[introduction.]
The class warfare which flared anew in the colonial countries following the post-war upsurge of the revolutionary movement showed convincingly that the temporary stabilisation of capitalism in the mid-1920s lacked a firm foundation. The national liberation war waged by the peoples of Syria and Lebanon, the Riff war with France, and the 1926-27 uprising in Indonesia indicated that the crisis of the colonial system was growing ever sharper. In 1924 an anti-imperialist and anti-feudal revolution began in China. In the 1930s, too, the national liberation struggle of oppressed peoples continued to gain force. India was more firmly resolved than ever to gain national independence. The liberation struggle pressed by the peoples of India and China was a most important factor in undermining the colonial system of imperialism.
Moroccans Fight
Spanish and French Colonialists
p By the time the First World War broke out Spain had firmly established herself on the Moroccan Mediterranean seaboard, even though the population of several mountainous regions of the Moroccan hinterland continued to offer resistance. The centre of that resistance was the Rif mountain country, inhabited by warlike nomad tribes who cherished their freedom.
p After the First World War Spain endeavoured to expand her conquests. In due course, the Spanish invaded the region inhabited by one of the largest Riff tribes. The Riffs avoided clashes with the Spanish troops, and the Spanish militarists became all the more overbearing.
p Early in 1921 a Spanish army 24,000 strong began to move into the Rif interior, occupying village after village as they advanced. Abd el-Krim, the Riff leader, who had spent over two years in a Spanish gaol, wished to avert a war. He did not think his forces sufficient to resist the invaders and repeatedly approached General Silvestre, in command of the Spanish forces, with peace offers to which the Spanish turned a deaf ear.
p In the battle of Anval, however, fought between July 21 and 26, 1921, the Riffs routed the Spanish expeditionary corps and seized around 20,000 rifles, 100 pieces of artillery and 300 machineguns, along with a large amount of equipment, food products and medical supplies. This victory made a tremendous impression on the peoples of North Africa and strengthened their confidence in the possibility of winning freedom. On September 19, 1921, a 194 newly formed National Assembly proclaimed an independent Rif Republic, with Abd el-Krim as its elected president.
p Internally, the policies of the fledgling state centred on bolstering its defences. Externally, it announced its desire to establish cordial relations with all countries.
p As it got ready to carry on its struggle against the Spaniards, the Rif Republic did what it could to turn to its own advantage the contradictions among the leading colonial states that were fighting to dominate Morocco, that is, Spain, France and Great Britain. Abd el-Krim looked to the French for support in his resistance to Spain. As a matter of fact early in the war French intelligence agents did supply arms to the Riffs in the hope of weakening the position of the Spaniards and driving them out of Tangier. British and German manufacturers also supplied the Riff forces with arms. These supplies did not play a decisive role, however, and the rebels’ main source of supply were the arms seized on the battle-field.
p In the summer of 1922 Abd el-Krim dispatched two delegations: one to the French authorities at Fez, the other to London. The delegation to Fez asked for French recognition of the Rif Republic and a trade agreement. The French turned down the offer. In his letter to the British Government the Riff leader solicited British aid in arranging negotiations with Spain. Abd elKrim declared his readiness to admit into the Republic industrialists and merchants of all nations on equal terms.
p The British Government also turned down the request, fearing lest the success of the Riff tribes should set an example for the population of Egypt and other British colonies and dependencies. Thus the fear of possible anti-imperialist movements proved stronger than her contradictions with Spain and France.
p Having exhausted all possibilities of achieving independence by peaceful means, the Rif army launched, in June 1924, a general offensive. Revolts flared up immediately back of the Spanish lines, and the situation seemed favourable for driving the Spanish army into the sea and clearing the whole country of the invaders.
p But the Rif high command failed to follow up its victory and left the staging area in the enemy hands. This was a serious blunder, for it left the Republic open to new assaults. Still, the victories won over the Spaniards considerably strengthened the Rif Republic politically and militarily. Abd el-Krim had succeeded in extending his government’s control over the entire western half of Spanish Morocco, in addition to the territory inhabited by the Riff tribes. The Republic was now a centralised Moslem state, covering an area of 20,000 sq km, with a population of 500,000 and an army 50,000 strong.
195p The establishment of a French protectorate over the eastern part of Morocco in 1912 had failed to end resistance on the part of the local population, and the mountainous and desert regions remained outside the area of French control. The southern and southwestern regions of the country retained their independence.
p The emergence of the Rif Republic and its successes encouraged the Moroccan tribes in their opposition to the French authorities. As for the French, they foresaw that the growing strength of the Rif Republic would add momentum to the national liberation struggle. And the Spanish reverses made them begin largescale preparations for an attack on the Rif Republic.
p In the spring of 1924 Marshal Lyautey, the French residentgeneral, moved his forces into the Auergha River valley, lying close to the boundary between Spanish and French Morocco. This was a region which France and Spain had been disputing over since 1912. The Rif Government agreed to withdraw its forces from the area which the French authorities considered theirs, but this amicable offer was turned down, and on May 27 the French troops crossed the Auergha and were soon in occupation of the region, despite the resistance offered by the Riffs.
p Aware that the armed forces available to France were numerically greater than the entire population of the Rif Republic, Abd el-Krim was anxious to avoid a war with France. In the second half of March 1925, Riff representatives contacted the French and reiterated their wish to reach a peaceful solution of all controversial issues, pointing out, at the same time, that French occupation of part of the Republic’s territory was illegal and suggesting that a commission be appointed to delineate the exact boundary between French Morocco and the Republic. The French again rejected the Riff suggestions, and began, in April 1925, large-scale military operations in the Auergha valley. In the ensuing battles the Riffs repeatedly beat the French, even though they had only light fire-arms with which to fight French planes, artillery and tanks.
p These set-backs made the French turn for help to Spain. In June 1925, both these imperialist powers reached an understanding concerning military co-operation and the blockading of the Rif Republic, and at the same time drafted the terms of a peace treaty with the Riffs, which dictated an acceptance by the latter of their dependence on France and Spain.
p The French high command had now concentrated substantial forces in Morocco, and the French air force began a campaign of barbaric bombing of the Riff civilian population. This did not stop Abd el-Krim’s active operations against the French. He was scoring success after success. He called upon the peoples of Algeria and Tunisia to join him in the war against the French and 196 Spanish invaders and advanced the project of creating an independent Moslem republic which would unite the whole of North Africa. That, however, was something which the peoples of North Africa were not, at the moment, prepared for.
p Early in September a Spanish invading force was landed at Alhucemas. Simultaneously the French launched a general offensive in the region of Fez by a force of some 200,000, under the command of Marshal Petain. The Riffs were thus forced to fight on two fronts. On September 30 the Spaniards took the capital, with the result that the Riff population, all those able to bear arms, rushed to enlist in the army. Such was the vast superiority of the French and Spanish in arms and manpower, however, that they were able to split and surround the Riff forces. This was accomplished in May 1926.
p Realising the uselessness of further resistance, the Riff leader decided to lay down arms. Even then French and Spanish planes bombed, on May 26, the village where Abd el-Krim was staying. "I am surprised,” he told the French officers, "that your planes killed men this time; usually they kill women. Yours is a gunpower civilisation: you possess big bombs, therefore you are civilised; I have nothing but rifle bullets, therefore I am a barbarian.” Fighting went on for some time after Abd el-Krim’s surrender, for many tribes refused to lay down arms.
p On July 10, 1926, Spain and France signed an agreement providing for Abd el-Krim’s deportation to the island of Reunion. A mixed commission was to be set up to draw the line of demarcation between the French area and the Spanish.
197p Such was the end of one of the most heroic episodes of the Moroccan people’s fight for freedom and independence. Some 60,000-70,000 fighters equipped with nothing but rifles had stood up to the armies of two European powers, France and Spain, something like 300,000 strong, equipped with the most modern arms. The peoples of the colonial East, above all the Arabs of Algeria and Tunisia, had been heart and soul with fighting Morocco. People had prayed for Abd el-Krim’s victory even in the interior of India, even in far-away Indonesia, and donated money and valuables to aid the rebels. The French Communist Party, too, had been active in its opposition to that colonial war, and in this it had had the support of the mass of the working people.
