against the forces of intervention and counter-revolution. They discovered that they could count on the Soviet Union as a friend and ally. Three days after the initial session of the Grand National Assembly Kemal telegraphed Lenin an offer to establish diplomatic relations and a request for aid in Turkey’s revolutionary struggle. A Turkish delegation left for Moscow. And in the autumn the first Soviet embassy arrived at Ankara.

p Meantime, in April 1920, the Entente powers had reached an agreement on the partitioning of Turkey and adopted a draft peace treaty with the sultan’s government, which provided for the annexation of the greater part of Turkey and the preservation of her colonial dependence. This programme, however, could be implemented only after the suppression of the national movement. Counter-revolutionary revolts instigated to that end having failed, military intervention was decided upon and the job was entrusted to Greece. In June 1920, a Greek army supplied with arms by Britain launched an offensive from Izmir into Anatolia. Another Greek army occupied Edirne (Adrianople). On August 10, 1920, the sultan’s government signed the Peace Treaty of Sevres with the Entente powers. Besides dooming Turkey to subjugation, the treaty was in line with the imperialist powers’ anti-Soviet aims, inasmuch as bases created on Turkish territory could now be used against the Soviet Union.

p The national bourgeoisie, which headed the anti-imperialist movement, was objectively playing a revolutionary role. However, the Kemalists displayed a rather narrow approach and could not or would not put through any democratic reforms in the interests of the masses. They were intent on strengthening their dominance as a class, and they openly put down all attempts of the peasantry and the fledgling working class to act independently. The Turkish Communist Party, formed in 1920, was wiped out. Mustafa Subhi, the staunch proletarian leader who headed the Party, was murdered in cold blood, together with several other Party leaders, early in 1921. About the same time the bourgeois government dispersed the peasant partisan detachments, some of them being incorporated in the regular army. Occasional peasant anti-feudal outbreaks were put down.

p Among the Turkish bourgeois nationalists there were quite a few adherents of pan-Turkism  [169•1  and pan-Islamism  [169•2  who coveted 170 certain territories in Georgia and Armenia. Towards the close of 1920 and in the beginning of 1921 the Kemalists attempted to acquire these territories by force of arms, taking advantage of the traitorous stand taken by the Armenian Dashnaks  [170•1  and Georgian Mensheviks. The counter-revolutionary governments were crushed, however, and Soviet power was re-established in the Caucasus; and this action, together with the firm and consistent policies of the Soviet Government, removed the danger that threatened the Caucasian nations as well as the obstacles in the way of Soviet-Turkish friendship, a friendship that accorded with the basic interests of the Turkish people. A treaty of friendship and fraternity was signed by the RSFSR and Turkey on March 16, 1921, and similar treaties were concluded by Turkey in October of the same year with the Soviet Republics of the Transcaucasus. In view of the international situation at the time, this was of great political value for the national liberation struggle of the Turkish people. A special Soviet mission headed by M. V. Frunze was sent to Turkey. Soviet Russia supplied Turkey with arms; and credit was made available.

p Improved relations between the two countries and direct Soviet aid to Turkey helped the latter to defeat the invaders. In the autumn of 1921 the Greek offensive was checked and a year later the invaders were completely routed and driven from Turkish soil. An armistice was concluded on October 11, 1922, and the Peace Treaty of Lausanne was signed on July 24, 1923, whereby Turkey retained the territories to be taken from her under the Treaty of Sevres; the Allied troops were withdrawn from the Straits zone; and the regime of capitulations liquidated. Her determined struggle for national liberation had won Turkey her national independence.

p The formation of a bourgeois national state on the ruins of the Ottoman empire was legalised by various administrative, social and cultural reforms and other legislation. Progressive reforms were put through despite feudal and clerical opposition. Following the conclusion of the peace treaty the Grand National Assembly announced the transfer of the capital to Ankara. This decision was motivated by the government’s desire to reduce the influence of the feudal, clerical and comprador elements, which were particularly strong in Istanbul. Turkey was proclaimed a republic. In view of the fact that the former sultan, who had retained his title of caliph, the "Commander of the Faithful”, remained a centre of attraction for reactionary elements, a law 171 was passed in March 1924, abolishing the ministry of religious affairs and waqf  [171•1  and the caliphate as an institute. The members of the deposed house of Osman were exiled. Madrasahs, Moslem religious schools, were abolished, and all other schools transferred to the ministry of education. The right to interpret and apply the law was transferred from the clergy to the government bodies. The series of 1923-24 reforms was capped, in April 1924, by the promulgation of a bourgeois constitution, establishing the bourgeoisie and the landed proprietors associated with it as the dominant class.

p Kemal’s programme of reforms ran into active opposition on the part of the reactionary elements. Early in 1925 a serious rebellion broke out under Sheikh Said, a prominent Kurd leader closely associated with the British. The Kurds, cattlemen and farmers, lived in circumstances of poverty and oppression, and this made them susceptible to the specious religious slogans with which Sheikh Said was able to rally thousands of them to the struggle. Only by deploying considerable forces, and even then not until June, was the government able to put down the rebellion. But the reactionary elements did not give up the struggle. 172 Proceedings were instituted by the Kemalist government against the adherents of the old regime, and these were summarily dealt with. The reforms continued. In 1928 the church was disestablished from the state. New legal codes were issued. However, all attempts of the masses to fight for their interests, to improve their condition, were ruthlessly suppressed, as were the efforts of the working people to set up an independent political organisation of their own.

p Reforms bearing on the political regime and in the field of administration, the campaign against the vestiges of feudalism in the social and cultural fields, and the abolition of the regime of capitulations—all these events facilitated the development of capitalist relations within the country, though this process was seriously hindered by the fact that the agrarian problem was still to be solved, land was still the property of the landowners, rents were still exorbitant, and share-cropping continued to be practised. Widespread poverty among the peasants, who made up the bulk of the population, was another drawback to the functioning of the national industry, which was being built primarily on the basis of state ownership, and financed chiefly through taxation, that is to say, at the expense of the masses.

