Ten Days That Shook the World

Title: Ten Days That Shook the World
Author: John Reed
Publisher: Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1987 (First published 1919)
ISBN: Nil
Pages: 336

The Socialist Revolution in Russia in 1917 actually consists of two phases - in February and October, as per the old Russian calendar and in March and November as per the reformed one. The first part of the revolution, which forced Tsar Nicholas II to step down was staged under the leadership of socialist allies, of which Lenin’s Bolsheviks of the far left variety played only a minor part. A provisional government headed by Alexander Kerensky assumed office but faced immense challenges right from day one. Russia was fighting in World War I against Germany but the battlefront lengthened interminably without any definite results while at the same time bleeding Russia in resources and manpower. Kerensky’s government became unpopular and it employed repressive measures to clamp down on the protests. Bolsheviks called the March revolution a democratic revolution and also bourgeois. Peace at the German border, land for peasants and control of factories to workers were the rallying cry of the revolution. The provisional regime, most importantly, failed to control the Bolsheviks who formed governing councils (soviets) in every sphere of political and economic activity. After ensuring support from soldiers, the Bolsheviks struck on Nov 7, wresting the control of Petrograd (now Saint Petersburg) from the socialists. Kerensky fled and the ten days in which the second revolution began paved the way for the communist takeover of Russia. After a civil war that lasted until 1923-24, the Soviet Union was established. John Reed was an American journalist, poet and socialist labour activist who stayed in Russia during the heady days of revolution and reported on it. This book is a first-hand experience of Reed of the first ten days of the revolution. Not content at being a passive spectator, he took up arms in 1918 for the Bolsheviks. Reed died in 1920 in Russia, at the age of 33, of typhus and was buried in Red Square, beneath the Kremlin Wall.

A crucial thing to remember is that there was strong opposition to the Bolshevik line among the revolutionaries and workers and peasants of Russia. The major rivals were Mensheviks who included socialists who believed that society must progress by natural evolution toward socialism and that the working class must conquer political power first. The Bolsheviks wanted immediate proletarian insurrection and seizure of the reins of government in order to hasten the coming of socialism by forcibly taking over industry, land, natural resources and financial institutions. Both sides denounced the other as counterrevolutionaries. Even after the arrest of some members of the provisional government on Nov 7, the bourgeoisie were complacent, thinking that the Bolsheviks would not remain in power for more than three days. This was a costly blunder. Instead of three days, they clung on to power for 74 long years, till 1991. The peasants were not supportive of the Bolsheviks because even though the land was confiscated from the rich landowners, they had no intention to pass it on to the ownership of peasants because they abolished all private property. Lenin remarked that ‘if socialism can only be realized when the intellectual development of all the people permit it, then we shall not see socialism for at least 500 years’ (p.240). The Bolsheviks took a great risk by plunging headlong into armed combat as extorted by Lenin. The Bolsheviks had firepower in the form of a section of loyal soldiers, but the economic life and labour force in the government, railways and communications were with the socialists. Power was quickly usurped by the Military Revolutionary Committee and the Petrograd soviet of workers’ and soldiers’ deputies by deposing the provisional regime and arresting serving ministers. The Bolsheviks were accused to be German agents by their opponents throughout the struggle which was a time of intense political activity. People eagerly listened to speeches on street corners with great interest and either condemned or praised the speakers based on their arguments. Newspapers were eagerly sought for and whatever little money they had was spent on them so as to become aware of the latest goings on. Bolsheviks, who included the author, claimed that the ‘reactionaries’ preferred military defeat at the hands of Germany than to cooperate with Bolshevik soviets. Coal mine owners in Kharkov fired and flooded their own mines and engineers in the textile factories of Moscow put the machinery out of order.

Reed provides an eyewitness account of the revolutionary takeover of Russia and that’s why this book still motivates communists. I first came to know of this book as referred in a social media post of a left politician in Kerala who praised it profusely. But the situation in Russia in those ten days was really grim and it requires not a small bit of ruthlessness to still be able to feel proud of it. Week by week food became scarcer that eventually bread completely went missing. Robberies and house-breakings increased. Unions of all types of workers developed a truculent stance. Waiters and hotel-servants refused to take tips feeling that the customers were insulting them by doing so. The Petrograd garrison was ordered to the front lines, partly to rid them off the city, but they declined. The soviet of soldiers defied the provisional regime and openly sided with the Bolsheviks which turned out to be a shot in the arm for the latter. The military revolutionary committee quickly seized the arsenal of Petrograd. Reed also describes how the civilian populace lived oblivious to the fighting that went on in a part of the city. While gun fight was going on in the Winter Palace which housed the administration, life was going on as usual in streets a few blocks away. Reed comments that all the theatres were open, but it was more exciting outdoors. Trams were moving, crowds were milling around and electric signs of moving picture shops glittered brilliantly. The author witnessed the discipline of the revolutionary soldiers and Red Guards who were just starting to loot material from the Winter Palace. People shouted at them to put everything back as it was the property of the people. The things were crammed back in their places and self-appointed sentinels stood guard. This is to be taken with a pinch of salt. Bolsheviks’ victory was also aided by the tactless antics of Kerensky. When he reached Tsarskoye Selo near Petrograd, he commanded the army unit stationed there to surrender. The soldiers replied that they’d remain neutral, but would not disarm. This was true, since the soldiers were governing themselves by committees for eight months after the March revolution. Kerensky was annoyed at this insubordination and gave them ten minutes in which to obey. This smacked of the old regime. A few minutes later, the artillery opened fire on the barracks and all neutral troops went over to the Bolsheviks.

The communist regime in the Soviet Union was notorious for silencing voices of opposition and abusing human rights. Even though Stalin is often portrayed to be at the pinnacle of repression, all leaders were complicit in this crime against humanity to some degree. We find in this book that Lenin was also of this mould. Signs of authoritarianism were evident right from the first day of the revolution, after the Bolsheviks captured power. One delegate dared to oppose Lenin’s motion to issue an offer of peace. The author notes smugly that ‘the sudden, sharp outburst around him brought the hand swiftly down’ (p. 121). The peasants’ soviet was initially not on board, supporting the socialists led by Kerensky, but they were brought on line by coercion. Bolsheviks immediately shut down opposing newspapers on the ground that the capitalists who run them would poison the minds of the people. Freedom of opinion thus went down the drain. Advertisements were made the monopoly of the official, state-run newspapers, thereby restraining the income of private newspapers. The municipal council, called Duma, was forcibly dissolved. A new election was called in a week which most parties boycotted. The result was a foregone conclusion and expectedly, the Bolsheviks bagged a big majority. The class disparagingly called bourgeoisie was treated as sub-human. A questionnaire was issued to them in which they had to declare their incomes and apparel, down to the number of underwear they possessed (p. 305). The bloodlust which was lying dormant in some leaders came out in the open once they started to rule the land. There was a bitter civil war raging and a lot of fraternal killing occurred. In retaliation Trotsky demanded to kill five opponents for each Bolshevik killed in battle.