Sentiment in the Soviet Union had been unreservedly for the Moroccans in their fight for freedom. Thousands of meetings had been held throughout the country, which wrathfully condemned the aggressors and called for an end to imperialist intervention and the reign of terror unloosed by the French and Spanish invaders.
National Liberation
War in Syria and the Lebanon
p One of the consequences of the First World War was the conversion of Syria, formerly a Turkish province, into a French colony. This incorporation of Syria into the framework of the French empire, which meant her separation from traditional markets, had produced an economic crisis in the country. Many minor businesses had closed down, throwing the workers out of employment and making their proprietors face financial ruin.
p French rule caused discontent and there were sporadic uprisings. Six such uprisings occurred between 1920 and 1924, besides unimportant scattered manifestations of protest.
p The French Government was compelled to manoeuvre. Blair, the French high commissioner, known as an ultra-reactionary and a clerical, was dismissed and replaced by Sarrail, a “radical” and “atheist”, who introduced a number of liberal reforms, intended for effect, such as permitting the national bourgeoisie to form a People’s Party.
p This display of liberalism by the new French high commissioner did not last very long. At the first signs of a growing popular movement he promulgated draconic laws directed against the press, and launched a drive against the People’s Party, whose leaders were either seized or forced to flee abroad.
p These actions served to further aggravate the situation. One measure produced particular resentment: that was the lifting of 198 restrictions on land lent, already an intolerable burden for the peasantry. When colonial troops fired on a demonstrating crowd in Beirut, on orders from Sarrail, a general Syrian uprising became a foregone conclusion. The Syrian liberation movement took courage from the heroic fight put up by the Riff tribes, the Turkish and Chinese revolutions, and the achievements of the Soviet Union. Besides, the Riff war had compelled the French to shift important forces to Morocco, and the colonial forces in Syria had been accordingly reduced in numbers.
p The uprising started in an almost inaccessible mountain area peopled by 50,000-70,000 Druse tribesmen, who lived under a patriarchal, feudal social system. The French authorities had conducted themselves here with arrogance. Several punitive expeditions had visited the district, and the parcelling of community lands had been begun. Moreover, the French had tricked the chiefs of the more important tribes into coming and then held them as hostages. This had been the last straw, and on July 18, 1925, the Druse tribes rose in armed revolt.
p An All-Druse National League was formed at Es Suweida, the chief town of the Druse territory, and a national government was set up. The new government was headed by Sultan Pasha el-Atrash, sheikh of one of the mountain villages, who, having led the uprising of 1922, had had the experience of fighting the French. El-Atrash issued a manifesto in which he summoned the Syrian people to start a holy war for freedom and independence. The leaders of the uprising also made efforts to establish contact with the Riffs and the tribes inhabiting Saudi Arabia.
p In early August the Druses inflicted a defeat on the French punitive force and captured a quantity of artillery pieces, machine-guns, 2,000 rifles, and convoys with munitions and food products. They were thus able to arm several new peasant detachments. The French retaliated with aerial bombings, but in the mountainous terrain these did not have the desired effect.
p Meantime the uprising gathered force, as other population groups joined in the struggle. While the peasants formed the nucleus of the Druse movement, the workers also took an active part in armed clashes with the French colonialists and aided the icbels by strikes and walk-outs. The urban petty bourgeoisie, students and intellectuals also participated in the struggle. Support came in the initial stage from the Syrian national bourgeoisie and some of the feudal lords, inasmuch as they hoped to take over the leadership; but when the fortunes of war began to go against the Druses most of them dropped out of the struggle.
p To frighten the people the French resorted to terror. Mass executions took place in the streets of Damascus, but these merely 199 incited the population to a general revolt against the French. On October 19, 1925, rebels in Damascus and partisan forces occupied several districts of the city. Sarrail ordered the city shelled by heavy artillery and bombed from the air, and within 48 hours the ancient city with its architectural monuments and art treasures was a mass of ruins and some 25,000 of its population, among them women and children, lay dead. This piece of atrocity did not break the spirit of the Syrians; on the contrary: by November 1925, the national liberation army had grown to 40,000. Only the large towns, such as Damascus, Aleppo, Horns and Hama, remained in the hands of the French.
p Public opinion the world over reacted violently to the brutal bombing and shelling of Damascus. The imperialist powers, Prance’s rivals for dominance in the Middle East, and above all Great Britain, did what they could to use the event to their advantage. Then, too, the Syrian uprising worried the British ruling circles more and more, for it was having repercussions in Iraq and Palestine. In Iraq, for instance, the Arab National Party at Mosul had issued a manifesto urging support of "our Syrian brothers".
p In November 1925, the post of French high commissioner in Syria was given to H. de Jouvenel, an experienced diplomat. His first step, on taking over the post, was to go to London, where he concluded an agreement with the British Government. In exchange for a promise of French support of British claims to Mosul, 200 Britain undertook to help the French put down the Syrian uprising. The United States, too, offered its aid. Two American destroyers arrived at Beirut, ostensibly to protect American citizens, but in actual fact to prevent the Syrians from reaching the Lebanese coast.
p So far as French diplomacy was concerned, its efforts were directed towards planting dissension among the various Arab organisations. In mid-November. 1925, Jouvenel began negotiations with the Syrian nationalist leaders. The Syrian side was represented by the executive committee of the Syria-Palestine Congress, which united various bourgeois-nationalist parties of Syria, the Lebanon and Palestine. The Syrians demanded an independent Syrian state, a provisional national government, elections to a constituent assembly and the evacuation of French troops following the formation of a national government. Jouvenel kept putting off his reply to these demands.
p Those were trying times for imperialist France, made still more difficult by her military reverses in Morocco and the widespread anti-war movement at home. By manoeuvring and making promises he had no intention of fulfilling Jouvenel sought to weaken the national liberation front. Early in 1926 he decreed an amnesty for partisan fighters who would lay down their arms and return to their homes. There would be no death sentences for the chiefs who surrendered. Another decree promised to convene a representative council with a membership elected in those areas where there was no state of siege. Elections in all the other areas were to be held after the re-establishment of "law and order”. The representative council would approve a constitution based on the “rights” of the mandatory state, that is, France.
p Jouvenel’s decrees were rejected by the Arab leaders, and his negotiations with the national liberation army’s leadership fared no better. As early as November 1925, Sultan Pasha el-Atrash had published a declaration which said: "We shall not stop fighting until we have won independence for Syria. It is rumoured that there are those who intend to negotiate peace with Jouvenel. I am authorised to state on behalf of the Druses that such persons have not been empowered to speak for us.”
p When in the spring of 1926 the French army finished its Moroccan campaign it became possible for the French high command to throw some 70,000-80,000 troops and equipment into the punitive operations in Syria. Jouvenel’s utterances took on the tone of ultimatums. From now on, he declared, only unconditional surrender of the “rebels” would be acceptable. At this, the feudal lords and bourgeoisie definitely dissociated themselves from the national liberation movement, in awe of the French and in still greater awe of the scope of the struggle waged by the people.
201p Large-scale military operations against the insurgents were begun in May 1926. The main drive was directed at the Jabal Druse district, which was the centre of the uprising, with a population of around 70,000. Over 10,000 French troops were thrown into the drive. Employing "scorched earth" tactics, they destroyed crops, seized cattle, plundered and burned villages in order to leave the partisans neither food nor supplies. Three offensives were pressed simultaneously: in the Lebanon, northern Syria and the vicinity of Damascus. But the struggle against the invaders went on; and it was only in the autumn of 1926 that the French succeeded in defeating the most important partisan units. In May 1927, Sultan Pasha el-Atrash and a force of 600 were compelled to retreat into Transjordan, where they were interned by the British and handed over to the French.
p Enjoying indisputable military and technological superiority as well as the support of other imperialist powers, France had succeeded in crushing the national liberation uprising in Syria. The Druses, on the other hand, had lost because of the inconsistency of the national bourgeoisie and the lack of organisation of the proletariat which failed to rally the various classes and social forces to its cause.