As class (and also national) contradictions became more and more aggravated, the Kemalists were impelled towards a rapprochement with their erstwhile adversaries, the comprador element, whose political influence they had been able to undermine. This necessarily impelled them towards a rapprochement with the imperialist powers as well, which meant subservience to foreign capital. The consequence was that reactionary tendencies manifested themselves more and more obviously in the policies of the Turkish government, both foreign and domestic, until they gained complete dominance with the death of Kemal Atatiirk (Father of the Turks) in 1938. His successors repudiated the policy of promoting relations with the Soviet Union. The bourgeoisnationalist revolution had not been consummated, the interests of the broad masses continued to be ignored, and this left Turkey s hard-won independence in a precarious state.

Upswing of Revolutionary
Movement in Iran

p During the First World War Iran was virtually brought to ruin, exhausted, and on the brink of collapse. The country was under foreign occupation, and the central government was to all intents and purposes powerless. The process of feudal disintegration was gaining momentum, and the tribal khans and high 173 government officials, who looted the population, were growing increasingly powerful. The Russian tsarist government and Great Britain were negotiating a deal for the final partitioning of Iran.

p When the October Revolution won in Russia and a workers’ and peasants’ state emerged on Iran’s northern frontiers, the Iranian people could at long last prosecute their struggle for independence with a real chance of success. Hard upon the Revolution, in December 1917, the Council of People’s Commissars of the RSFSR proclaimed the "agreement on the partitioning of Persia" null and void. The Soviet Government decided to withdraw its troops from Persia, leaving the Persian people free to determine their country’s future. The evacuation of Russian troops was begun before the year was out. The Soviet Government’s initial decrees and Lenin’s foreign policy, which was 174 designed to support oppressed nations in their fight for freedom, made a favourable impression throughout Iran.

p The impact of the October Revolution was felt particularly strongly in the north, in the province of Gilan, where the revolutionary traditions of 1905-11 had survived better than elsewhere and where general resentment had found expression in armed uprisings even during the war years. The rebel groups known as the jengeli people, or "forest brothers”, were composed mainly of peasants and farm labourers, but their leadership was provided by the commercial bourgeoisie and intelligentsia, headed by Kuchek Khan. While fighting for national independence, neither the bourgeoisie nor the intelligentsia aimed at a radical solution of the agrarian problem.

p Following the withdrawal of Russian troops, which was completed during the summer of 1918, Great Britain set out to extend her domination to cover all of Iran with the intention of making it entirely dependent upon her and then using it as a stepping stone to seize territories in the Transcaucasus and Central Asia. Overcoming the resistance of the population and the People’s Councils that had been set up in the northern towns, British troops took Resht and Anzali. The working people’s organisations were suppressed.

p A counter-revolutionary coup at Baku and the temporary successes of the British invaders cut Iran off from direct communication with Soviet Russia. This worked to Britain’s advantage, for she could now force Iran to sign the onerous treaty of 1919, which turned Iran into a British protectorate, provided for the appointment of British advisers to all civilian and military bodies, facilitated a wide penetration of British capital, etc.

p The Iranian rulers that capitulated to Britain did their best to conceal from the people the Soviet Government’s sincere wish to establish equitable friendly relations with Iran and to offer it aid. The first Soviet mission, headed by Kolomiytsev, sent to negotiate with the Iranian Government, was arrested by the British and deported to Bagdad. Kolomiytsev had to overcome many difficulties before he got back to Moscow. On June 26, 1919, the Soviet Government issued a special note, formally repudiating all rights and privileges extorted by the tsarist government from Iran and announced the gratuitous transfer to Iran of all the property of the Russian concessions in that country, the value of which was assessed at 600,000,000 gold rubles. Kolomiytsev once again travelled to Teheran as an accredited diplomatic representative but was seized on his way to the capital and assassinated on British orders.

p Nevertheless, the British imperialists and their agents were finding it harder and harder to conceal from the Iranian people 175 the sincerity and integrity of the Soviet Government’s attitude towards Iran.

p Foreign interference in Iran produced a powerful patriotic movement throughout the land. All classes of the Iranian society, including the landowners and the big bourgeoisie, who had had dealings with the Russian market, wanted an end to be put to British overlordship and the onerous treaty of 1919 abrogated. The sole exception were a handful of feudal reactionaries and other direct agents of the British imperialists. Anti-British demonstrations were organised the length and breadth of the land, and armed uprisings occurred here and there.

p A serious uprising broke out early in 1920 at Tabriz and spread over most of Iranian Azerbaijan. It was led by Mohammed Khiyabani, son of a merchant, who had taken part in the revolution of 1905-11. The rebels set up a government, and the people rallied to its support. The province was renamed Azadistan, or "Free Land”. The struggle was directed both against imperialist domination and against the oppression of the Azerbaijanian people at the hands of the Kajar monarchy.

p Unfortunately, the nationalist bourgeois leaders of the rebellion proved incapable of winning the support of the people-inarms and making common cause with the revolutionary movement in the neighbouring Gilan. They even failed to organise the proper defence of Tabriz against the shah’s troops and admitted their commander into the city in the capacity of a private citizen. Once in the city, the commander succeeded in winning over the local garrison and the people’s government was overthrown. Khiyabani and his followers were murdered in cold blood.