Readers get a glimpse of some of the peculiar features of Bolshevik as well as Russian administrations in general. One is the privilege and awe in which bureaucracy was held which can be judged from the status and entitlement one obtained by possessing a piece of paper duly stamped and endorsed by a seat of authority. Getting a pass assuring entry to restricted places was a great thing. Reed proudly reproduces many photos of such passes he possessed, but getting in without having to show the pass at the gate was greater still. In fact, that was the privilege flaunted by party bosses. The author remarks it to be a characteristic of the country and coins it as ‘Russian respect for documents’. The sentimental importance of the city of Moscow to Russian values is emphasized in the book. Petrograd was the seat of the government for over a century, but it still was an artificial city. The author argues that Moscow was, is and will be Russia and the true feeling of the Russian people can only be had there. The communist regime was noted for its contempt to religion and its institutions as evidenced by instances of transforming places of worship to other uses such as wine storage in later times. Reed ascribes a lack of religious sentiment to the working classes in toto. This is because he didn’t see any priest attending the funeral of the revolutionaries killed in street battles. He then claims that the Russian people no longer needed priests to ‘pray them into heaven’, because ‘they were building a kingdom on earth more bright than any heaven had to offer and for which it was a glory to die’.

The book is graced with an introduction penned by Lenin himself. He certifies that it was a truthful exposition of the revolution and recommends it wholeheartedly to the international labour movement. It is likely that rather than the content, it is this endorsement that makes this book dear to leftists all over the world. Many of the fine details, such as the outcomes of meetings, standings of prominent persons in the hierarchy and analysis of local press reports are either wrong or not aligning with the official party narrative. The publisher frequently clarifies the points through footnotes on the appropriate pages. The book is a piece of communist propaganda and this fact comes out plainly on each page in the book. Still, as a mirror of the tumultuous period which changed the destiny of the world's largest nation, this book should be read by all readers.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

1984

Title: 1984
Author: George Orwell
Publisher: Maple Press, 2016 (First published 1949)
ISBN: 9788190782692
Pages: 312

The Soviet Union went into World War II as an ally of Nazi Germany. When Hitler turned towards Poland and France on the western front, Stalin annexed a good chunk of eastern Europe. Unexpectedly, Hitler turned against Stalin in 1941 and invaded Russia, who then joined the Allies in fighting Germany. Stalin emerged victorious and righteous at the end of the war with an immense political clout. With the rise of a worldwide Leftist movement gaining momentum, it seemed as if communism would take over the whole world. The absence of personal freedom and civil liberties in the Soviet Union had attracted the scorn of non-partisan intellectuals in the West. This book is essentially a political satire that gives a dire warning against totalitarianism. This was originally published in 1949. The plot envisages a nation named Oceania which geographically includes all regions coming under the definition of the West, such as the USA, UK and Western Europe. The story unfolds in London. An authoritarian political regime controlled by a cadre-party and headed by a figure named 'Big Brother' runs the administration where the citizens' rights and privileges hardly rises above the level of animals. George Orwell is the pen name of Eric Arthur Blair who was an English novelist, poet, essayist, journalist and critic. He was born in Motihari, Bihar, where his father was an opium agent. 

Orwell portrays the authoritarian society in the hypothetical republic of Oceania as something modelled on the erstwhile Soviet Union. Like the larger than life-size pictures of Stalin in the Soviet Union, Big Brother's portraits were everywhere, watching over the people. He is depicted with a heavy, black moustache and ruggedly handsome features. Continuously living under the punishing gaze of the authorities, all looked older than their age in Oceania and one has the impression that 'there was dust in the creases of their faces'. Children eavesdropped on their parents and denounced them to the police who then elevated these little monsters as child heroes. Nothing was one's own, except for the few cubic centimetres inside the skull. That was why the most stringent mechanism was put in place to regulate what was going on there, in the form of the Thought Police. The Ministry of Truth ensured that people who were purged are wiped clean in all records. It created fictitious people to uphold some points of the party's dogma and to serve as a model for others. There were no friendships in the real sense between people, but everyone was comrades with each other. This is a direct adaptation from communist jargon. It was that there were some comrades whose society was pleasanter than the others. Slogans that run counter to common sense were promoted by the party to spread among the people. Some such slogans were: 'War is peace, Freedom is slavery, Ignorance is strength'; 'Who controls the past controls the future, who controls the present controls the past'. 

Orwell has imagined a comprehensive surveillance mechanism for the citizens of Oceania that fully utilized the technological know-how of the 1940s. We may shudder at the thought of what an authoritarian government of the future would not be capable of, considering the mind-boggling advances in AI. In Oceania, every house was fitted with a telescreen that received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound above the level of a low whisper would be picked up and relayed to the police. No privacy was allowed. The punishment for keeping a diary was death or 25 years in a forced-labour camp. People suppressed their feelings and emotions, just to keep on living. To dissemble your feelings, to control your face, to do what everyone was doing, was an instinctive reaction. A new category of offense was introduced in the form of 'thought-crime'. Even thinking about practises that run counter to what the party advocated was a crime. A thought or an attitude could not be concealed forever and sooner or later, the thought-police would get them. The heresy of heresies was common sense. The party bluntly told its cadres to reject the evidence of their eyes and ears.

Orwell brilliantly picturizes the novel ways in which all intellectual exercises not conforming to the party line could be bridled effectively. Shortening of the vocabulary of the language was a clever idea. There was only one word for a concept, which eliminated synonyms and finer nuances. For example, the word 'good' was in the dictionary. Its antonym 'bad' was removed from it. Instead, it was expressed as 'ungood'. Comparative terms like 'better' and 'best' were changed to 'plusgood' and 'doubleplusgood' respectively. This was intended to narrow the range of thought so as to make 'thought-crime' impossible to commit. Marriage was permitted only between party members, but was only for begetting children for the service of the party. Sexual intercourse was looked upon as a slightly disgusting minor operation, like having an enema. A party committee has to approve marriage between party members. Permission is refused if physical attraction was suspected. 85 per cent of the populace belonged to 'proles', which is a shortened form of proletariat. They were the slaves over whose efforts the edifice of the party was constructed. Proles had some freedom to act as they wished and the hero of the novel secretly wished that the regime would one day be usurped through rebellion by the proles. A party member had no spare time in principle. When they were not working, he or she should be taking part in some kind of communal recreations. A taste for solitude which is a suggestion of individuality was frowned upon. The proles were lured by a government-run lottery which was regularly conducted and offered enormous prizes. Only small sums were actually paid out, the larger ones assigned to imaginary persons. It was the principal reason for a lot of people remaining alive. Literature was commanded to serve the interests of the party. Novels were written by machines according to the general directives issued by the Planning committee. Books were just a commodity that had to be produced, like jam or bootlaces. Music was generated by a machine called versificator. All recipes for an AI-ruled world are pictured by Orwell in this book.

The story turns around Winston Smith, an employee in the Ministry of Truth, whose real job is to falsify records as per the needs of the party. His rebellious nature makes him stifled to live according to the dictates of the party. He secretly starts a diary and records his observations. He falls in love with a fellow employee Julia against the code of conduct. Both of them join the clandestine resistance movement which was in fact secretly run by the party itself to identify detractors. He was tortured by his mentor and finally betrays Julia who had betrayed him similarly under torture. After a brainwashing experience during the interrogation, he submits to the will of the Big Brother. The only hope for civilized society was the proles, who remained loyal to each other than to the party or country, and hence were looked down upon. They stayed human and did not become hardened inside. Orwell analyses the nature of absolute power in this book. It is not a means; it is an end. It is not merely an ability to control human bodies, but their minds too. How they do it is nicely described. The rationale for the privileged minority in the party top brass to keep the masses in poverty even though the technology can make every one of them wealthier is rather odd and brutal. Wealth brings in leisure and security which may turn the poor into thinking for themselves and who might conclude that the privileged has no function to perform. Indulging in continuous warfare with other states destroys the surplus produce and keeps everybody on scarcity of essential goods. Small privileges to some groups means a lot in such cases. The book claims that the philosophies that run in the three super states are barely distinguishable. Everywhere there is the same pyramidal structure. The super states cannot conquer each other, they remain in conflict and thereby prop each other up to keep the people in poverty.