The heroic fight waged by the Syrian people from 1925 to 1927 was of great international significance, and, besides, provided the Arabs with first-hand experience in waging a national liberation struggle.
National Liberation Movement in Indonesia
p For most of the population of Indonesia the aftermath of the First World War and the loss of its traditional markets meant economic disaster. Stocks piled up of the plantation produce for which there were no buyers; and prices dropped sharply on crops of the local peasants who had been induced to grow for export. Industry was but feebly developed and could provide no jobs for destitute peasants. A limited expansion of small and medium semi-handicraft production was unable to absorb the growing supply of labour or satisfy the demand for consumer goods. There was no big bourgeoisie in the country, either industrial or commercial, while the dominant position in the comprador trade was held by Chinese capitalists. The Indonesian bourgeoisie, which had grown somewhat stronger during the war, besides carrying the burden of foreign domination, was largely at the mercy of the middlemen who supplied its industrial enterprises with raw materials and bought up their production.
p Objective preconditions for a struggle against the dominance of the Dutch and those who worked with them multiplied rapidly. 202 Peasant actions, though unorganised, became more frequent in Java and elsewhere in the archipelago, and increased activity was shown by a peasant movement motivated by religious and Utopian ideas. This was the Sarekat Islam, or Islamic Union, a movement started in 1913 by members of the petty and middle bourgeoisie, which had become, during the First World War, a genuinely mass organisation, whose leadership was being largely taken over by the progressive intellectuals.
p The Indonesian intelligentsia was a most consistent stratum of the population in expressing the growing national consciousness and anti-imperialist feeling. It was influenced by the SocialDemocratic Union, a union established in 1914 by Dutch Leftwing Social-Democrats. These revolutionary Social-Democrats had a press of their own, through which they spread the ideas of the Marxist teaching, kept the people of Indonesia abreast of the liberation struggle in other countries, and maintained contact with the Sarekat Islam, where their followers were gaining ever greater influence.
p In this situation the impact of the October Revolution in Russia was great indeed. Within the Social-Democratic Union the Left-wing forces defeated the Right-wingers, who were compelled to withdraw from that organisation and formed a party of their own, which was more than ready to make a deal with the imperialists. The strike movement increased in scope, and strikes were often won by the workers. Since there were no large national 203 industrial enterprises in the country, the class warfare waged by the proletariat interflowed with the anti-imperialist struggle. Ships from Europe constantly touched at Indonesian ports, bringing news of Soviet Russia as well as word of the revolutionary events of 1918 in Holland itself. A revolutionary club known as Seaman’s House was organised in Surabaya, Indonesia’s leading seaport, and Soviets of Sailors’ Deputies were formed, which tried to establish contact with soldiers and workmen.
p The Dutch authorities took steps to divert the liberation movement into a law-abiding reformist channel. In 1918 they organised a Volksraad, or People’s Council, a ludicrous travesty of a colonial “parliament”. Half its members were appointed by the governor-general, the other half was elected primarily by Europeans and colonial officials, both Dutch and Javanese. Europeans formed a majority in the Volksraad, but among the appointed members there were also some leaders of Indonesian organisations (including the head of Sarekat Islam) whom the Dutch hoped to bribe and use as a tool. Still, most of the Indonesian deputies used the rostrum of this “parliament” devoid of all rights to voice sharp criticism of Dutch policy and colonial rule.
p In May 1920, the Social-Democratic Union was transformed into the Indonesian Communist Party, which was admitted that same year into the Communist International. Semaoen, leader of the railway workers’ union, was elected chairman of the Party. Closer contacts were established with the revolutionary movement elsewhere in the world. The Communist Party increased its influence in workers’ organisations, as, for instance, in the Central Trade Union Association, formed in 1919. Many branches of the Sarekat Islam were headed by the Communists. However, the Leftist mistakes, inherited from the Dutch Left Socialists—Tribunists, prevented the young Communist Party from consolidating its successes and preserving the Sarekat Islam as a broad national front organisation. These mistakes helped the Islamist elements in the Sarekat Islam leadership in their fight against the Communists, whose growing influence panicked the moderate nationalist leaders.
p The Communist Party called for an immediate socialist revolution. In their efforts to get the Sarekat Islam—fundamentally a petty-bourgeois organisation—to accept the socialist programme the Communists argued against nationalism as being “harmful” in the struggle with imperialism, and against religion.
p The strife within the Sarekat Islam grew increasingly bitter and spread to the Central Trade Union Association where it led to a split. In 1923 the Communists had to leave the Sarekat Islam, but they were followed by several of that organisation’s important branches, which took the name of the Red Sarekat Islam, subsequently changed to Sarekat Raiyat (People’s Union).
204p In the beginning, their political experience prompted the Dutch authorities to allow the Communist Party of Indonesia (CPI) and the young people’s and women’s organisations associated with it to carry on their activities legally. They expected that internal dissension would weaken the national liberation movement and were content to resort to repression only in the case of especially active Communists. By and by, however, they saw that the CPI had a considerable following among the workers and that Communist influence was responsible for the growth of the strike movement as well as for the appearance of popular schools, peasants’ organisations, and so on; and this made the Dutch authorities change their tactics in favour of mass persecution. The general railway workers’ strike of 1923—the most important of that period—served as a pretext for promulgating a series of rigorous laws directed against the workers’ movement. The People’s Union leaders arrested on the eve of the strike (CPI chairman Semaoen among them) were deported from the country. These laws were followed by others, also directed against revolutionary organisations and democratic publications.
p Increasingly grave Leftist errors on the part of the CPI leadership facilitated the Dutch authorities’ task. Calling for the establishment of a Soviet-type government, the CPI leaders considered the peasantry incapable of joining the revolution as being petty bourgeois by its nature. Furthermore, they endeavoured to dissolve the Sarekat Raiyat, which lacked a programme of its own and was looked upon as a lower rung of the Communist Party. These efforts of the CPI leadership, however, were strongly resisted by the CPI and Sarekat Raiyat rank and file.
p In November 1926, at a time when repressions were increasing and the mass movement was ebbing, an armed uprising broke out. In the western part of Java it was "drowned in blood" by the Dutch rulers after two months of fighting. A series of arrests prevented it from spreading to central and eastern Java. With the uprising put down in Java, armed popular rebellion broke out, in January 1927, in Western Sumatra; but this, too, was soon suppressed. The Communist Party and its associated organisations were smashed, the revolutionary trade unions dissolved and forbidden. Thousands of Communists were arrested and deported to a special concentration camp in Western Irian.
The Indonesian people’s revolutionary struggle was hard hit by the campaign of terror unleashed by the Dutch. The CPI was reconstituted again only as late as 1935 in the greatest secrecy. However, it was not within the power of the Dutch to stop the liberation movement. In 1927 Sukarno formed a National Party, and those few Communists who had managed to survive joined it. The National Party, and its successor—the Indonesian Party, 205 formed in 1931—called, in their programme, for a struggle for independence and democratic reforms. The trend became more and more apparent towards a closer unity of all the national antiimperialist forces in the country.