p That did not mean the end of the struggle against the British and the rule of the shah. The patriots took courage from the successful fight waged by the Soviet people against British intervention in Central Asia and in the Caucasus. April 1920 saw the reestablishment of Soviet power in Baku. When the whiteguards fled in ships of the Caspian merchant fleet, with valuable state property, to put themselves under British protection, Soviet warships followed them to Anzali. A landing party was put ashore and entered the town. The British troops beat a hasty retreat, taking the whiteguards with them.

p The Anzali operation was successful not only in that the Soviet Government regained its property but also because it dealt the prestige of the British a telling blow. It added momentum to the Iranian people’s struggle, for the latter could now rely on Soviet Russia’s aid. The cabinet that had signed the onerous agreement of 1919 with Great Britain was compelled to resign, and the new cabinet at once took steps to preclude the implementation of that agreement. Diplomatic relations with the RSFSR were 176 established, and in September 1920, an Iranian embassy arrived in Moscow, despite all British efforts to prevent the establishment of friendly relations between Iran and the Soviet state.

p Meanwhile the struggle against imperialism and feudal reaction grew in scope. During the summer of 1920 the province of Gilan became the centre of the national revolutionary movement. A revolutionary government headed by Kuchek Khan was set up, in June, at Resht. This government, however, was representative only of the local, unorganised national front. It lacked unity. Kuchek Khan, though waging a determined struggle against the rule of the shah, was incapable of putting through a consistent programme of democratic reforms. Echsanullah, who enjoyed the support of the petty-bourgeois intelligentsia, adhered to an ultraLeft trend, prone to risky political ventures. The Communist Party, which was formed in July, lacked battle experience and its errors bore all the earmarks of leftist thinking. Its leadership declared for an immediate socialist revolution, which, of course, was premature, since the basic aims of the struggle against feudalism and imperialism had not as yet been achieved.

p This situation led to misunderstandings and weakened national unity. Neither was there a single military command. Echsanullah’s forces recognised no other command; Kurban, a former farm hand, led his own Kurdish detachments; and Kuchek Khan relied on his jengeli units.

p At the most crucial moment, when the rebels had succeeded in driving the shah’s authorities out of Gilan and establishing their own rule over the whole province, sharp dissension broke out. On July 19, 1920, Kuchek Khan and his followers left Resht and took to the forest. Next, Echsanullah set up an Iranian Provisional Revolutionary Committee at Resht, with the participation of representatives of the Communist Party.

p Great harm resulted from the implementation of the leftist programme, which included such measures as confiscation of land and other property, prohibition of private trade, closure of homeindustry establishments, and persecution of the priesthood and religion. Initial successes in the struggle against the shah’s forces were followed by defeats. The Gilan government was losing popular support.

p In an effort to speed events the British resorted to a military coup d’etat, which was to be spear-headed by a division of Persian Cossacks under Colonel Reza Khan, an all but illiterate former non-commissioned officer, though a man of ability and resolution, who enjoyed prestige among the rank and file. On February 21, 1921, his division entered the capital and arrested all the members of the old cabinet as well as other prominent statesmen, some 200 persons .all told. A new cabinet was formed, with 177 Sayyid Zia ud-Din as Prime Minister and Reza Khan as Minister of War. A government declaration was published, promising the people a better life. A few days later, on February 26, to be precise, a Soviet-Iranian treaty was signed, which was to change Iran’s destinies.

p No longer able to keep its troops in the country after that, Great Britain was compelled to consent to the abrogation of the treaty of 1919, which meant that the British plan of maintaining her position in Iran by means of a coup d’etat had fallen through. As to Sayyid Zia ud-Din he did not stay at the helm of the state much longer. And Reza Khan, too, let the British down, for he had no intention of being used by them as a tool.

p Reza Khan had set his sights on gaining unrestricted power. He was aware of the necessity of building up the national army and strengthening the central government, checking the separatist tendencies of the feudal khans, ending the regime of capitulations, and bolstering the country’s economy. Even as the ruthless suppression of the revolutionary hotbeds went on, he began to discharge the British advisers from the army, disbanded the South-Persian Rifles Corps, and initiated the reorganisation of the armed forces. Meantime, Kuchek Khan, in Gilan province, was acting in a manner which aided the schemes of the reactionary elements. Thus, in September 1921, Ali Hyder, chairman of the Central Committee of the Iranian Communist Party, and many other revolutionaries, were assassinated on his orders when they arrived to participate in a conference, as invited. The communist organisations at Resht and Anzali were destroyed and many of their leaders murdered. This seriously crippled the revolutionary movement in Gilan, and towards the end of 1921 that province was occupied by government forces, Kuchek Khan was killed, and his head sent to Teheran.

p All those who had taken part in the struggle of liberation were put to death. After putting down the movement in Gilan the government forces were able to deal with the rebellion in Khurasan led by an army officer named Mamed Taghi. In that province the struggle had been waged by the soldiers and peasants against the feudal lords and landowners, with the use of such methods as seizure of property, tax repeal, etc. In the beginning, the rebel forces had been joined by some of the local tribal khans. But dissensions had developed in the rebel camp, and these contributed to the final defeat of the movement.

p Other popular movements were put down by the government troops with equal ruthlessness. These had been spontaneous, lacked centralised direction, and the absence, at the time, of a class that could provide such a direction had foredoomed them to failure.

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p Reza Khan’s prestige and influence grew in the meantime. The cabinet merry-go-round, which reflected both the clique struggle within the ruling classes and the inter-imperialist contradictions, went on and on, but Reza Khan invariably retained the post of Minister of War. He was aided, in his drive for absolute power, by popular resentment against the corrupt and parasitic Kajar dynasty, which was linked with the ultra-reactionary elements and had sold the country out to the imperialist powers. In December 1925, the Constituent Assembly in which his followers were predominant, proclaimed Reza Khan shah. The new dynasty took the title of Pahlavi. In line with the interests of the bourgeoisie and the landowners Reza Shah introduced measures designed to promote the development of industry and transport and to reduce the unrestricted powers of the foreign monopolies. These measures, however, had to be paid for by the masses, who were still living in dire circumstances and whose attempts to promote their own political and economic interests had invariably failed.