1984 is not, as is usually believed, a scathing criticism of the communist system alone. It raised its voice against all kinds of authoritarian tendencies to intrude into the life of the people. It has some cadences tuned to what is called McCarthyism in the US. This book is a poignant reminder to the dangers inherent in hoisting a single party or group with unbridled powers onto the throne. This has added resonance to our technologically advanced societies. In the past no government had the power to keep its citizens under constant surveillance. That is not so today with the ubiquity of mobile phones and its enhanced powers to eavesdrop and voyeurism. Doomed are the people who are fated to live under a regime that is keen on utilizing the surveillance potential of sophisticated technology. The conclusive chapter of the book on Newspeak — the language developed by the party for popular use — is informative but pointless.

The book is highly recommended.

 

Rating: 4 Star 

The Shoemaker and His Daughter

Title: The Shoemaker and His Daughter – One Ordinary Family’s Remarkable Journey from Stalin’s Soviet Union to Putin’s Russia
Author: Conor O’Clery
Publisher: Doubleday Ireland, 2018 (First)
ISBN: 9781781620434
Pages: 357

The socialist empire in the Soviet Union threatened capitalism in the post-World War II period when even the US apprehended that the communists might take over most of the globe. But the concern was a bit premature. Margaret Thatcher once famously said, "the problem with socialism is that eventually, you run out of other people's money". It did exactly that in the Soviet Union. Decades of mismanagement and ridiculous economic logic shattered the economy whose coup de grace came in the form of the oil price slump in the early 1980s. Three general secretaries died in quick succession in 3 years and a reformer named Mikhail Gorbachev took the chair. His structural changes got out of hand and ended up in the collapse and dismemberment of the Soviet Union in 1991. It took hardly 6 years to dismantle the communist regimes in eastern Europe. This book follows the life story of a master shoe-designer-cum-maker who weathered the storms of living in a strictly controlled society and still flourished. His daughter studied hard and earned high academic credentials. Incidentally, she is the author's wife and he tells the story of his in-laws in this book which is actually a mirror to the scourge of communism in the Soviet Union and proves that the communist system was founded on lies and monstrous crimes. Conor O'Clery is an Irish journalist and writer. He worked for the Irish Times for 30 years and represented them in many countries including the Soviet Union where he met his wife. He has authored many books.

Stanislav Suvorov was a shoemaker who led a prosperous life in Grozny, Chechnya by making bespoke shoes which were highly prized. He was sent to prison for a charge that was a crime only in a communist polity. The prison term had a devastating effect on the family’s prestige. It migrated to Krasnoyarsk, Siberia to start a new life where too Stanislav led a good life. His wife Marietta hailed from Nagorno-Karabakh which was beset with ethnic tensions between Armenians — to which our family belonged — and neighbouring Azeris. His daughter Zhanna studied diligently and conformed to the norms of a socialist society. She joined the communist party’s youth wing and eventually joined the party itself. She represented a district in the legislative body of Krasnoyarsk. But she still harboured resentment about how her father suffered at the hands of communist officialdom. She married a friend, but gradually drifted apart from him. During her absence from home for her PhD program at Moscow, her husband gets killed in a drunken brawl over an illicit relationship. She meets O’Clery in Moscow as a Russian tutor and the relationship grew. O’Clery was a divorcee with five children but they marry and he adopts her daughter. This occurred during the critical time of USSR’s disintegration. The author and Zhanna relocated to other countries following his transfers to various places and they used to visit her parents occasionally. On the rich tapestry of the family’s story, the author carefully crafts the history of the Soviet Union and how the system affected the life of the family in unexpected ways.

Readers wonder at how inefficient the Soviet system was managed according to the politico-economic theories of communism. With private enterprise curtailed, shops relied on deliveries from central warehouses that were far distant. Provisions were snapped up as soon as they appeared, so it was advantageous to be at the head of the queue or be friendly enough with the manager to buy goods at the back door. A party membership usually helped in such situations. Usually, articles were rare and queues very long that people joined a queue and only later asked what it was for! Scarcity moulded the Soviet people in grotesque ways. The Ukrainian peasant soldiers who invaded Romania which was capitalist in 1944 are reported to have wept when they saw the pretty houses, the fattened cattle and the well-stocked barns. They wept for a way of life and a prosperity that could’ve been theirs if not for communism. The party crushed religion, but even with its suppression, it was rare for an Armenian child who has not been secretly christened, even in communist households. A form of consumer apartheid prevailed. Special shops called Beryozka which stocked food unavailable elsewhere which was open only to holders of hard foreign currency. There were shops reserved for party functionaries that were not accessible to common people. Strict obedience to authority was drilled into the people. People witnessing a state-sponsored unjust act did so in silence, avoiding eye contact with other people. In Stalin’s Russia, no one spoke to strangers about matters that did not concern them.

Communism shunned any kind of enterprise — however small — coming from the people who were meant only to toil hard as per the commands of authority figures. It was essential that they should not think for themselves, or more practicably, not have time to think. As a result, private enterprise was not only discouraged, but penalized too. After seven decades of this madness, party bosses wondered why their economy was in shambles. Even the modest shoe and boot business of Stanislav (the author's father-in-law) was forced to run low-key because it thwarted the state's aspiration to own and control all the means of production. He restricted services to only the customers he knew. He was detained one day for selling his used car at a higher rate than the approved one which amounted to speculation that was a punishable offence. Article 154 of the criminal code made punishable any act such as 'buying up and reselling of goods or any other articles for the purpose of making a profit'. Punishments were very harsh. Stanislav was arrested and sentenced to seven years in jail. His new car was confiscated and re-assigned to a party functionary. The judiciary was subject to directives from the Kremlin on penal policy. Judges served 5-year terms and their continued careers depended on the party's assessment of their conformity.

Not content with nipping private initiative in the bud, communism sought to wipe out individuality as well, encouraging conformity to a goal set from on high. All kinds of creative literature wilted as a result. Central planning did not allow for individual architectural expression whose spin off was the almost identical cities and towns across the country. All residential blocks looked the same. Each city had its statue of Lenin and streets named after Lenin and Marx. The shops were all the same, carrying numbers rather than names. Dissimulation was the norm when portraying 'achievements' of the Soviet system to outsiders and quite ironically, to its own citizens as well. In speeches cataloguing the milestones, the word 'and' was never put before the last item so as to give the impression that the list can go on and on. Legislature was a total mockery of that democratic function. The role of deputies in legislative forums was to endorse the decisions of the hierarchy. As a rule, discussion was minimal and endorsements unanimous. Every time a vote was required, a voice called out, "those for" and all hands went up; 'Those against', no reaction; 'Those abstaining', no reaction; 'Motion passed' and the exercise ended. Foreign travel was a state-controlled privilege and only certain categories of citizens with proven party loyalty were allowed. The state didn't even allow people to talk to international contacts and telephone calls could be made only through an operator. Direct international dialling was introduced in Moscow for the Olympics in 1980 for the convenience of foreign athletes, but was discontinued immediately afterwards. The academia was constantly reminded of their place in the socialist system. Even in the 1980s, students and faculty of academic institutions were forced to help with the harvesting on state farms. They would toil on distant stretches of muddy fields with no facilities and primitive sleeping arrangements.

