Learning from Experience: Moscow’s Changing Approaches to ‘Third World’ Revolution

Abstract

Starting in the 1950s, the Soviet Union, the United States, and China began to compete for the allegiance of the (emerging) post-colonial world. But which newly independent countries were ready for socialism? What paths should aspiring socialist leaders follow? How much room did they need to make for religion, nationalism, or even the market? And how did the USSR go about figuring out whom to support, what to advise, and when to cut its losses? The latter question occupied observers of the USSR during the Cold War era, and, over the last twenty years, many historians who have produced case studies and a few larger, synthetic works. Jeremy Friedman’s Ripe for Revolution: Building Socialism in the Third World, is an important and highly original entry into this discussion. Using well-chosen “episodes of a larger engagement between socialist powers and developing states,” Friedman analyzes the experiences of five revolutionary movements that were supported by Moscow, Beijing, or both (13). Chapter 1 traces the USSR’s support for Indonesia and its involvement with that country’s Communist Party (KPI). Indonesia was one of Nikita Khrushchev’s first targets when he decided to revive the Soviet commitment to anti-colonialism. Moscow’s relationship with Indonesian President Sukarno led it to support his elimination of a parliamentary system in favor of “Guided Democracy.” As Friedman shows, the Soviet involvement with Indonesia also forced Soviet scholars and policymakers to think more seriously about the role of religion (Islam proved to be a powerful mobilizing force not just among the bourgeoisie but also the peasantry and working class), and how to guide a popular communist party which was nevertheless locked out of power, and which refused to follow the Soviet line. Friedman sees the ties between the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and socialist parties in decolonizing countries as neither a patron-client relationship nor an alliance between equals but a “franchise system, in which the local communist leaders were basically licensed to operate the local franchise of the international communist movement, while headquarters in Moscow looked after the interests of the brand as a whole” (74).