Revolutionary Struggle of the Chinese People,
1924-1927
p From 1924 on the revolutionary movement in China began to gather considerable momentum as the result of the formation of a united national front, directed against the forces of imperialism and feudalism and deriving its support from the working class, the peasantry and the national bourgeoisie. The three classes were united in the task of bringing about a bourgeois-democratic revolution that was developing in the semi-colonial land that was China.
p When the First Congress’of the Kuomintang was convened in January 1924, the national revolutionary front was already in existence. It was this Congress that adopted a manifesto setting forth the programme which became a basis for the co-operation of the Communists and the followers of Sun Yat-sen. Communists joined the Kuomintang individually, retaining their membership in the Communist Party. The main political tenets of the Kuomintang, as formulated by Sun Yat-sen, were union with Soviet Russia, union with the Communist Party of China, and defence of the interests of workers and peasants. Serious ideological differences remained, of course, between the Kuomintang leadership and the Communist Party; as, for instance, in the evaluation of the motive power of the revolution, of the required extent of democratic reforms, etc. There existed within the Kuomintang, moreover, a Right-wing group which opposed co-operation with the Communist Party and closer links with Soviet Russia (a member of this group, incidentally, was Chiang Kai-shek, then head of the Whampoa Military Academy, which trained officers for the National Revolutionary Army). The bulk of the national bourgeoisie, it should be said, supported the revolution in those days, for the dominance of foreign capital and the survivals of the feudal system were harmful to their interests and created serious impediments to any expansion of their activities.
p During 1924 and 1925 contacts between China and the USSR continued to expand in parallel with growing Soviet aid to the Chinese people in their national liberation struggle. The Soviet people took a firm stand against the continuing interference of foreign imperialists in the domestic affairs of China and constant threats that they would throttle the revolutionary struggle. A 206 “Hands Off China" Society was formed in the USSR in September 1924, which launched a vigorous campaign against the encroachments of the ruling circles of Britain, the United States, Japan and other imperialist powers. On May 31, 1924, China and the USSR established diplomatic relations, the Peking government taking this step only after the USSR had been accorded recognition by the leading capitalist powers. This act was of great importance for the cause of aid to the Chinese people. The Sino-Soviet agreement was the first equitable treaty to be concluded by China with a foreign power, the Soviet Union relinquishing all of the privileges which had been extorted from China by the tsarist government.
p The Soviet Union gave its support to the revolutionary centre at Kwangchow in the south, which was growing increasingly strong despite all kinds of threats and acts of sabotage on the part of the imperialists. In line with Sun Yat-sen’s wishes, M. M. Borodin, a Soviet Communist, was appointed as his political adviser, while V. K. Blucher, a prominent Soviet military leader, assisted by a group of Soviet military advisers, went to work energetically to help build up the liberation army. Soviet arms shipments were an especially valuable form of aid to the revolutionary government in those days.
p The death of Sun Yat-sen, in the spring of 1925, came as a heavy blow to the Chinese people’s liberation movement. Great democrat and tireless fighter for China’s independence and prosperity that he was, Sun Yat-sen remained faithful to the last to his programme and the policy of seeking the support of the masses and close union with the Soviet Union.
p On the eve of his death he dictated a letter to the Central Executive Committee of the USSR, which ran as follows:
p “Dear comrades! As I lie here, prostrated by a disease from which there is no known cure, my thoughts turn to you and to my own country’s future.
p “You stand at the helm of a union of free republics—the legacy which the immortal Lenin left the oppressed peoples and which will inevitably help the victims of imperialism free themselves from an international system whose roots, since ancient times, have been imbedded in slavery, wars and injustice.
p “I am leaving behind me a party which, I have always hoped, would work jointly with you in accomplishing the historical task of achieving the final liberation of China and the other exploited countries from that imperialist system.... I firmly believe in the enduring nature of the aid you have been giving my country.
p “In bidding you farewell, my dear comrades, I wish to voice the hope that the day will soon come when the USSR will welcome a powerful, liberated China as a friend and ally and that 207 the two allies will stand shoulder to shoulder in the glorious struggle for the liberation of the oppressed nations of the world " Late that spring, on May 30, 1925, to be precise, the Britishdirected international settlement police in Shanghai opened fire on a patriotic demonstration. This produced a new explosion of anti-imperialist feeling among the Chinese people, and violent reaction which came to be known as the "May 30th Movement" Ihe working class confidently headed the anti -imperialist struggle. On June 1, some 200,000 of Shanghai’s proletariat went on strike, demanding punishment of those guilty of the shooting withdrawal of foreign troops, transfer of all rights and powers m the international settlement to the Chinese, etc. Tens of thousands of students and great numbers of the petty and middle bourgeo.sie joined the workers The anti-imperialist campaign reached its highest point when a strike began, in June 1925 in the Hong Kong-Kwangchow area in support of the workers of Shanghai. Lasting 16 months, this strike set a record in respect of both its length and the resolution with which it was carried out Ihe strikers received assistance from the authorities of Kwangchow; some 250,000 men moved from Hong Kong to Kwangchow which considerably strengthened the consistently revolutionary lorces on which the South China government mainly relied for support. Many Hong Kong workers joined the National Revolutionary Ai my.
208p These events were watched by the Kuomintang Right-wingers with growing concern. In March 1926, they made their first attempt at a counter-revolutionary coup in Kwangchow. For the moment, however, these Right-wing elements lacked sufficient opportunities to achieve a break with the Communist Party. But in the summer of 1926 Chiang Kai-shek succeeded in having himself appointed concurrently chairman of the Kuomintang Central Executive Committee and commander-in-chief of the National Revolutionary Army, which last post was all the more important since with the start of the northern liberation campaign the army became a political force of the first magnitude.
p The National Revolutionary Army set out from Kwangchow in July 1926. The campaign was successful from the start. In September the revolutionary forces liberated Wuhan, one of the country’s most important centres, routing the Chihli war-lord clique entrenched for years in Central China. The victories of the National Revolutionary Army were due above all to the support of the population in the provinces which it overran and the extreme hostility of the masses toward the war-lords. Another important factor was the superior ability of the revolutionary army’s officer corps, largely contributed to by the Soviet military advisers. Also, there were many Communists in the army, who carried on political work not only among the rank and file, but among the civilian population as well.
p The northern campaign imparted new vigour to the workers’ movement, prompted the peasants to action against the landowners, and generally stimulated class warfare. There was a rapid growth of trade union membership, and strikes increased. In the villages, people joined to form peasant unions, which in turn formed armed units of their own. The national bourgeoisie regarded the mounting revolutionary struggle with growing alarm. Their stand was influenced to a great extent by the actions of the foreign imperialists, who, beset by the fear of losing control over China, employed armed force to interfere in her internal affairs and endeavoured to use the war-lords more effectively against the revolutionary people.
p Acute contradictions notwithstanding, the logic of struggle induced the imperialist powers to unify their efforts. In December 1926, Great Britain, Japan and the United States succeeded in welding the armies of the various war-lords into a single army, which was put under the command of Chang Tso-lin. The army was amply supplied with arms by the imperialist powers. Moreover, its operations were supported by their fleets: British and American warships patrolled the Yangtze, interfering with the movements of the National Revolutionary Army; and in December 1926 put a landing party ashore at Hankow. Early in 1927 209 most of the US Asiatic fleet was transferred into Chinese waters. Additional troops were landed at Shanghai by the United States, Japan, France, Italy, Holland, Spain, and Portugal, as well as a British volunteer corps.
p In March 1927, the revolutionary forces approached Shanghai, China’s leading industrial centre, and the city’s workers declared a general strike and rose in revolt. Units of the National Revolutionary Army entered the city after it was taken over by the insurgents. On March 23, that is, two days later, the revolutionary forces captured Nanking, a politically important city of Central China. These two brilliant victories of the revolutionary forces threw the imperialists into a rage. On March 24, American and British warships anchored on the Yangtze off Nanking subjected the city to a merciless shelling. This was done with the dual purpose of scaring the population into submission and prompting the Right-wingers in the Kuomintang to openly side with the counter-revolution.
p In the meantime a large sum of money had passed from Shanghai’s industrialists into the pocket of Chiang Kai-shek, and the latter made a deal with the representatives of those very same imperialist powers whose brazen armed intervention in China had raised a storm of indignation all over the world. On April 12, 1927, Chiang Kai-shek staged an anti-revolutionary coup in 210 Shanghai. Similar outbreaks took place in other liberated districts, accompanied everywhere by violence against trade unions and the imprisonment and shooting of Communists. A government was set up at Nanking, headed by Chiang Kai-shek, to the great delight of the foreign imperialists, who accorded recognition to the new government, which they regarded as a firm guarantee of the security of their interests in China.
p There was still a national government in Wuhan, it should be said, which controlled the central provinces and which could have had ample opportunity for developing the revolution if only it had used the peasants’ and workers’ movement to that end. As it turned out, however, the Kuomintang Left-wingers at the head of the government were incapable of that, while some, including Wang Chiang-wei, who took over the Kuomintang leadership after Chiang Kai-shek’s defection, were nothing but disguised traitors. Serious mistakes were made by the leaders of the Communist Party and particularly by Chen Tu-hsiu, General Secretary, whose Right-wing opportunist tactics did a great deal of harm to the Party and the revolutionary cause.
p Taking advantage of the situation, Wang Chiang-wei engineered in Wuhan, in July 1927, a coup d’etat on the lines of Chiang Kai-shek’s. The Communists were ejected from the Kuomintang and subjected to savage repressions. And that completed the defection of the national bourgeoisie to the counter-revolutionary camp.