The interval in which communism crumbled was miraculously short as to be unbelievable. The fleeting nature of its collapse was telling on the flimsy foundations and the rot to the core. Brezhnev managed a consumer spending boom due to the high price of oil which brought in hard currency. Gorbachev introduced glasnost (openness) and perestroika (reconstruction). He granted Soviet writers unprecedented freedom because he wanted the Intelligentsia on his side to discomfit the hard-line conservatives who were obstructing his reforms. Reassessment of historical figures, past events and revelations became ever more frank. This openness was genuinely believed to be capable of reforming the party and the existing system. Even in 1989, the party believed that perestroika was designed to fully use the potential of socialism and that only with a renewed and revitalized party in the vanguard can the Soviet Union move to a renewal of socialism and a bright future. Unfortunately for the party, Gorbachev was unlucky. It was his misfortune that oil prices had fallen but consumer expectation couldn't be lowered. He allowed constituent republics to get in touch with foreign partners and thereby unknowingly pushed them on the road to independence. With Khrushchev's thaw and Brezhnev's consumer society, people became less afraid to speak openly than the previous generation which had a memory of Stalin's arbitrary and cruel punishments for even a hint of dissidence.

O'Clery makes an analysis of the Soviet system's transformation to a market economy for which it suffered enormously. As Solshenitsyn said, 'whatever the communists told about their socialist system was false, but unfortunately, whatever they told about the capitalist system turned out to be true'. Hyper-inflation which followed the fall of the Soviet Union wiped out entire life's savings, turning millions of Russians into paupers. It was a humiliation for the generation that defeated Hitler to learn that war widows were getting Red Cross parcels from Germany. Russia entered the modern consumer era in the 1990s, with everything available in the stores, but it became a dangerous place with increased crime, financial chaos and no respite for the poor while a few powerful Russians syphoned off national wealth and the former captains of communism transformed themselves into oligarchs of capitalism. The book also provides an overview of the Russian society. Family ties were intense and close, which almost feels like India, in the importance it accorded to the extended family. Fathers were typically not appreciative of their daughters' boyfriends and we read about Zhanna's father breaking the finger bone of one when he gives the poor lad a 'firm' handshake after he caught them kissing! Parents offered financial help to their children to buy homes and donated furniture. Whatever the Soviet society lacked in some material comforts, they compensated for it in intangible things. Zhanna was accustomed to the discipline and respect shown to teachers in Soviet schools and she was taken aback to find her American pupils taking chewing gum in class and putting their feet up on the desks.

The book shares chilling details of how Islamic fundamentalism took hold in Chechnya once the central hold weakened that eventually made the non-Muslims flee from the province. It's true that Russia established itself there by resorting to brutal policies and stubborn suppression, but it does not justify the Chechen attempt to establish an exclusive religious state. When the author and wife visited Grozny in 1991, the Russians were living in fear that 'if incited, hitherto peaceful Muslim neighbours might turn against them overnight' (p. 279). Street graffiti threatening Russians came up quickly which warned them with dire messages such as 'RUSSIANS DON'T LEAVE — WE WANT SLAVES' and 'DON'T BUY THE APARTMENT FROM MISHA (meaning any Russian) — HE WILL BE GONE SOON ANYWAY'. This looks exactly similar to what the Kashmiri Pandits underwent in Kashmir at around the same time. The script was the same and universal with slight, local variations. Non-Russians were not exempt as seen in another slogan: 'RUSSIANS BACK TO RYZAN, ARMENIANS TO YEREVAN'. This exposed the true colour of the Chechen pogrom that it was not against Russians alone, but against all Christians. The book is structured in an engaging way where two stories unfold at the same time — that of the Suvorov family and that of Soviet Union itself. The writing style produces an intimacy to the characters among the readers. Family photographs are interspersed throughout the narrative. The story is presented in a charming present tense that appear contemporaneous to readers and attracts tremendous interest.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star

History of the Communist Movement in Kerala

Title: History of the Communist Movement in Kerala
Author: E. Balakrishnan
Publisher: KurukshethraPrakasan, 1998 (First)
ISBN: Nil
Pages: 268

Kerala’s politics differ much from the Indian mainstream. This was so, right from the incorporation of the state in 1956. The state also witnessed the remarkable occurrence of a Communist movement assuming power through a democratic election based on universal adult franchise and secret ballot for the first time in the world. All the material on the origin of the Communist party in Kerala is written by the comrades themselves. This book presents a refreshing alternate review of the birth and growth of communism in Kerala. This is published by Kurukshethra Prakasan, a mouthpiece of the Sangh Parivar. Naturally enough, the party and its leaders are generally criticised, but it keeps a fine balance to present facts without omission or embellishment. The foreword is penned by P. Parameswaran, former director of the Bharatiya Vichara Kendra, a think tank of the Sangh. E. Balakrishnan was associated with the Communist movement from his school days. He was attracted to the Naxalite movement later and was imprisoned for a short time. The atrocities of Stalin and the communist government distanced him from that ideology. He wanted to follow the path of sanyasa, but later abandoned the idea to become a teacher. This book is his dissertation for doctorate at the University of Calicut.

There is a superb introductory chapter by the noted historian M G S Narayanan. It gives a lively summary of the mess Communists have created in Kerala. The commerce and industry of the state have collapsed due to the proletarian culture rampant among all sections of society. All levels of education are over-politicized. The visible prosperity and higher quality of life are artificial and was created by the parallel economy made by remittances from the Middle East where almost a tenth of the Keralites earn their livelihood. This is hailed by the Communists as an economic miracle called the ‘Kerala Model’. MGS also comments on the duplicity of EMS Namboodiripad in ‘donating’ his family property to the party. He also notes the lack of an in-depth analysis of the economic and social factors which controlled and moulded the political fortunes of the Communist movement in Kerala in the book. Balakrishnan begins the narrative with Gandhi’s Civil Disobedience Movement through which most of the founders of the Communist Party cut their teeth. People opposed to Gandhian tactics worked under the Congress Socialist Party (CSP) which in Kerala metamorphosed into the Communist Party. However, the national leaders of CSP maintained their anti-communist stand till the end. The central narrative of the book begins with the formation of the state committee of the Communist Party in 1937 and ends with the dismissal of the Communist ministry in 1959.