The revolutionary movement in Iran, which had gained momentum in the years that followed the October Revolution in Russia, was crushed by the reactionary forces. But the impact produced by the revolutionary action and revolts of the Iranian patriots continued to be felt, for they had achieved a concrete effect by having driven the British out of the country and upheld the sovereignty of Iran as an independent state.

China After the October
Revolution in Russia

p It was on the destinies of China, largest of the countries under imperialist domination, that the October Revolution in Russia had the greatest impact. The ideas released by the October Revolution, and, later, the varied aid provided by Soviet Russia contributed to an unprecedented upswing of the Chinese people’s liberation struggle and hastened the political education of China’s working class, and it was this latter factor that was to set the liberation struggles developing along new lines and to secure final victory.

p China’s working class began increasingly to resort to strikes and overt political actions designed to counter the dominance of the imperialists; for the class oppression of the capital coincided in the majority of cases with the national, colonial-style exploitation of the Chinese proletariat by foreign monopolies. The ideas of scientific socialism were gaining ground, largely through the efforts of a group of intellectuals headed by Professor Li Ta-chao 179 of the Peking University, who was later to become one of the founders of the Chinese Communist Party. Li Ta-chao and his group acquainted progressive workers with the teaching of Marxism-Leninism and the experience of the working people of Soviet Russia in their victorious struggle for a better life.

p One immediate result of their propaganda efforts in 1919 was the anti-imperialist "May 4th Movement”. On that day over 3,000 Peking university students organised a mass demonstration, demanding the rejection of the Treaty of Versailles which made the rich province of Shantung Japan’s sphere of influence. This started a wave of anti-imperialist demonstrations, political strikes, boycotts of Japanese goods, etc., led by the workers of Shanghai and other industrial towns, with students and members of the petty and national bourgeoisie taking part.

p These events were a turning-point in the fight to end the semicolonial and semi-feudal regime in China. Hereafter the Chinese working class began to play a leading role in the anti-feudal struggle. The scope of the "May 4th Movement" alarmed the imperialist powers. Anxious to safeguard their interests in China and to continue the exploitation of the Chinese people, they took steps to bolster the military cliques, on which primarily they relied for support in China and which were at the same time instrumental in weakening the country. Each imperialist power relied on a particular clique through which it exercised its 180 influence. Thus, the Japanese imperialists used the Anfu clique, then at the head of the central government. Yet another group of Chinese militarists co-operated with the Japanese in the Northeastern China; this group was headed by general Chang Tso-lin, in the past a bandit, at present engaged in openly plundering the multi-million population of several provinces in China and in endless warfare with rival war-lords. And Central China was the domain of the Chihli clique supported by the British and American imperialists, who were engaged in bitter rivalry with the Japanese militarists for domination in China.

p The seizure of the state power in Peking by the Chihli clique in the middle of 1920 was an episode in that rivalry.

p Meantime, despite repressions, resentment grew among the masses against the foreign imperialist grip on China and the lack of unity in the country resulting from the endless wars among the war-lords. Demands were voiced with increasing insistence for the return to China of territories ceded by virtue of the unequal treaties signed by the country’s mercenary government with Japan, Britain, France, and other imperialist powers. The republican government of Sun Yat-sen, set up in Kwangchow (Canton), in the south of China, in the autumn of 1917, was gaining in popularity. It had become the focal point of the anti-imperialist struggles, and it held out, in spite of all the efforts of the imperialist powers and their Chinese agents to topple it by military pressure, counter-revolutionary revolts, etc., and in spite of the fact that Sun Yat-sen was twice forced to leave Kwangchow. Early in 1923 Sun Yat-sen came back to Kwangchow to stay, and the government he headed became the real stronghold of the Chinese people’s struggle of liberation, largely through the efforts of the Chinese Communists.

p The Communist Party of China was founded in July 1921. The CPC constituent congress met in Shanghai in deepest secrecy. Chinese historians describe the founding of the CPC as the concentrated expression of the influence of the Russian October Revolution on the Chinese people’s liberation movement. The Second Congress met a year later to adopt a decision on the Party joining the Communist International. If the activity of the working class increased over 1922 and 1923, it was due to communist influence. Notable developments took place in these years and among them, the seamen’s strike at Hong Kong and the strike of the Peking-Hankow Railway workers.

p Sun Yat-sen was a convinced democrat. When he returned to Kwangchow he turned more resolutely than ever to the masses for support. He realised what power was latent in the fledgling Communist Party and adopted a policy of closer co-operation with it. There were no legal restrictions on the Party’s activities 181 in Kwangchow; and the Third Party Congress met here in June 1923, to make decisions of great importance for the further development of the revolution. Most important among these was the decision on the Communist Party joining the Kuomintang while preserving its organisational, ideological and political independence.  [181•1  This decision was based on Lenin’s appraisal of the role of the national bourgeoisie in colonial and semi-colonial countries: that bourgeoisie, according to his view, could still be useful in the struggle against foreign imperialism as well as against the most pernicious vestiges of feudalism in the economy of a given country and in its political organisation.