Although the revolution had been defeated, it had played an important part in moulding China’s future. In the course of its evolution valuable experience had been gained, which was to make an important contribution to the final victory of the Chinese people. The events of the 1920s showed beyond all doubt that in its struggle for independence and social progress its truest ally was the international proletariat and above all its revolutionary vanguard—the Soviet Union.
China in 1927-1939
p In the course of 1927 the big bourgeoisie and landowner bloc, together with the national bourgeoisie, succeeded in imposing their reactionary political regime over all of China.
p The interests of the national bourgeoisie, however, were given only minimal consideration. Nominally the Nanking government’s rule extended over the entire country, but actually many provinces continued to be ruled by the war-lords. What was most important, however, the country continued to be further enslaved by the foreign imperialists, with the Chiang Kai-shek government particularly dependent on the United States. The 211 Kuomintang, after it had been purged of the revolutionary elements, had become a hotbed of anti-popular forces, though its leaders, who had totally betrayed the behests of Sun Yat-sen, continued to invoke his name to fool the people. The population at large fared worse and worse. Any peasant aspirations to land were ended when the Kuomintang government promulgated laws perpetuating the ownership of landed proprietors thereof.
p There were armed worker and peasant uprisings by way of retaliation to the betrayal of the revolution by the Kuomintang leadership. The most important among these was the revolt of 30,000 Kwangchow workers in December 1927, known as the "Canton Commune”. The insurgents proclaimed an end of landed proprietorship, of landed estates, confiscation of the property of foreign firms, abrogation of all unequal treaties, etc. This insurrection, as well as the others, were drowned in blood. The detachments which had managed to break through withdrew to inaccessible rural districts and there began to form units of China’s Red Army. The Sixth Congress of the Communist Party of China, convened in 1928, laid down the principle that in the new situation top priority should be given to the promotion of an agrarian revolution, and condemned both the Leftist tendencies to disregard the lack of conditions favouring uprisings in the larger towns and the Right-wing opportunism of Chen Tu-hsiu (who was relieved of his office in August 1927). A number of revolutionary territories appeared during the period of 1928-30, in Central and South China, chiefly in mountainous regions, and Soviets of Workers’, Peasants’ and Red Army Deputies were set up, which performed the functions of government. A number of democratic reforms were implemented by the latter, the most important of these being the agrarian reform. Under this reform landed estates were expropriated and distributed among the peasants who owned little or no land. At the same time in the regions ruled by the Soviets the interests of well-to-do elements who did not infringe the decrees of the revolutionary authorities were equally protected, and it was this policy that fostered among the local population a determination to take up arms in defence of what they had won.
In the years that followed, the area of the liberated regions expanded considerably. Six large revolutionary bases were set up in various parts of the country, in South and Central China and in the northeastern provinces; and a number of minor bases. In November 1931, the First Congress of Workers’ and Peasants’ Deputies was convened at Juiching, Kiangsi Province, which was attended by delegates from all the Soviet regions of China. The Congress adopted a constitution and formed a Central Soviet Government, with Mao Tse-tung elected as chairman.
212p The Kuomintang government made repeated attempts to liquidate the Soviet regions. Several punitive expeditions numbering each some tens of thousands of troops were sent against them by Chiang Kai-shek, but these were all routed by the Red Army, which, enjoying as it did the unstinting support of the population, was able to inflict considerable loss on the enemy.
p The Kuomintang leaders did not abandon their efforts to liquidate the Soviet regions even after the Japanese attack, in September 1931, and the gradual Japanese occupation of Northeastern China, which constituted a serious threat to the Chinese people. The Chiang Kai-shek government did everything to sabotage organised resistance, though the Japanese occupation of the northeastern provinces was a great loss to the national economy. Chiang Kai-shek did not lift a finger even when the Japanese attempted to seize Shanghai in the beginning of 1932. Using the classical “incident” pretext, the pre-arranged murder of a Japanese monk in the given case, the Japanese had landed a force in the Shanghai area in the expectation that they would be able to take the city unopposed. However, the Shanghai proletariat rose to a-man to the defence of the city in answer to the call of the Communist Party. Soldiers of the 19th Army, dislocated in Shanghai, fought shoulder to shoulder with the workers in contravention of Chiang’s orders. The heaviest fighting took place in the Chapei district of the city. If the city was not occupied by the 213 Japanese that time, it was solely thanks to the heroic stand of these rank-and-file Chinese patriots, which fiustrated the aggressor’s sally.
p The Shanghai events increased popular resentment against Chiang’s refusal to stand up to the Japanese imperialists and their designs on China. The patriotic forces, fully conscious of the menace created by the Japanese invasion, were headed by the Communist Party of China, which had summoned the Chinese people to resist aggression as early as September 1931. In April 1932, the Central Government of the revolutionary regions declared war on Japan and called for unification of all forces to resist the Japanese invaders. Chiang Kai-shek, on the contrary, endeavoured to expand the civil war, and in the autumn of 1933 launched a fifth punitive campaign with a force nearly one million strong. The patriotic forces found themselves in a dangerous situation: the very existence of the revolutionary regions in South and Central China was jeopardised.
p Despite extensive American aid and despite the counsel of nazi generals, Chiang’s campaign failed to achieve its ends. After a year of heavy defensive battles the Red Army broke through the ring of Kuomintang troops and began the march that was to bring it into the northwestern region of China, where it would no longer be under Kuomintang attack, and closer to the area menaced by the Japanese invaders. In January 1935, while still on the march, an extended session of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee was convened, which resulted m putting Mao Tse-tung to all intents and purposes at the head of the Party. In October, after a march of 12,000 kilometres, the Chinese Red Army reached the Kansu-Shansi border area, and here set up a new Soviet region, which was to become a strong base from which the struggle against the Chinese reactionaries and Japanese invaders could be carried on.
p Meanwhile the movement in favour of resistance to Japanese aggression was gathering force in the areas under Kuomintang control. On December 9, 1935, students in Peking staged a demonstration, demanding an end to the civil war, a determined stand against Japanese aggression, and political freedom for the people. The demonstration was ruthlessly dealt with, but the movement against the government’s policy of capitulation continued to grow. The "December 9th Movement" had made an important contribution by preparing the ground for a war of liberation, a war that had become inevitable in view of the Japanese threat to the vital interests of the Chinese people. People in all walks of life were increasingly demanding that all patriotic forces should join and end the civil war which gave the Japanese an opportunity to grab more and more Chinese territory. As a 214 215 result of the efforts of the Communist Party the Kuomintang leaders found themselves compelled to end their campaign against the Red Army; but they still refused to come to an agreement with the Communist Party regarding a common anti-Japanese front, even though the Communists offered to make concessions on a number of important issues.
p The situation changed only when Japan began a large-scale war with the intention of subjugating all of China and turning it into a Japanese colony. This war broke out on July 7, 1937, and by the end of the month the Japanese had taken Peking; in August they began the battle for Shanghai and achieved success elsewhere. They had made a mistake, however, in reckoning that China’s military weakness and the lack of unity among the country’s patriotic forces would bring them immediate victory. The national peril forced the Kuomintang to accept the Communist Party’s offer, and an agreement was reached in September between the two sides on the subject of resistance to the Japanese invaders. This was an important achievement, though even then the Chiang clique continued to sabotage the war effort, a circumstance that led, in 1937 and 1938, to extensive territorial losses. Still, the wave of patriotism that swept the country kept the icactionaries from capitulating to the enemy and resuming the civil war. The brunt of the war against the invaders was carried by the Eighth Army and the New Fourth Army, both under Communist command, and other partisan forces operating in the enemy rear.
p Large-scale aid in combating the Japanese aggression was made available to the Chinese people by the Soviet Union. In 1937 the two countries signed a non-aggression pact, which served notice on the world where the sympathies of the Soviet people lay. In 1938-39 the Soviet Union advanced fighting China two loans to the tune of US $250,000,000, which were used for the purchase of arms. A large number of Soviet volunteers fought on the Chinese side, including fliers who did their best to protect Chinese towns from Japanese aerial attacks. Very different was the attitude of the Western powers, who didn’t do a thing to stop the Japanese aggression, even though that aggression was seriously damaging to their imperialist interests in China. The motive in this case was the same that had lain at the root of their appeasement policy towards nazi Germany, that is to say, their desire to deflect the spearhead of the attack to the Soviet Union and thus kill two birds with one stone: smash or seriously weaken the Soviet Union and safeguard their interests in China against the encroachment of the Japanese imperialists.