As was the international political norm, the Indian Communist Party was also led and subject to handholding by the Soviet Communist party. In 1920, Lenin instructed Indian communists to work alongside the Indian National Congress even though they were bourgeois. Lenin’s plan for colonies was to fight against the imperialists before playing out any ideological strategy to wrest power. M N Roy, however, refused to toe this line. After Stalin came, this policy was reversed and the Communist party assumed an exclusivist posture. When the Soviets faced threats from Nazis, a rapport was offered in 1936 to create a united front even with class enemies to fight fascism. The author critically examines EMS at many places and brings to light his contradictions and occasional pettiness in dealing with rivals. EMS took part in the 1932 Civil Disobedience from the outset as a leader nominated to that position by Kongattil Raman Menon. As a prisoner, his family requested and obtained Class A facilities for himself. This was in stark contrast to AKG or P. Krishna Pillai who enjoyed no special privileges denied to ordinary workers. AKG had a great appeal on the masses. The author alleges that the foremost contribution of the Communist party in Kerala to the struggle for independence was the sabotage of the Gandhian strategy of nonviolence by staging violent upheavals under the guise of Congressmen. Balakrishnan also identifies five features of the Communist party in the pre-independence period. The first is the sabotage referred above. The other four are, 1) disruptive activities within the ranks of the freedom movement by voicing sectarian demands exclusively for the industrial workers and peasants 2) instigation of the peasantry to violence 3) open alliance with the British and 4) inculcation of fascist behavioural patterns among its cadres.

The book elaborately narrates how the disgruntled leaders first took asylum under the shade of CSP before emerging as full-fledged Communists. Congress Socialists opposed Gandhi’s constructive programs like elimination of untouchability as religious reform because it applied to Hinduism alone. In Kerala, they introduced class-war ideas to lure the industrial workers to buttress the party. Evolution of Congress Socialism to Stalinist Communism began in the latter half of 1935. The CSP stood for a democratic, flexible and realistic political line whereas the Communists articulated a doctrinaire, dogmatic, tough and violent strategy. But they were not ignorant of the cruel and brutal repression Stalin was unleashing on his people in the USSR and his rivals in the party. News of Stalinist repression was appearing abundantly in the Malayalam press too, but these heinous atrocities did not deter the likes of EMS or Krishna Pillai who termed them ‘bourgeois and imperialist lies’. In December 1934, K P Gopalan published an article titled ‘Three World Famous Russians’ featuring Zinoviev, Kamenev and Stalin. Within five days of its publication, Stalin arrested the first two and later executed them after a mockery trial. Still, the Kerala leaders stayed loyal to Stalin as they had developed a trait called ‘authoritarian submission’. While Congress brought all sections of the people together to fight against the British, Communists wanted dictatorship of only the working class. Labour unions became a pawn in the hands of Communist leaders for manipulation for political ends. The first political strike organized by the Travancore Coir Workers Union in 1938 demanded responsible government based on adult franchise in the state rather than better wages or relief measures for the factory staff. Former goons of jenmis (landlords) were accepted as activists in the peasant unions. This was the beginning of the instrumentalization of violence as a political tool. Meanwhile, indoctrination of volunteers and cadres in training camps was organized under the label of KPCC as the socialists had a majority in it.

The decade following the year 1935 was one in which the Communist party in India swayed with the ebbs and tides of the Russian political sea. When Nazis was against the Communists before World War II, they united with other parties to present a common front against fascism. But after the Hitler-Stalin Pact of 1939, Communist policy in India changed and they termed the war ‘imperialist’ and devised stratagems to defeat the British war machine which was arrayed against the Nazi-Communist combine in Europe. Violent protests were organized in Malabar on Sep 15, 1940 that led to police firing and many deaths of both the protestors and policemen. Riots, ostensible for the distribution of scarce rice, broke out in Morazha, Mattannur and Kayyur. Four men were sentenced to death for the murder of a policeman at Kayyur. Meanwhile, EMS transferred his properties to his wife anticipating its attachment by the government. However, the government, and in challenge the court also, struck down this transaction as bogus. When Germany treacherously invaded its Soviet ally in 1941, CPI again changed its policy. After the Soviets allied with the British, Communists did the same in India, betraying the independence movement. Ban on Communists was lifted in 1942. Execution of death sentence of the four Kayyur prisoners carried out at this point was the only awkward moment as far as the party was concerned. Anti-Japanese rallies were organized and Subhash Bose who sought shelter with them was abused in the foulest language. He was called a ‘rascal’ and ‘boot-licker of the Japanese’ (p.169). All peasant and labour unrest was called off to assist the British in their military effort, which was rechristened ‘people’s war’. Active campaigns were initiated to produce more in factories and farms. This cooperation was in spite of the biting inflation of 1943.

Balakrishnan neatly captures the dilemma of the CPI after World War II. Even though they wholeheartedly supported the British, the government sought to mend ways with the Congress and wanted to transfer power to them without much delay. On Dec 4, 1945, the Secretary of State informed British parliament that independence of India was its immediate goal. It was clear to all that total freedom was only months away. An interim government under Jawaharlal Nehru assumed power on Sep 2, 1946 to manage the transition. The Communists desperately wanted to do something big to usher in revolution, if possible, with Russian help. Sensing that time was running out for them, CPI called for resistance in its August 1946 resolution. They fully supported the Pakistan demand as well. Not only two, EMS was suggesting that India was a makeshift patchwork of sixteen nationalities! EMS exhorted Moplahs in Malabar to rebel in response to Muslim League’s call for ‘Direct Action’ in August 1946. Fortunately for Malabar, they did not pay heed to his call. But the Kolkata Muslims did and thousands were killed in the communal riots that ensued. The CPI also organized futile armed action, more in a bid to gain some martyrs for the party rather than effecting any meaningful change in the political scenario. Communists led thousands to avoidable death in Punnapra and Vayalar in October 1946. The author estimates the death toll at 2000, but the Communists concede only a tenth of the figure and calls them out as the only occasion in which a revolutionary party gave the number of its dead which was much less than the official estimates. Violence flared in Malabar as well. Three people were killed in police firing at Karivelloor and five at Kavumbayi. This book continues to point out the revolutionary confusion even after 1947. The Madurai Congress of the party in 1953 reiterated that the objectives of the party can be realized only through a revolution and overthrow of the current Indian state. The party still maintained that India had not achieved ‘real’ independence. The question of political independence of India was recognized only in 1956 in the party congress at Palakkad. The 1958 Amritsar Congress accepted peaceful evolution to socialism which waved the green flag for the party to contest elections.

This book clearly exposes the brazen adherence of early Communist leaders to their ideology even in the face of plain evidence that proved the authoritarianism of its practitioners in the Soviet Union. It includes a review of reportage of Stalinist repression in Malayalam and the national media. As noted earlier, they shrugged it off as an ‘imperialist lie’ and refused to countenance the truth. Propaganda was the lifeblood of the party on which truth was not an essential component. The book lists the newspapers and other publications as well as membership figures of the party and feeder organizations in their formation period. Balakrishnan also makes a comparison of AKG and EMS, the two founding stalwarts of the party. In the early phase of the Communist party, AKG was democratic and accommodative while EMS had a closed mind and treated people on the basis of social classes to which they belonged. A great drawback of the book is that it is solely focussed on Malabar with little or no coverage of party formation in Travancore or Kochi. Great Communist leaders of these two native states had reached the top echelons of the party in future but their trail is not visible here. The narrative is much subdued after 1947 and it feels that the author somehow managed to continue the narrative till 1959 when the EMS ministry was dissolved.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 4 Star

How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed

Title: How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed
Author: Slavenka Drakulic
Publisher: Harper Perennial, 2016 (First published 1992)
ISBN: 9780060975401
Pages: 197