p Sun Yat-sen saw the October Revolution as an event of prime historical magnitude. He attached paramount importance to close relations with the Soviet Republic and to the assistance which the latter was giving to the Chinese people’s liberation movement. Soviet Russia was the only country to support the Chinese democracy. Correspondence between the Soviet Government and Sun Yat-sen had started back’ in the spring of 1918, when the latter had signed a message of greetings on behalf of the South China parliament and Chicherin, People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the RSFSR, had replied, in part, as follows: "Our success is, by the same token, your own success. ... Let us close our ranks in the struggle for the common good of the proletariat the world over.” Repeated meetings between Sun Yat-sen and loffe, the Soviet diplomatic representative in the Far East, took place in the beginning of 1923. A joint communique on these talks stressed the fact that China’s top-priority task was to achieve national unification and independence. "In this great task,” said the communique, in part, "China has the warmest sympathies of the Russian people and may rely on Russia’s support.”

p As early as 1920, in a letter to the Soviet Government, Sun Yat-sen wrote that he was "tremendously interested in your work, especially in the organisation of your Soviets, your army and your education system”. In the autumn of 1923 he sent a delegation to study the Party work and the administrative system developed in the USSR, as well as the system of military organisation. Soviet experts sent to China at the request of the Canton Government rendered valuable help in organising the work of party and administrative bodies, and also the armed forces.

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Most of the country, however, was still controlled by the warlords, at feud with one another. A puppet government functioned in Peking, claiming to be the central government, which in fact it was not. The imperialist powers were openly defiant and took advantage of various incidents, so called, to force new humiliating treaties on China. Resentment grew as a consequence, and the liberation movement gathered strength.

Rising Tide of Revolution in India
After October 1917

p During the First World War there had been a heavy drain on Indian manpower and the country’s raw material and food resources to meet the needs of the British army, and this had brought fresh misery for the people of India. Fields were poorly tended, and crop yields diminished. 1918 and 1919 were the years of a great famine and an influenza epidemic, both of which took over 12,000,000 human lives. For the workers, as for other categories of the urban population, living conditions had sharply deteriorated.

p The war years had worked still other changes in the pattern of India’s social and economic development. Thus, Great Britain found herself constrained to assist, in some measure, in the development of India’s industry, especially metallurgy, due to the fact that she had sharply curtailed the import of manufactured goods into the country. There was some growth of her light industry as well, mainly textile, which has been her leading industry. In 1915 a five per cent customs duty was introduced by Great Britain in order to counter the import of Japanese and US manufactured goods into India, these two countries being all too eager to benefit by the curtailment of British imports. In 1917 the duty on cotton textiles was raised to 7.5 per cent. The Indian big bourgeoisie had grown somewhat stronger during the war and had come to expect considerable political concessions on the part of Britain. While the war lasted Britain had been compelled to make vague promises concerning reforms. Other imperialist powers had been making similar promises.

p The working class had grown in numbers and had come to be rather concentrated in a few industrial centres. By the end of the war the labour force in all enterprises employing over twenty workers (plantations included) totalled over 2,500,000, with the textile industry in the lead. Nevertheless, India was still a backward agrarian country, with a lop-sided industry typical of colonial countries and had no heavy industry. Moreover, the process of impoverishment among the craftsmen and peasants outstripped by far the pace of industrial development.

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p As living conditions deteriorated resentment grew in the masses, mobilising them for struggle against the colonial rule. In this situation the October Revolution in Russia provided a powerful impetus for the growing anti-imperialist movement among the people of India, aimed, above all, at national independence. The country’s working class, acting at long last in an organised manner, took an active part in this movement. There was a flurry of strikes all over India. Late in 1918 and early in 1919, a general strike of the textile workers of Bombay broke out, and for the first time the strikers carried red flags through the streets of the city.

p In 1917-19 unrest seethed in the rural districts as well. Demobilised soldiers of peasant stock came home with stories about the Socialist Revolution in Russia and the growing struggle for freedom in other countries. Among the urban petty bourgeoisie, too, revolutionary feeling was running high under the impact of the October Revolution. As early as January 1918, illegal newspapers carried a message of congratulation addressed to the leaders of the Russian Revolution on the occasion of "the great victory they have won for democracy the world over”, which asserted that "the Revolution in Russia has made a tremendous impression on the thinking of the Indian people. The idea of national self-determination has reached India despite all British efforts to prevent this. ... Britain can no longer remain in India".

p The colonial government used their newspapers to give the revolutionary developments a false construction, but this failed to achieve their purpose. The Indian big bourgeoisie, fearing a revolution, tried to convince the British that a revolutionary outbreak might follow a refusal to introduce reforms now.

p Britain, intent on maintaining her rule in these new and difficult conditions, bore down heavily on those who fought for India’s freedom, and at the same time made insignificant concessions to the propertied classes in an endeavour to gain their support. The draft of reforms published in 1918, which embodied the so-called Montagu-Chelmsford  [183•1  report on reforms, made no provisions for self-government. It was proposed to create a bicameral legislative assembly in the central government, though with restricted powers. Bicameral legislatures were to be created in the larger provinces, and unicameral legislatures in Punjab and the Central Provinces. Education, public health and agriculture were transferred to Indian ministers appointed by the British, while the really important subjects remained in the hands of the British administration.