The twenty-year interim between the two world wars was a significant period in Chinese history. It witnessed the 216 unprecedented growth of a mass revolutionary movement directed against imperialism and feudalism. What is more important, it witnessed the appearance in the political arena of the Chinese working class in the capacity of a leader of the war of liberation, a working class that had taken in the lofty aims of the October Revolution and formed a Marxist-Leninist Party of its own. Although the perfidy of the national bourgeoisie had brought a defeat to the revolution, the invaluable experience acquired by the revolutionary forces and the existence of a Communist Party tempered in the crucible of class warfare gave promise of victories to come. The results began to tell already in the 1930s, when the Japanese started their aggression against China and the revolutionary bases established by the Communist Party became a bulwark not only against the reactionaries at home, but also against the grave menace of Japanese imperialism.
Fresh Upswing of Anti-Imperialist
Struggle in India
p After the ebb of the 1919-22 revolutionary tide, the contradictions which had started the anti-imperialist struggle of the people of India became still more aggravated. The British monopolies increased their economic pressure on India, and the 217 local capitalists were in tuin anxious to increase their share of profits by all possible means. As a result, wages were dropping and working conditions growing worse for the workers, while among the peasants the process of impoverishment went on unabated. In addition, a period of political reaction set in. The colonial authorities did everything in their power to sow discord among the various religious communities. The Moslem League and the National Congress co-operated no longer, as they had done during the revolutionary upswing. And armed clashes between Hindus and Moslems occurred in certain regions.
p The capitulation of the National Congress leaders, who had terminated the civil disobedience campaign, had produced a feeling of frustration among the masses. Membership in the National Congress Party fell off from close to 10,000,000 to a few hundred thousand.
p This recess of the revolutionary movement could not last long, however. Though the reactionaries had the upper hand the Indian workers continued striking. Trade union membership had grown to 300,000 by the end of 1926. The Communist groups were extending the range of their activities, and in December 1925, the Communist Party of India was established.
p In 1925 and the years that followed, workers’ and peasants’ parties were organised, at various times, in the provinces of Bengal, Bombay, Punjab and elsewhere. These served to unite workers, peasants, intellectuals and petty bourgeoisie. Revolutionary nationalists of the petty bourgeoisie, as a matter of fact, shared the leadership of these organisations with the Communists. These parties helped consolidate the democratic forces in the country.
p That a new upswing of the national liberation movement was in the offing could be seen from the increasing activity of the Left-wing elements within the National Congress Party, comprising chieflv students, intellectuals, and members of the petty bourgeoisie. Leadership of these elements was assumed by Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhas Chandra Bose, who represented that part of the national bourgeoisie, which stood for active opposition to British imperialism.
p In 1928, in anticipation of the scheduled review of the Government of India Act of 1919, a British Government commission headed by J. A. Simon arrived in India. Incensed by the fact that India’s future was to be decided by the seven English members of the commission, the Indians staged mass demonstrations under the slogan "Simon, Go Back!”
p The strike movement, too, gathered force, and over half a million workers took part in strikes during 1928. Most important of these was the strike of the textile workers at Bombay, which 218 lasted six months. The struggle against the owners was marked by the increasing influence of the Communists, workers’ and peasants’ parties, and revolutionary trade unions.
p In an effort to halt the mounting workers’ movement the British authorities resorted to repression. In March 1929, 33 prominent leaders of the movement were arrested, including Dange and thirteen other Communists. They were removed to Meerut, a minor town, where a hearing was to be staged of an alleged "secret Communist plot”. Active trade union workers were jailed in many industrial towns. And though the membership as well as the activity of the trade unions continued to grow, the power of the working class diminished as the result of a split in the trade union movement: there were now three trade union centres in the country.
p The economic crisis which engulfed the capitalist world in 1929 brought fresh miseries to the people of India. Prices on farm produce dropped sharply, and most of the farmers’ crops went to pay rent to the landowners and taxes to the colonial authorities. Tax arrears were collected with indescribable brutality. In some rural areas failure to pay taxes brought torture. From time immemorial it had been a custom in India to cherish gold ornaments, which were held sacred and handed down from generation to generation, even among the poorest families. Now these heirlooms passed into the hands of the ruthless tax-collectors. In the urban communities business failures among small entrepreneurs increased rapidly, while the big monopolists, such as Tata, Birla and others, expanded. The growing numbers of impoverished and starving peasants swelled the ranks of the unemployed.
p British monopoly capital endeavoured to mitigate the impact of the crisis at home by increased exploitation of the colonies, India among them. This increased the rivalry between the British monopolies and Indian national capital.
p As resentment against the colonial regime grew, so did the prestige of the National Congress and the scope of its activities. Under the pressure of numerous meetings whose key-note was independence for India, the National Congress, at a session held in December 1929, at Lahore, elected Jawaharlal Nehru, Leftwing leader, as its chairman, and proclaimed the achievement of complete independence as its basic aim. This was to be attained through a campaign of civil disobedience, the direction of which was entrusted to Gandhi.
p January 26, 1930, was proclaimed Independence Day. [218•1 Mass 219 meetings and assemblies were held all over the country on that day. A great demonstration of students, employees and petty bourgeois carrying the slogan "Long Live the Non-Violent Revolution!" began in Bombay early in the day. The Indian national flag flew over the National Congress building. At the end of the working day the Congress-sponsored demonstration was joined by a workers’ demonstration 100,000 strong, directed by the revolutionary trade unions and carrying slogans of " Revolution and Independence!”, "Long Live the Soviet Union!”, and "India to the Indians!”
p That day, January 26, marked the beginning of a mass antiBritish movement, even though Gandhi made an attempt to reach 220 a peaceful agreement with the British Government. Towards the close of January he published his eleven demands and made it known that if these were accepted by the British viceroy the campaign of civil disobedience might be called off. The demands called, in part, for an adjustment of the exchange rate of the Indian rupee that would give Indian capitalists a better chance to compete with British-made goods; the introduction of protectionist customs tariffs; lower land taxes; abolition of the British salt monopoly; a fifty per cent reduction of military expenditure; and the release of political prisoners, except "those guilty of murder or incitement to murder".
p When the British Government turned down these demands Gandhi summoned the people of India to begin the civil disobedience campaign, which was to be initiated by an infringement of the salt monopoly. On March 12, 1930, Gandhi led 79 specially chosen followers from Ahmedabad, on foot, to the coastal village of Dandi. They were warmly greeted by the villagers on the way; and on April 5, a remembrance day for the 1919 massacre at Amritsar, Gandhi and his followers started to evaporate salt from sea-water.
p On April 9 Gandhi addressed the people of India as follows:
p “Our road is clear. Let every village obtain or produce contraband salt, let women picket the wine-shops, opium dens and shops selling foreign-made textiles. Let young and old in every home work diligently and daily spin a great deal of yarn. Foreign textiles should be burned. Hindus must abandon the concept of untouchability. Hindus, Moslems, Sikhs, Parsees and Christians must all achieve cordial agreement... . Let the students leave their state schools and colleges, and let civil service employees resign and consecrate themselves to the service of the people; and we shall then soon see full independence (puma swaraj] coming of itself to knock on our door.”
p The "salt march" touched off a mass civil disobedience campaign. Infringement of the salt monopoly became universal. Multitudinous demonstrations took place in most towns, often accompanied by clashes with the police and troops. Specially formed volunteer detachments picketed shops selling British goods, and clothes made of British textiles were burned in the town squares. Millions were joining the movement.