There were times at the peak of the Cold War when the world was really nervous about the prospect of a false step from one of the rivals unintentionally setting in motion a nuclear holocaust. Fortunately, one of the contenders – the Communists – collapsed surprisingly quickly in the matter of around three years straddling 1990. The people of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe found themselves standing exposed to the world one fine morning. The new world which they saw unfolding right in front of their eyes was full of challenges of the new capitalist system. How they coped with this ‘revolutionary’ change is a question that becomes relevant only after their life under the communist system is studied in detail. There are several books on this interesting topic and their perspectives also differ widely. This book provides a refreshingly new viewpoint and aspires to provide a snapshot of the lives and feelings of the unfortunate men and women – mostly women – who had had no option but to stay under the yoke of communism. The book is dedicated to all women of Eastern Europe, who too made possible the changes in 1989. It tells some anecdotes about how they lived a joyless existence where the seventy years of communism’s authoritarian rule could not provide them with their most basic needs. Slavenka Drakulic is a respected journalist and cultural commentator of Croatia. Her works had appeared in major world journals. She was one of the founders of the network of eastern European women’s groups. She has also produced three other books. This book covers the life in the former Yugoslavia of which Croatia was a part and is based on the author’s firsthand experiences and interviews with women in other communist regimes in the critical period of the dismantling of socialism.

Drakulic presents a fine view of how life was under the repressive Communist state and its never-ending status quo of ordinary life. One was trained to fear change, so that when change eventually began to take place, one was suspicious and afraid, because every change one has ever experienced was always for the worse. What Communism instilled in its victims was the sense of immobility, the absence of a future, the absence of a dream, of the possibility of imagining their lives differently. Everything in society or any abstract idea was first tested on the touchstone of ideological consistency with Marxist-Leninist thought. Growing up in a Communist country, one learns very young that politics is an abstract concept but a powerful force influencing people’s everyday lives. The state intruded into every minutiae of ordinary life. The political authority and the trivia of daily living were inseparably connected. The author then asserts that communism, more than a political ideology or a method of government, is a state of mind. Everyone watched their steps and felt the breath of the state’s censors behind their neck. The socialist state had also brought to perfection the social game called ‘reading between the lines’. The censoring was harsh and the punishment for even minor infractions matched it.

A good part of the book details how the people of a socialist state always lived with shortages of essential goods. All means and methods of production were under state control and a bunch of bureaucrats decided what to produce and how much of it. This created imbalances such that any item could go out of stock any time. People developed the precautionary habit of storing everything that went through their hands – whether useful or not because you never knew when it might become useful. The planned economy and industrialization drive didn’t care for small things in life. Consumer goods were of poor quality and unappealing. It is the superiority of the West in mass-producing cheap, good quality consumer goods that dazzled the people of socialist states and made them look at their system with inward contempt and suppressed anger. Aesthetics was considered superficial, bourgeois invention. Women were declared equal to men and the state saw no point in them trying to look beautiful! They were made to work everywhere proving that they were even physically equal. The communist ideal was a robust woman who didn’t look much different from a man. Without a choice of cosmetics or clothes, with bad food, hard work and no spare time, it wasn’t hard to create a uniformity that comes out of an equal distribution of poverty and the neglect of people’s real needs. As a result, women in Eastern Europe looked tired and older than they really were. People were instructed to be good workers and party members. To cultivate individualism, to perceive oneself as an individual in a mass society, was looked down upon. Communism liked the homogeneity of cattle a better role model than the fissiparousness of a free-thinking human society.

Continuing with the analogy to cattle, we read about instances where the state control over an individual’s life was suffocatingly tight. Life under communism lacked any kind of privacy. Everybody was comrade to everybody else and every member watched over the life of others because only when there is no privacy can there be total control. Besides, the thinking was that why one needs privacy if he has nothing to hide? In communist Yugoslavia, the state found a novel way to address shortage of housing which the author experienced and describes. The government divided big apartments into rooms, forcing complete strangers to live in a kind of commune. Socialism feared privacy in each of its manifestations. There was only one state-owned channel on television, broadcasting programs designed to brainwash people and bore them to death. However, the party/state functionaries were a class of its own and enjoyed a life fuller and richer than the ordinary comrades. It was hard for common folk even to peek into their houses, protected by high walls, watchmen and dogs and a general element of fear. Consequently, many people ran away from their homes and crossed the border to the West at great risk. They were so desperate and determined to escape the clutches of communism that they ignored the risk of guards shooting them dead if their movement was detected. The author talks about a museum in former East Germany where the devices people created to escape out of their dreary and worthless existence are displayed. This includes a home-made submarine which sailed under the Baltic Sea to reach Denmark. There’s a small aircraft with a car motor, a hot air balloon and a chair-lift with rope using which a whole family escaped.

The author was surprised to see several beggars going about the streets in US cities soliciting something from passersby. It was new to her. Whatever may be its shortcomings, the socialist state had ensured that nobody wandered the streets aimlessly except the gypsies who didn’t count. The cutthroat nationalism of the constituent provinces was also kept under check as long as communism reigned. The first thing people experienced in a state de-shackled from the communist yoke was the civil war that broke out between the different provinces. The warring nations had restarted their fight which was cut off after World War II when socialism had enveloped them. For 45 years, within the iron embrace of the communist party, the wounds of nationalism had not healed. Instead, they were simply ordered to disappear. Drakulic also identifies a deep trait of the socialist society regarding the passivity or detachment of the people in the administration of their social assets. Cities in Eastern Europe fell into decrepitude relatively fast. Low quality of paint, pollution, bad gasoline and bad cars were reasons of this but not the whole story. What caused this degeneration were the people themselves with decades of apathy behind them. Their conviction was that somebody else – the government, the party or those ‘above’ – was in charge of it. How could it be the people when they were not in charge even of their own lives?

The author declares at the outset that this is not a story of big heroes, political prisoners or dissidents, but of ordinary people – especially women – who were under the wheel of communism’s juggernaut who couldn’t stand it anymore. Since it came from the very foundations like a cataclysmic earthquake, the socialist regimes fell like dominoes one by one rather quickly. Readers can enjoy the biting sarcasm displayed in the book against the socialist state thinking big and omitting the mundane things useful in the daily lives of the people. The book is also noted for subtle humour and sarcasm. Political ones aside, she describes about a window-shopping trip in New York with a friend and remarks that ‘due to the fact that we had no money, we were enjoying the expensive clothes just as someone would enjoy an exhibition of modern art’. Most likely the book is a compilation of articles the author had written on journals as all chapters are of equal length. Unfortunately, the author has not examined much on the life of the nomenklatura – the top brass of the party and government – who enjoyed all luxuries of life while almost all others in the country languished in squalor.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star

Love and Capital

Title: Love and Capital – Karl and Jenny Marx and the Birth of a Revolution

Author: Mary Gabriel

Publisher: Back Bay Books, 2012 (First published 2011)

ISBN: 9780316066129

Pages: 707

 

To say that the fall of Napoleon was a turning point in European history would be an understatement. Alongside the political changes, it wrought a profound transformation on economy with the rise of capitalism. Capitalism created a class called bourgeoisie which employed its capital in enterprises that utilized the physical effort of the proletariat to generate profits. In the early stages, the working class was a thoroughly exploited lot who stood even lower in status to machines. Replacement of a machine cost money but a worker could be easily substituted because there were so many of them waiting outside the factory gate for a chance to work. Workers began to unite in many countries under various guises. In Europe, Karl Marx created a theoretical framework that tried to explain the relationship between the modes of production and its effects on the development of social classes. At capitalism’s infancy, Marx set to work chronicling its rise and predicting its fall. As we now know, he was only partly right. But this book is not about his theory – this is all about his personal life. It is the story of a love between a husband and wife that remained passionate and consuming despite the deaths of four children, poverty, illness, social ostracism and the ultimate betrayal when Marx fathered another woman’s child. Scores of biographies of Marx exist, with every possible political perspective. However, there was not one book in English that told the full story of a family that sacrificed everything for an idea the world would come to know as Marxism. This book satisfies that function admirably. Mary Gabriel worked as journalist at Reuters for two decades and authored two more biographies. She now lives in Italy.

