Contentious Comrades: Egyptian Communism Reconsidered

Abstract

Rami Ginat’s study—a work that will quickly become the go-to source on the history of communism in pre-Nasserist Egypt—is really two books in one. It is first and foremost a detailed account of the origins and impact of communist movements from the 1920s through the end of the “liberal era.” At the same time, it is an exploration of the particular role played by Jews, native and adopted sons and daughters of Egypt, in founding, fostering, and, at times, fragmenting amovement that inmost cases eventually disownedanddisbarred them, much to their dismay. It is a story that is at once inspiring and, for them, ultimately, tragic. Ginat’s authority as the primary academic chronicler of the Egyptian left is rooted in exhaustive, innovative research undertaken over many years and in many places. He has already written important works on Egyptian-Soviet relations in the late 1940s and early 1950s, theMarxist intellectual Lutfi al-Khuli, and the Nasser-era foreign policy approach of positive neutrality during the ColdWar.1Hismonographs andarticles are informedby research that has taken him beyond the usual archival sites, and his reading of memoirs, periodicals, and secondary sources is comprehensive and current. For this study he has traveled to Moscow (Comintern and Communist Party archives), Washington, D.C. (Department of State records), London (Foreign Office records), Cairo