p In May 1930, the British colonial government declared the National Congress outlawed and arrested Gandhi, Nehru and other Party leaders. The number of participants in the civil disobedience campaign now in prison surpassed 60,000. The movement had now unavoidably overstepped the bounds set by Gandhi’s “non-violence” injunction. Already towards the end of April there had been a popular uprising in Peshawar, and the British 221 authorities, in an effort to exploit religious differences, had sent Sikh troops to deal with the Moslem population. But the Sikhs refused to fire on the insurgents and turned over their own arms to them instead. The rebellion spread to Chittagong, Sholapur and other towns; and in some provinces peasants stopped paying taxes.
p The scope of the movement strengthened the trend towards a compromise on the part of both the British colonial government and that part of the Indian bourgeoisie which feared the increasingly independent actions of the workers and peasants. On January 26, 1931, there came the release of Gandhi and the members of the National Congress Working Committee, and negotiations between them and the viceroy culminated in the signing at Delhi, on March 5, of the Irwin-Gandhi Pact. The Congress undertook to call off the civil disobedience campaign, and the British authorities promised to halt repressions, repeal martial law, and free political prisoners (this latter provision not to apply to the Meerut Communists in prison and to the Sikh soldiers who were held for court-martial). Gandhi agreed to take part in the round table conference, at which representatives of the British Government and the Indian political circles that co-operated with the British had been discussing since 1930 the problem of a new Indian constitution.
p The Irwin-Gandhi Pact came as a disappointment for the Indian patriotic elements. Gandhi’s talks in London proved fruitless, as might have been expected. Back in India again, he announced, in January 1932, a new campaign of civil disobedience, 222 to which the British authorities retaliated by once more sending the Congress leaders to prison.
p The civil disobedience campaign of 1932 was on a more modest scale than the one before, but certain important shifts in the mass movement began to shape up during that year. Peasant activity spread to Bihar, Madras and some of the princely states, to regions, in other words, that had remained practically entirely outside the movement in 1930. The influence of the workers’ and peasants’ parties and the Communist Party began to gain ground among the peasants. The mass movement induced the maharajah of Kashmir to convene a legislative assembly in 1934. An insurrection in the principality of Alwar lasted over a year.
p While the revolutionary movement of the early 1930s had failed to drive the British out of India, the national liberation struggle of the Indian people had been conducted on a higher plane than in the period 1919-22. It had increased in scope; it had been better organised; and the masses had been increasingly active.
p The strikes of 1928-29 and later years and the active participation of Indian workers in the anti-imperialist movement spoke of the increasing role of the proletariat in politics and public affairs and the spreading of progressive ideas in the country. So did the trial of the leaders of the workers’ movement, which continued at Meerut till 1933 and which was used by the accused to denounce the British authorities and expound the MarxistLeninist doctrine. The obvious facts of the case to the contrary, the accused were found guilty; but the British authorities were constrained to release them before they had served their full sentences. This trial served to increase the prestige and influence of the Communist Party.
p The recession of the revolutionary movement was of short duration, and the year 1935 witnessed a vigorous movement of protest against the new Indian constitution promulgated by the British Parliament.
p Qualified popularly as strengthening Indian enslavement, the new constitution proclaimed India a federation of British India provinces and princely states, the latter receiving a disproportionately greater number of seats in the central legislative assembly. A further provision made it dependent upon the feudal princes whether they establish the method of appointment or election of deputies. It became clear that the British would be able, through the princes and landowners, to control the all-India legislative assembly. And, in addition, the viceroy’s powers would be the same as hitherto.
p The only concessions the constitution made were contained in the articles defining the system of government for the provinces 223 of British India. Here legislative assemblies were to be established with an elected membership. The franchise would be extended to 35,000,000, including the well-to-do peasantry. The election system contributed to increasing the differences between Hindus and Moslems, however. In the provinces governments were set up answerable to the deputies of the legislative assemblies, but with limited powers. The real power in the provinces remained with the British governors-general, as before.
p This fettering constitution was actively opposed by the National Congress, the Communist Party, and also workers’, peasants’, and youth organisations. This prepared the ground for the creation of a united anti-imperialist front. In consequence of this movement of protest the federation of the provinces and princely states failed to come into effect.
p Elections to the provincial legislative assemblies were held in 1937. The National Congress participated, though protesting against the "enslaving constitution" and demanding independence for India. Its efforts were largely successful in that its candidates obtained majorities in seven of the eleven provinces where governments were formed by the Congress members.
p The year 1937 initiated a new period in the anti-imperialist movement. 648,000 workers took part in that year’s strikes. The 224 strike movement continued to gather force through 1938 and 1939. Magnificent fortitude was displayed by the workers of Bombay and Cawnpore, who called for Indian independence and the legalisation of the Communist Party, besides presenting demands of an economic character.
p Thanks to the efforts of the Indian Communists the split within the trade union movement was ended in 1938, and a single trade union centre created. The peasant movement continued to gain in strength and organisation, its programme calling for the abolition of landownership, cancellation of debts, etc. The All-India Peasant Union, created in 1936, soon had a membership of 800,000. The democratic, anti-imperialist movement gained considerably in the princely states.
p The three consecutive waves of the revolutionary movement that swept India in the interim between the First and Second World wars left the British rule over India considerably shaken. And each time the national liberation movement had achieved, quantitatively and qualitatively, a higher plane.
Several distinct features characterised this movement on the eve of the Second World War: the proletariat and the peasantry now played an increasingly important part in political affairs; the National Congress had become a mass organisation capable of rallying a majority of the country’s population; the Communist Party of India was becoming an important political factor, fighting for a united anti-imperialist front in compliance with the resolutions of the Seventh Congress of the Communist International. The economic and political situation in the country in the late 1930s was propitious to a unification of all the forces that were fighting to end India’s colonial yoke.
South Africa and Tropical Africa
Between the Two World Wars
p So far as the modern history of South and Tropical Africa is concerned, the man in the street, in all probability, knows only about the events of the past few years, those during which the national liberation revolution in Africa has been scoring one victory after another. It is not so long ago, incidentally, that a French bourgeois historian referred to Africa as a continent without a past. And, indeed, many books on Africa present the events of recent years as fortuitous, rather than as changes brought about by what had come to pass before. This approach should substantiate the version that independence, rather than won by the colonies, had been granted to them by the parent states.
p Yet Africa’s history of the 1920-30s has been that of a gradual 225 mobilisation of forces for the coming all-out fight for national independence. This process could be traced in the growth of national and political consciousness, in the appearance of new forms of resistance to the colonial system, and in the emergence of political organisations.
p By the beginning of the 20th century colonial rule and exploitation have reached the remotest parts of the continent to establish harsh control over the life and customs of all African peoples. The African economy has been changing, more and more assuming the colonial pattern, that is to say, giving increasing prominence to the production of export crops and mining ores and minerals. The role of commodity-money relations was on the ascendant. And the traditional way of life was crumbling.
p As a result of this process new social forces were coming into being. More and more peasants were leaving the land in search of work. Proletarian cadres, it must be admitted, had appeared only in the south, in the Union of South Africa, to be precise. In the other African countries hired workers were practically all seasonal; going home, they carried with them the elements of proletarian self-consciousness and thereby introduced changes in their countrymen’s habitual thinking.
p A bourgeoisie was coming into existence; and there was already a stratum—a very modest stratum—of intelligentsia, chiefly teachers graduated from mission schools or "colleges for natives”. Some Africans were fortunate enough to pursue their studies further in the schools of Europe. Concurrently, chiefs and elders were losing their grip on the populace.
p As a result of changes in the way of life and social shifts the national liberation movement was assuming new forms. Tribal revolts, the traditional methods of resistance to colonialism, were being abandoned.
p All these processes were extremely slow. The only exception was the Union of South Africa, economically the most advanced African state, which accounted for over 50 per cent of the capitalist world’s output of gold and platinum and 90 per cent of that of diamonds. Its industry developed at a considerably faster pace than elsewhere in Africa. Urban development was also more rapid, and some towns had already turned into important industrial centres. Several hundred thousand miners worked in the mines of Transvaal, the deepest in the world.
p Here, in the Union of South Africa, the workers’ movement had started earlier than in the other African countries. African miners had attempted to strike as early as the 1880s. In the beginning of this century workers of European descent formed several Social-Democratic organisations here, and in 1909 the SouthAfrican Labour Party was established.