 

Marx was the son of a Jewish lawyer who was forced to convert to Christianity to keep his profession in the face of rampant anti-Semitism in Germany. His wife Jenny von Westphalen belonged to an aristocratic family and was four years his senior. Close proximity to her younger brother enabled Marx to fall in love and obtain her hand in marriage. Undoubtedly, Marx was the lucky partner in this union. He was without work or income many times in his family life. He spent his life stressing the primacy of economics but was chronically irresponsible when it came to his own finances. Jenny never appeared to lose patience with him. Marx devoted his time to study and Jenny facilitated his work wholeheartedly. The book includes an amusing incident which throws light on Marx’s scholarly inclinations. After marriage, his mother-in-law paid for a short honeymoon for the couple in Switzerland. He went along with 45 volumes of books on Hegel, Rousseau, Machiavelli and others to read during his spare time. His honeymoon studies and reflections produced two of his most famous declarations: religion is the opium of the people and the heart of the emancipation of mankind is the proletariat. However, his literary pursuits did not otherwise seem to impede their relationship as Jenny became pregnant the next month itself!

 

Gabriel treats her subject – the giant of communist thought – with respect and sympathy but never tries to hide or obscure some flaws in his personal life. The greatest of them would be his illicit liaison with Helene Demuth, his wife’s maid, who was sent by his mother-in-law to their Brussels home. She was to help Jenny devote more time to assist her husband with his work and prepare for the second expecting baby. A son was born to Demuth whose paternity Marx was loathe to bear. As always, his dear friend and benefactor Engels came to his rescue and shouldered that vicarious responsibility. He was sent away and grew up to become a friend of Marx’s daughters. It was on Engels’ deathbed that he confessed to Marx’s daughter that her father was indeed this man’s father too. The author had made a thorough search of the extant letters and other correspondence between the Marx family members, some of which contained racist remarks which are not included in the book. She claims that they were not germane to the story and entirely consistent with the norms of that period.

 

Marx did not aspire to be a popular leader. He considered the masses ‘a brainless crowd whose thoughts and feelings are furnished by the ruling class’. But he wanted to teach them because only they could defeat the ruling class. This book is remarkable for its poignant portrayal of the first half of Marx’s wedded life. Poverty and misery were the hallmarks of their existence as Marx eagerly awaited financial returns for the articles and books he produced. Often he took advance money from the publishers and then quickly spent them only to be in hot water with the lender later. He borrowed freely from others and when that source dried out, suffered the pitiless episodes fate threw in his way. One of his infant daughters died due to disease and he had to keep her lifeless body in a room till he could find the money to buy a small casket for that unfortunate child who could not enjoy a moment of comfort while she lived. Such moving incidents there are many in this book. Once a journal under Marx’s editorship collapsed with the very first issue. Its proprietor declined to pay salary and instead offered him unsold copies of the journal. However, the Marx family entertained fellow-travelers of the movement who knocked on their doors in a dignified manner. Both Marx and Jenny were never reluctant to share whatever little they had with their friends and accomplices. When some of his wealthy relatives were nearing their end, Marx keenly looked forward to the share of his inheritance from them. Sometimes he borrowed money pointing to such inheritances as a kind of collateral.

 

An area in which this book excels in is the highlighting of Marx’s role in the organisation of working men of Europe. Marx himself belonged to the class which he pejoratively called bourgeois, but worked for the emancipation of the working class. He was a profound scholar who could not mingle freely with the workers. Despite the severe and scornful public façade, Marx had a depth of feeling for his fellow men that his detractors have not recognized. Many remark that Marx had more hate in him than love. This may not be entirely true and we might have to conclude that he had a healthy dose of each. The masses did not even recognize themselves as having a political voice much less power. They had no conception of how the economic or political system worked. Marx was convinced that if he could describe the historical path that led to their condition, he could provide a theoretical foundation on which to build a new, classless society. He believed that a sustained and successful revolution was impossible without a clear understanding of the history that had brought man to that juncture and a blueprint for the future once the old system was obliterated. Marx’s path to communism consisted of distinct phases such as the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, the rule of the proletariat, the abolition of the old bourgeois society which rests on the antagonism of classes and the foundation of a new society without classes and without private property.

 

After reading the book one can’t help envy at Marx’s good fortune to meet two people without whom he would not have risen to the stratosphere of Leftist thought. One is his totally devoted wife Jenny and the other was his unbelievably selfless friend Friedrich Engels. Jenny was not just his wife, but acted as secretary too, copying and drafting his voluminous papers. She, her daughters and Engels were the only people who could decipher Marx’s handwriting. She helped in the editorial offices of newspapers Marx was running and took care of sundry tasks like attending to personal requests from party refugees and those in jail seeking help for their families. Jenny truly understood the needs of the rare genius she had chosen as a husband. For all his faults, she loved Marx deeply and trusted him completely. She saw his life’s work as her own. Engels was a rich man who ran a textile mill that earned good profit. He financed Marx and his family and never asked to return his money. Marx family always received a good share of Engels’ income, including that of the final settlement when Engels sold the mill off so as to be free to work in politics. When he died, a large portion of his wealth was distributed among the Marx children. Of the two men, Engels had the more successful writing career up to Marx’s move to London. But he regarded Marx so highly that he volunteered to put his own aspirations aside so his friend could write without hassles. Engels even claimed to be the father of Marx’s illegitimate child. He cared nothing about his reputation, especially with regard to women.

 

After several decades of loving companionship, Jenny died in 1881 followed by Marx in 1883. However, the book continues its narrative till 1910 when the last of the three Marx daughters died. These were the only children of Marx who reached adulthood and two of them committed suicide. These children had a very difficult childhood raked by biting poverty. Poor nutrition and unhealthy living conditions caused four children to die in their infancy. Marx needed the anchor Jenny and the children provided. All of them substituted Marx’s scholastic interests above their own preferences. He ordered his thoughts only in the midst of their disorder. Throughout his life, theirs was the society he craved. There is a moving section in the book in which Marx acknowledged the sacrifices made by his wife and daughters. In a letter to his daughter’s fiancé, Marx wrote: “You know I have sacrificed my whole fortune to the revolutionary struggle. I do not regret it. Quite the contrary. If I had to begin my life over again, I would do the same. I would not marry however. As far as it lies within my power I wish to save my daughter from the reefs on which her mother’s life was wrecked”.