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p Various restrictions in respect of property ownership, education, etc., made the franchise available to but 1.5 per cent of the Indian population. The electoral system was based on religious sects, which reflected the desire of the British colonial government to sow conflict between Hindus and Moslems and so to weaken the all-India movement for national liberation. The Moslems were given 30 per cent of the seats in those provinces where they formed a minority and over 50 per cent in those where they were in the majority. Meanwhile new measures were introduced by the British administration in 1919, which made it easier for the authorities to cope with the revolutionary movement. These measures were based on the Rowlett Act of March 1919, which invested the authorities with the right to arrest and send to prison any Indian even in the absence of any charges, to suppress any organisations and newspapers, disperse assemblies, etc.

p The Montagu-Chelmsford reforms were not enough even for the big bourgeoisie. A special session of the National Congress, which met in August 1918 to discuss these reforms, found them unacceptable and demanded self-government for India, within the framework of the British empire.

p In its effort to get more concessions out of Britain the National Congress sought the support of the masses. Its leadership began to use on a wide scale such methods as mass demonstrations, boycott of foreign-made goods, etc. It was then that M. Gandhi became the recognised leader of the liberation movement. His ideas and methods were adopted by the National Congress as its declared ideology and exercised a great influence over the masses.

p Gandhi preached non-violent resistance (Satyagraha) as a means of combating imperialism, insisting that this, in conjunction with the force of moral persuasion, would enable India to attain selfgovernment (Swaraj). A champion of India’s downtrodden castes (the “untouchables”), workers and peasants, Gandhi advocated non-violence in opposition to revolutionary methods as a means of fighting for the interests of the masses. His artless nature, ascetic habits, and continuous close contact with the working people gained him great popularity with the masses. A valuable contribution was Gandhi’s success in winning millions over to the struggle for independence. He exhorted the people of India to work together for the attainment of self-government and actively opposed British efforts to sow dissension between the Hindus and the Moslems.

p However, while aiding the expansion of the all-India national liberation movement, Gandhi’s doctrine, by preaching non-violence and peace among the classes, restrained the masses from revolutionary action, to the advantage of the propertied classes, 185 who were anxious to prevent independent action on the part of the working people and to maintain their ideological influence over the masses.

p Gandhi’s influence became especially strong when the National Congress entrusted him with the task of opening a campaign of non-violent resistance to the Rowleit Act, which had caused a wave of indignation among the people. This movement spread over many districts, particularly Punjab, which had been hit harder than the others by compulsory enlistment in the army as well as by the wring of food products from that province.

p The all-India hartal (non-cooperation campaign) set by the National Congress was to include such measures as a cessation of all work in enterprises, government offices and schools, and the closing of all bazars. Gandhi had understood that the principle of non-violence would be strictly followed. But in many large towns the boycott took the form of strikes, demonstrations and clashes with the authorities and police. Incidents occurred in a Punjab town following the deportation of two Left-wing members of the National Congress. The British authorities resolved to teach the national liberation movement a lesson of unparalleled atrocity. On April 12, 1919, at Amritsar, troops under General Dyer opened fire on a crowd of townspeople and peasants several thousand strong participating in a peaceful demonstration. Among the unarmed participants many were killed, many were wounded and trampled underfoot in the ensuing panic. The shooting was followed by mass arrests and public whippings in Punjab.

p If the colonial authorities thought these measures would intimidate the people of India, they were mistaken. News of the Amritsar massacre spread all over the country. In the capital of Punjab and in other cities the people rose in protest. In April and May 1919, uprisings were practically universal in the province. But the movement lacked centralised leadership and formulated no clear-cut aims. It was put down with bestial cruelty, neither young nor old being spared.

p The bourgeois and landowner leadership of the National Congress was anxious to utilise the growing anti-imperialist movement to force, with the support of the masses, a number of tangible concessions from the British Government. On the other hand, the Congress leadership were no less anxious to avert a revolutionary outbreak. At the Nagpur session of the Congress amendments were adopted in respect of both its programme and its charter. Swaraj was declared to be the aim of the struggle, which was to be achieved through a mass non-violence non-cooperation movement. Indians were to give up their titles and offices, and refrain from working in government agencies, attending schools and paying taxes (including the land tax). Refusal to 186 pay taxes was to start only on specific orders of the Congress. Peasants, meanwhile, were urged to continue paying their rent to the landlords.

p The National Congress thus developed into a modern political party with local branches in various towns and villages. A policy was adopted of inviting workers, artisans and peasants to join, and as a result its membership had grown, by 1921, to several million.

p Now that the National Congress had turned into a party with a multi-million membership, it was easier to maintain the influence of the national bourgeoisie and to preach Gandhiism, its official doctrine. The current broad non-co-operation campaign meanwhile kept drawing people in all walks of life into the political struggle. Non-violent demonstrations often led to acts of violence and uprisings, for propaganda of the idea of peace among the classes was powerless to stop the working people from struggling against their local exploiters. The Moslem League tried to do that and also failed; its reactionary leaders feared, even more than the National Congress, the independent movement of the masses and endeavoured to restrict it to the "defence of Islam" against the encroachment of the imperialist powers.

p The consequences of the first post-war crisis in 1920-21 made the situation still more favourable to the growth of the mass movement in India. Britain, hard-hit by the crisis, sought a way out by making the peoples of her colonies foot the bill. British competition began to make itself felt by India’s industry; and Indian entrepreneurs began in turn to squeeze the workers. Some of the weaker enterprises were forced out of business; production was curtailed; all of which meant increasing unemployment. Prices on farm products dropped, and the peasants found themselves worse off than before.

p All these developments gave an impetus to the revolutionary struggle. There were strikes in the leading industries, in the cotton mills, to begin with. Collective action by the workers was undertaken chiefly to present economic demands, but it was also often of a purely political nature, such as the mass demonstrations in Bombay, Calcutta and elsewhere against the arrival of the Prince of Wales, etc. Savage repressions did not check the workers’ political activities or their increasingly efficient organisation. Communist study circles and groups began to appear in the larger cities. Strict as the censorship was, revolutionary Marxist ideas penetrated to the country and illegal literature increased its circulation. In 1922 a Marxist weekly called The Socialist began to be published in Bombay by Sh. A. Dange.

p Although the working class was waging a struggle of great importance to the national liberation movement, the Indian 187 proletariat was not as yet aware of its historical role and had not yet formed a party of its own. The fusion of socialism and the labour movement had then only begun.