226p From this party there branched off, in 1915, the Internationa! Socialist League, which called for an end to the imperialist world war and stood for the unification of the world proletariat and working-class unity in the Union of South Africa regardless of colour. With racism running high in the Union, this was a very courageous move. Also, this was the first time that the slogans of internationalism were raised in Africa.
p In 1920 the International Socialist League became a member of the Communist International, and in the following year, having joined with several other socialist organisations, it proclaimed itself the Communist Party of South Africa, the first to appear on the African continent. Created by white workers, it became the first organisation in the history of Africa to admit members regardless of colour. The Communist Party next proceeded to organise trade unions and evening schools for African workers. By 1930 Africans formed a majority in the Party membership.
p The impact of the Russian October Revolution and the revolutionary upsurge of 1918-23 in Europe can be traced with particular clarity in the history of the Union of South Africa. The International, a daily published by the International Socialist League and then by the Communist Party, gave very full coverage of the events in Russia and ran articles written by Lenin. Even as early as November 1917, League leaders lectured on the meaning of the Russian Revolution.
p An organisation called Union of Industrial and Commercial Workers was created in the Union of South Africa in 1919 and lemained throughout the 1920s the African peoples’ most important organisation in that country. Its membership comprised representatives of all strata of the population, such as workers, which made up the bulk of its body, intelligentsia, artisans, shopkeepers, traders, etc. Peasants made up the majority of its branch in the province of Natal. The fact that the Union stood at the top of the list of African national organisations shows that after the First World War leadership of the national liberation movement had passed from the tribal chiefs into the hands of the intelligentsia and bourgeoisie.
p The Union’s statute spoke of the opposition of interests of the working people and their exploiters, and at the outset the Union actively fought for the rights of the African working people against imperialism. In 1919 the Union directed a dockers’ strike in all of the country’s seaports and a railwaymen’s strike in the diamond mining area. Equally important was its role in organising the first mass strike of African miners in February 1920, in which several tens of thousands took part.
p Another political organisation, the African National Congress (ANC), which dates back to 1912, changed its policies. In 1912 227 the ANC announced that it would have nothing to do with the workers’ movement, but after the First World War it joined in the organisation of strikes.
p The workers’ movement and the national liberation movement in the Union of South Africa reached a higher level than anywhere else in Africa and greatly influenced the development of national and political consciousness among the peoples of other African countries. Even in remote areas the more astute and active elements of the population showed keen interest in the events that transpired in the Union of South Africa, which, in the 1920s and 1930s, had already prominent writers and poets of its own among the Zulus, Basutos and Swazis, whose works are known in other lands.
p Most important in spreading revolutionary ideas were the workers who came to the mines of Transvaal from Mozambique, Basutoland, Bechuanaland, Swaziland, Nyasaland, and Northern and Southern Rhodesia. When they went home they carried back with them, besides tuberculosis, the experience they had gained in fighting for their rights.
p In Basutoland, a small British protectorate, where half the able-bodied male population went in search of work to the Union of South Africa, there appeared in the 1920s the first anti-colonial political organisation, called Lekhotla la Bafo (People’s Court). Around 1923, industrialists and farmers in Southern Rhodesia had begun to complain that workers returning from the Union of South Africa were stirring up trouble among the native population, organising meetings and making efforts to form an organisation along the lines of the African National Congress. 228 Subsequently such organisations were to be formed all over South and East Africa, in many countries only after the Second World War.
p Thus we see that the Union of South Africa exerted a dual influence on the rest of the continent. For while its ruling circles were a bulwark of reaction and a symbol of the worst type of racism for the continent, the workers’ movement and national liberation struggle stimulated revolutionary thinking.
p The African working class made its presence known, in the 1930s, in Zambia (then still Northern Rhodesia). Here, in 1935, several thousand miners went on strike in the so-called copper belt. During the world-wide economic crisis of 1929-33 trade unions began to appear in Tanganyika.
p In Uganda an African motor-car drivers’ trade union was formed in 1939. Strikes as a means of fighting for their rightsbegan to be used by workers in other African countries as well.
p Strikes and political and trade union organisations as an expression of the protest against colonial rule, however, were far from universal. More widely used, in fact, were other, less advanced methods of protest.
p Peasant movements, for instance, often took on a religious aspect. Thus in Belgian Congo, in 1921, there began a strong movement known as Kimbanguism, so called after Simon Kimbangu, a former protestant minister, who was proclaimed a " Messiah”, come to save the people of the Congo. Similar movements developed in the Eastern Congo and in the Lower Congo, known respectively as the Kitawala and the Negro Mission movement. In Nyasaland powerful influence was wielded by the religious Watch Tower Movement, and in the Union of South Africa by the Ethiopian Sect.
p “Native Associations" and "Prosperity Associations" existed in many African countries in the 1920s and 1930s. These united members of the nascent intelligentsia and people in various other walks of life in towns. Officially, they were charged with no more than problems of community welfare and public service. Through their representatives in municipal consultative bodies they made recommendations for improvements in that sphere. Dissociating themselves from the national liberation struggle, they used every opportunity to emphasise their loyalty and readiness to co-operate with the authorities. Nevertheless, they did make a positive contribution. In Nyasaland, for instance, the Nyasaland African National Congress was formed during the Second World War precisely on the basis of a Native Associations Committee.
p In those countries where some part of the African population enjoyed the right to participate in elections (parliamentary, municipal or at least to local "native councils”) the creation of 229 associations of African voters promoted closer contact among the latter.
p In Uganda, the budding local intelligentsia formed, in 1918, a Young Baganda Association, which called for a democratisation of local administration. In 1921 a Bataka Association was formed here, whose programme included the return of expropriated lands to the peasants. Among the Kikuyu, Kenya’s biggest national group, two political organisations were formed in the 1920s. The Young Kikuyu Association, which appeared in 1921 and was active till 1940, opposed the expropriation of land. The Central Kikuyu Association, formed in the late 1920s, called, in addition, for political rights for Africans, equal rights for European and African workmen and employees, and the election of chiefs and elders. A political party formed in Nigeria in 1922 was named the National Democratic Party. In the elections to the legislative assembly it won three seats for Lagos, the country’s administration centre, out of the four reserved for Africans.
p None of these or the many other political organisations that came into existence in Africa in the interim between the two world wars had either a sizable membership or a clear-cut programme. None lasted long, as a rule. Yet organisations of that kind appeared more and more frequently and became increasingly numerous. Little by little they prepared the ground for those mass political parties which were to appear later, to lead their peoples in their fight for independence and set up the governments of sovereign states.
p There were efforts to unite on the part of some of the more active forces in various African countries. Thus, in March 1920, there was convened a conference of representatives of the African population of Nigeria, the Gold Coast, Gambia and Sierra Leone —all four of them British colonies. The conference created the West Africa National Congress, which continued to function for somewhat over ten years. This was not a mass organisation, nor did its demands go beyond broader rights for the African population under continuing British rule. Considering the conditions then prevailing, however, it must be recognised that the Congress helped to unify the budding African intelligentsia throughout British West Africa. The pan-African congresses of 1919-21, 1923 and 1927, too, as well as the pan-African movement as a whole, contributed to the growing national and political consciousness of the peoples of Africa.
An event of great significance for the development of the antiimperialist movement on the African continent was the resistance to the aggression of the Italian imperialists put up in 1935-36 by the people of Ethiopia. Ethiopia’s case was that of the sole country on the African continent that had been able to escape colonial 230 domination, and its fate was a matter of deep concern to all Africans. People all over Africa wanted to go to Ethiopia as volunteers. This war, more than any other event of the 1920s and 1930s, perhaps, showed the Africans the identity of their interests in the struggle against colonialism.
Notes
[218•1] Independence Day has since been celebrated yearly by Indian patriots, and the adoption of the constitution and the proclamation of the Republic of India in 1950 was specially timed to January 26.