 

The book has a fine diction which is witty, direct and incisive. The author possesses a fine capability to take the readers along the vicissitudes and ecstasies of the book’s protagonists. Readers get absorbed in the narrative and that’s what makes this work a page-turner. The book is somewhat big with 600+ pages, but we don’t feel the fatigue. However, the book begins with an intimidating character list of 353 individuals which even includes infants who died while four months old. Gabriel takes special care not to delve deeper into Marx’s theoretical work. She is only interested in what the man is and not what he did. In spite of this, there are concise, informative references to labour unrests in Europe and a very good description of the 1871 Paris Commune. Whatever theoretical aspects the author has handled is tempered to suit the general reader. She transforms the forbidding scholar which a portrait of Marx shows into a loving father and husband who had to rush through the backdoor of his house to fetch food and comforts for his daughter’s fiancé who was waiting in the front room to meet him. I think that if the twentieth century communist revolutions had not taken place, Marx would have been revered as a great thinker cutting across political affiliations. At least, that is the man Mary Gabriel introduces to us in this book.

 

The book is strongly recommended.

 

Rating: 4 Star

 

Maoism – A Global History

Title: Maoism – A Global History

Author: Julia Lovell

Publisher: Vintage, 2019 (First)

ISBN: 9780099581857

Pages: 606 

The establishment of a socialist state in the Soviet Union in 1917 sidestepped some lines in the theoretical recipe that Marxism had proclaimed for a country’s journey to socialism. Old Russia was not an industrial giant like Britain where Marxism had cut its teeth. Hoisting of a communist regime in China was an even larger aberration from theory since China was a feudal state and the sword that brought victory for the Communists was lowly peasants from the countryside. Mao Zedong coordinated the military effort and anchored the new movement on solid theoretical foundations. Mao’s thought thus acquired a practical legitimacy which even Marx could not claim. Maoism ruled the roost in China and was successfully exported to unstable regions of the world where it triggered civil war and insurrection in its bid to capture state power. Mao died in 1976 and the latter Chinese strongmen purged his economic ideas from the country. The growth of China has been unparalleled thereafter, but with affluence came back grateful remembrance of Mao as the helmsman of the country in its perilous journey through tough times. Maoism is a potent mix of party-building discipline, anti-colonial rebellion and continuous revolution grafted onto the secular religion of Soviet Marxism. It turned a fractious, failing empire into a defiant global power. Julia Lovell is a scholar and prize-winning author and translator on China.

Autocratic ideologies always yearn to obtain a firm footing on the intellectual soil of their opponents by cashing in on their liberal ideas of freedom of expression. Mao and his party were glorified in the skillfully crafted book ‘Red Star over China’, written by the American author Edgar Snow. Lovell describes the strict censoring of the manuscript by Mao’s accomplices. After Snow had completed his English language transcript of his conversation with Mao, it would then be translated back into Chinese for Mao to inspect. He might revise some portions which will then be re-translated into English for public consumption. Moreover, Snow only saw what his communist handlers wanted him to see. He was so minutely guided that he failed to meet a single, uncongenial individual in the communist state in Yanan. Even after the founding of the People’s Republic, Snow was engaged in intensely regulated visits to China. He refuted reports of a famine that we now know killed tens of millions. Establishment and consolidation of the PRC coincided with a global upsurge in decolonization across the world. Mao presented his country as the global headquarters of anti-imperialism.

This book gives a comprehensive coverage of the ways and means through which China exported its homegrown Maoist revolution all over the world. But they did not anchor too much on ideological rectitude. China's own national self-interest or convenience always trumps revolutionary theory when it came to supporting armed insurrections abroad. Political violence supported by China erupted in Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Chile, India and Nepal. These are narrated in detail. In the case of Africa, as de-colonization dawned, a host of new states were searching for political and economic models to fast track them into becoming modernized nations. As the years went by, China's focus on Africa also changed. Its presence in Africa today is focused on safe economic returns and political stability rather than on the kind of revolutionary upsurge that Mao cherished. The worst of Chinese revolutions abroad came about in Cambodia in the form of Khmer Rouge. It blatantly imposed slave labour on the ordinary people, with an ambition to turn the Khmers into rice- producing machines who consume no fuel and not too much rice. They abolished all currency and salary distinctions as well as killing millions of its own citizens. They forced people into collective communities like herds of cattle. With the creation of mess halls in such groups, they even abolished family dining in collective farms.

The author offers a clear argument on how the countercultural currents in western nations were so influenced by Maoism. In the 1960s, Soviet communism stood exposed and colorless with Khruzhchev’s disclosure of Stalinist terror. It had also fallen out of favour due to its repression of protests for democratic reforms in Eastern Europe and ossified bureaucracy. The chaos of Maoism appealed to the youth and Black activists of America. They showed little inclination to subject China to the same excoriating criticism applied to their own societies. Unlike in other countries, Lovell glorifies Maoist violence in India. She finds a prominent place to rebel voices like Arundhati Roy who depicts the Maoists as good-hearted, idealistic rebels with beautiful smiles, who laugh a lot and love poetry!

In a way, Mao’s death at the senile age of 83 in 1976 cleared China's unhurdled path to prosperity. Deng Xiaoping, who succeeded Mao to power, revoked his mentor’s theoretical injunctions one by one. In this de-Maoification of China, communes were dissolved, the sale of the Little Red Book was banned and all extant volumes pulped. To Deng, it was irrelevant whether the economic means were capitalist or socialist, provided that the political end of preserving party rule was achieved. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has long abandoned the utopian turmoil of Maoism in favour of an authoritarian capitalism that prizes prosperity and stability. With the advent of XI Jinping however, Mao is being rehabilitated in appearances. He re-infused Maoist strategies into China’s national public culture which readily found a receptive audience. People claim to have observed therapeutic properties of Maoist anthems and miracles like prisoners being cured of their criminality by singing ‘read songs’.

This book also examines the reasons for the widespread popularity of Maoism, especially its chaotic Cultural Revolution, to the Western youth and oppressed sections of the society. As usual, rhetoric and individual practice varied widely. Mao famously declared that women can hold up half the sky, but continued his petty womanizing. When the need arose, the party even relied on narcotics to boost up their position. In the 1940s opium trade rescued the Communists from their trade deficit and was generating 40 per cent of the state’s budget. Mao shunned any trace of individuality among his cadres who looked like automatons coming out from the same mould. They were subjected to brainwashing by psychological moves and physical torture. Foreign journalists who visited Yanan in 1945 were surprised at the uniformity of thought among the common folk. The same question asked to twenty or thirty people elicited the same response. Even on questions about love, there seemed to be a point of view that has been decided by meetings.

The parting of ways between Soviet and Chinese communism served to cause a rift in the global socialist movement that might have contributed substantially to the eventual collapse of communism in the 1990s. Maoism essentially differed from Soviet communism in its veneration of the peasantry as a revolutionary force and its inclination to anarchic rebellion against authority. It sought to realize rebellion through state capture and claimed itself as an alternate model to the Soviet one which was too European for the Third World's taste. This huge book analyses Maoism’s ambivalent history and enduring appeal to power-hungry dreamers and dispossessed rebels all over the world.

The size of the book taxes the readers in many ways. Its wide coverage thereby nets a lot of subjects with characteristic lack of depth. At no point do the text raise above the level of journalism. A lot of monochrome plates are included but they are thoroughly ineffective.

The book is recommended only to serious readers of Maoism.

Rating: 2 Star