p The working class was still insufficiently strong to take over leadership of the peasants’ movement, which, in 1920-22, was already in full swing. In some localities peasant action grew over into uprisings, but they were out of contact with one another, which made it easier for the police and army to quell them. The big landowners, both Moslem and Hindu, co-operated with the British authorities in meting out punishment to those who took part in these revolts.

p In respect of organisation the peasant movement was most advanced in the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh, where the Eka (i.e., Union), India’s first peasant organisation, had been formed under the leadership of a peasant who belonged to the lowest caste of Mandari-pasi. The peasants refused to recognise the local authorities and formed Panchayats, or committees of their own. The Eka urged the peasants to pay neither taxes nor land rent and to resist dispossession. There were over 100,000 members in the Eka by the end of 1922, and the movement had spread over several districts in Oudh.

p In 1922 the National Congress leadership openly challenged the Eka and condemned the methods of the peasant action. Such a stand on the part of the Congress aided the landowners and authorities in putting down the rebellion.

p The unprecedented scope of the mass movement; its recourse to violence; and the fact that it was directed not only against the imperialists but also, notwithstanding the propaganda and exhortations of the National Congress, against the local exploiters of the people—all this served to frighten the bourgeois and landowner leadership of the Congress. Following the incident in the village of Chauri Chaura, where exasperated peasants resisted the police and set fire to the police barracks, burning 21 policemen alive, the National Congress, meeting at a conference in Bardoli, sharply condemned such actions and instructed its branch organisations to end all mass movements and to co-operate with the government in establishing order.

This capitulation of the National Congress at Bardoli helped the British authorities put down the first post-war upswing of the liberation struggle, maintain their rule, and increase the exploitation of the country and the people. However, the era of more or less stable British domination had now definitely come to an end. The people of India had fully awakened to the fight for their independence.

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March 1919 Uprising in Korea

p Korea’s proximity to the Russian Far East facilitated the spread of the ideas of the October Revolution among the Korean people. Lenin’s Decree on Peace and the appeals of the Soviet Government for an end to colonialism were in accord with the innermost aspirations of the Korean people anxious to throw off the colonialist yoke of Japan. Their determination to do so was openly backed by the Soviet Government, which stated its views in an address to the Korean people and Korean revolutionary organisations.

p Koreans whom colonial oppression at home had forced to migrate to the Russian Primorye enthusiastically welcomed the October Revolution and joined in the fight against the forces of intervention and the whiteguards, feeling that they were thereby fighting for their own country as well. The commander of one Korean battalion wrote, in part, as follows: "We Koreans are only too well acquainted with the benefits of ’Japanese culture* . .. and we lost no time in joining the Russian revolutionaries.... Fighting for the cause of the Russian proletariat, we are, of course, fighting for our own cause, for we and the Russians had common interests and faced the same foe.”

p The events in Russia imparted a new momentum to the struggle of the Korean workers (the country’s labour force numbered 40,000 in 1918). Revolutionary and patriotic feeling ran high among the broad sections of the Korean people. There was a resurgence of partisan warfare in 1918, after a period of practically complete inactivity coincident with the First World War.  [188•1  This resurgence of national feeling reached out to include Koreans living abroad, as in Japan, China, Manchuria, to be more specific, and even across the Pacific, in the United States.

p The mounting revolutionary feeling stirred even the bourgeoisnationalist Korean leaders to greater activity. These were interested in steering the national liberation movement along the course of compromise and reform; and toward the close of 1918 they set up an Independence Movement Initiatory Centre.

By the beginning of 1919 resentment against the colonial regime had become so intense that an explosion of public indignation could have been produced by the slightest incident. On January 22, the ex-emperor of Korea, who had been living under arrest in his palace, died; rumours spread that he had been poisoned by the "Japanese dogs”; and people flocked in from the provinces to pay homage to their late sovereign.

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p The Independence Movement Initiatory Centre decided to draft a Declaration of Independence, organise demonstrations, and launch an appeal campaign. The text of the Declaration shows that its authors were seeking to make a deal with the colonial government, for it contained very moderate demands, while the appeal, addressed to the Paris Peace Conference and the United States, was regarded as a means of bringing pressure to bear on the Japanese Government and intended to deter the masses from using revolutionary methods in their fight for independence.

p The text of the Declaration of Independence was read at a crowded meeting held on March 1, 1919, in the Park of the Pagoda, in Seoul. And it became plain right away that the masses took it as an announcement of a revolutionary struggle to drive out the Japanese invaders, rather than the launching of an appeal campaign. Some 300,000 people took part in an anti-Japanese demonstration in the streets of Seoul that day. A fighting spirit was abroad. Factory workers in Seoul stopped their work.

p Then the Initiatory Centre began to back down. Its members did not show up at the meeting, but assembled at a banquet, where they toasted Korean independence and at once telephoned the Japanese police to tell them about it. As to the anti-Japanese 190 movement, that continued to gather momentum. Mass demonstrations now spread to other towns.

p For a moment, the Japanese authorities were non-plussed. The Japanese papers ran remarks to the effect that the police and gendarmerie, hitherto considered invincible, had lost their prestige. Soon, however, troops were moved and arms used against the demonstrators. Mass arrests followed. Ten thousand were arrested in Seoul alone after the March 1 demonstration. At a time, when the official leaders of the movement had capitulated, the masses, on their own initiative, stepped up their resistance to the colonialists.

p A second demonstration took place in Seoul on March 5, this time with the prominent participation of students. In the days that followed, armed clashes broke out here and there between Koreans and the Japanese police and soldiers. By mid-March the uprising had swept over 211 out of 218 districts, or practically the entire country. By the end of the month 173,000 had risen in revolt, while over 2,000,000 had joined the national liberation movement. Patriotic, revolutionary fervour produced instances of mass heroism. Judging by the official Japanese figures of 8,000 Koreans killed, 16,000 seriously wounded, and 53,000 arrested, the patriots had put up a determined fight.

p The story is told of Mun En Ghi, a schoolboy of the town of Iri. Speaking at a meeting, he waved a Korean national flag. A group of Japanese soldiers fought their way through the crowd to get at Mun En Ghi, and one of them, striking out with his sword, cut off the hand in which the boy held the flag. Mun En Ghi quickly caught up the flag with his other hand and had just enough strength to shout "Let my blood serve the people of a new Korea!" before he was cut down by the soldiers.

p Despite the great numbers who joined the revolt and despite the courageous fight they put up, by the end of April the revolt had been quelled. There was, as yet, no working class party; the workers were only just starting to fight as a class. Hundreds of thousands of the participants in the movement had no leadership and lost their bearings, and the Japanese were quick to take advantage of this situation.

p Nevertheless, the March 1919 uprising was an important landmark in the history of the Korean people. Thereafter the working class was an active force in the movement of liberation. The revolt had been put down, but the workers continued to strike. There were 104 strikes in 1919. Workers’ organisations began to appear. One such organisation was the Workers’ Mutual Assistance Society, formed in 1920 in Seoul, which became the first workers’ trade body to appear in Korea.

The events of March 1 speeded up the inflow of 191 Marxist-Leninist ideas into Korea. During 1920, Marxist study circles were organised in Tokyo (by Korean students attending Japanese schools), Seoul and other industrial towns in Korea. Many Koreans living in Soviet Russia joined the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks). Korean emigres in Irkutsk and Shanghai formed communist groups which sent their representatives to carry on revolutionary activities in Korea. Revolutionary groups and study circles were springing up in Korea, too, and it was out of these that the Korean Communist Party was formed in 1925.

Anti-Imperialist Uprising in Egypt

p Roughly about the time of the uprising in Korea an armed struggle began in far-away Egypt against the British, who had foisted a colonial regime on that country back in 1882.

p Soon after the beginning of the First World War Egypt was officially proclaimed a British protectorate. The war brought great misery to the people of Egypt. In 1918 the annual death rate exceeded 500,000, thus surpassing the country’s birth rate. It is hardly surprising therefore that news of the Revolution in Russia was received here with the liveliest interest. In 1918, in Cairo, Alexandria and Port Said socialist cells appeared. They joined to form a Socialist Party which, in 1921, renamed itself the Communist Party of Egypt. On the initiative of the Communists and under their leadership a General Confederation of Labour was founded in Egypt in that year uniting various trade unions.

p Resentment against British colonial rule was rife in all strata of the population. Secret organisations emerged in different localities, and anti-British leaflets were distributed. The Egyptian bourgeoisie sought to establish their leadership over the popular movement. Late in 1918 the bourgeois leaders headed by Saad Zaghlul Pasha asked the British high commissioner to initiate talks concerning greater rights for the Egyptian people. Zaghlul’s next step was to set up a group of public figures from among the bourgeoisie and landowners, which was designated as an Egyptian delegation authorised to demand independence for Egypt. A document was issued empowering Zaghlul and the other members of the delegation  [191•1  to strive to obtain full independence for Egypt, using all legitimate, peaceful means to that end. The document was circulated in urban and rural districts in a successful campaign to collect signatures.

p Early in March 1919, there followed the arrest of Zaghlul and the other delegation members, and their deportation to Malta. 192 This measure produced a wave of indignation. Abd-ar-Rahman ar-Rafii, Egyptian historian and member of the movement, noted that the political atmosphere in Egypt, in March 1919, signalled the approach of a storm. On March 9, students demonstrated in Cairo, and on the following day they all left their schools. Workers, artisans and traders joined the students. They were fired upon by British troops, but the demonstrations, instead of dispersing, developed into an armed uprising, which spread, by March 15, to most of the provinces. The insurgents cut Cairo off from the rest of the country. Armed fellahs (peasants) attacked British troop trains. Tramway and railway workers at Cairo, dockers at Alexandria, and civil service officials went on strike. Secret printeries were putting out patriotic leaflets.

p In Cairo a patriotic police force was organised to maintain order during demonstrations and meetings. In several towns and villages revolutionary committees were set up and began to function as local authorities. The Russian word Soviet was occasionally applied to these bodies. The uprising was a clear indication of the impact of the October Revolution in Russia on the Egyptian people. The Egyptian historian ash-Shafii wrote that for the first time in the history of mankind a great power had appeared that had no intention to colonise, occupy, or exploit any land, and which had taken up the cause of all the national liberation forces in the world. This power, he added, had offered Zaghlul aid in arms, but he had taken fright and turned the offer down.

p The Wafdists wavered and revealed inconsistency of action: the scope of the struggle had frightened and confused them. The patriotic elements, on the other hand, lacked any centralised leadership. And by the beginning of April the British had been able to suppress the revolt by force of arms. They were nevertheless compelled to set the Wafdists free and allow them to proceed to Paris to the peace conference. As was to be expected, Zaghlul achieved nothing there, and the Treaty of Versailles confirmed the British protectorate over Egypt, which was officially recognised by W. Wilson, President of the USA.

p The defeat did not hold up the national liberation struggle of the Egyptian people. Another uprising occurred in 1921, though this, too, was quelled by the British troops.

Be that as it may, these revolutionary developments forced the British authorities to change tactics. Certain concessions were made. In February 1922, the British Government published a declaration terminating the protectorate and granting Egypt " independence”. British troops, however, were to remain on Egyptian soil, as before. As far as the Egyptian people’s national liberation struggle was concerned, its main objective had become to drive out the forces of occupation.