International Socialist Movement Research Articles

Known in Europe, Unknown in Bulgaria (To the 150th Anniversary of the Birth of Christian Rakovsky)

The article is dedicated to the 150th anniversary of the birth of Christian Rakovsky (1873-1941) – a prominent figure in the international socialist movement, politician, statesman, diplomat, Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars of Ukraine (1919-1923), Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the USSR in London (1923-1925) and Paris (1925-1927), one of the leaders of the Trotskyite bloc, and an opponent of Stalin. While Rakovsky’s life has been the subject of some research, many of its aspects remain unexplored. Drawing on a wealth of new documents discovered in the archives of Bulgaria, Great Britain, France, Ukraine, and Russia, the author sheds new light on little-known episodes of Rakovsky’s life – particularly the years of his youth, when he joined the international student socialist movement and spoke at international congresses. The article considers Rakovsky’s contacts with Plekhanov’s Emancipation of Labor group in Geneva, where Rakovsky studied medicine and achieved some prominence among Russian social democrats. His connections with famous Western European revolutionaries are discussed – including Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht, Jules Guesde, Karl Kautsky, and other figures of the Second International. It is noted that Rakovsky was the only member of the Bolshevik government who was also a member of the Bureau of the Second International. The article touches on a subject that has long been neglected by historians – Rakovsky’s efforts to solve the problem of Russian-Romanian relations in 1918, the resulting bilateral treaty, and his special position regarding the annexation of Bessarabia to Romania. Considerable attention is given to the question of Rakovsky’s so-called ‘Jewish’ origin and his alleged membership in the worldwide Masonic lodge, disproven on the basis of Rakovsky’s papers in the Bulgarian Historical Archive. The author also dwells on the problem of the so-called ‘Rakovsky protocols’, published by Iosif Landovsky in the book “Red Symphony: Confessions of the Trotskyist Rakovsky.” The author draws on Rakovsky’s NKVD case file and interrogation records, which he has published in full in his book “The Bloody Farce,” to demonstrate that no such protocols exist. Finally, the author addresses the rumor that Rakovsky was not executed, but spent the last years of his life in the Soviet Union. This rumor is proven false based on the analysis of extensive archival materials and memoirs of Rakovsky’s comrades; most notably, Rakovsky’s case file in the Central Archives of the KGB of the USSR contains a certificate of his execution on 11 September 1941 in the Oryol Central Prison.

Social democracy had become the two dominant political tendencies within the international socialist movement,[31] with socialism itself becoming the most influential secular movement of the 20th century.[32] Socialist parties and ideas remain a political force with varying degrees of power and influence on all continents, heading national governments in many countries around the world. Today, many socialists have also adopted

social democracy had become the two dominant political tendencies within the international socialist movement,[31] with socialism itself becoming the most influential secular movement of the 20th century.[32] Socialist parties and ideas remain a political force with varying degrees of power and influence on all continents, heading national governments in many countries around the world. Today, many socialists have also adopted

Todorova M. The Lost World of Socialists at Europe’s Margins: Imagining Utopia, 1870s – 1920s. London; New York: Bloomsbury, 2020. 384 p. ISBN 978-1-3501-5033-1

This monograph by Maria Todorova discusses the establishment and mutual acceptance of the international socialist movement in Bulgarian social democracy. The main features of the socialist movement in Bulgaria are highlighted and the penetration of socialist ideas into the socio-political environment of the country is presented. The attitude of the Bulgarian socialists to the national question and the issues of war and peace during the Balkan Wars and the First World War are considered. Bulgarian socialists are presented as consistent internationalists and pacifists who did not change their positions even under the influence of the outbreak of the First World War. The problem of the imitativeness of Bulgarian socialism is analyzed as an integral part of the issue of Russian or Western European influence upon Bulgaria. Despite the fact that Todorova does not deny the prevalence and cultural influence of the ideas of Russian populism in Bulgaria, she comes to the conclusion that both Western European and national historiography tend to exaggerate the Russian influence on the formation of the Bulgarian socialist tradition. Features of the two political generations identified by Todorova that operated in Bulgaria during the period under consideration are presented and the typical places of education of Bulgarian socialists are revealed. Analyzing a large volume of historical sources, the author uses the biographical method to acquaint readers with numerous socialists forgotten or bypassed by the national communist historiography. Considering the individual experience of socialists, Todorova demonstrates the various paths that led people to this political camp. Attention is paid to the women's socialist movement in Bulgaria and the history of women's participation in the social and political life of the country.

About a Letter by Abdurreshid Ibrahimov

The article presents а publication of a letter written by an outstanding Tatar religious and public figure, Abdurreshid Ibrahim. The letter was sent from Stockholm and addressed to his friend and colleague Rizaetdin Fakhretd. The letter reflects the attitude by A. Ibrahim to the then state of human civilization, and his thoughts about the future. It reflects one of the episodes of his active social and political activities aimed at involving the Russian Muslim community in political activities on the international level. In particular, A. Ibrahim announces his intention to take part in Stockholm conference, held in the spring and summer of 1917. Of particular interest are the reasons brought forward by A. Ibrahim regarding his decision about the participation in the forum of all the branches of the international socialist movement.

OFF-YEAR PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS OF 1908: DETAILS OF MYKOLA HANKEVICH BIOGRAPHY AND THE HISTORY OF THE SOCIALIST MOVEMENT IN LVIV

The article describes the character of Mykola Hankevich in the context of the early parliamentary elections of 1908 in Galicia. The author sets out his task, by shifting the usual historiographical accents, to consider the general election culture in the provincial capital in the early twentieth century, the theory and practice of the international socialist movement in a multinational urban environment. The well-established point of view of K. Jobst and other researchers, who believe that the conflict over Hankevich's face in the 1907 elections, when the executive leadership of the PPSD did not support his candidacy, is the beginning of the path that ultimately led the Polish and Ukrainian Social Democrats parties in the bosom of "their" national camps, and the ephemeral international socialist movement in Galicia disintegrated. The author believes that such a narrative simplifies the processes that took place in the environment of the Galician socialist parties. Cooperation between Ukrainian, Polish, and Jewish socialists did not stop until the outbreak of the First World War. In the USDP, M. Hankevich himself did not cease to cooperate closely with Polish and Jewish socialists. During the snap election of 1908, the PPSD leader agreed with the candidacy of Mykola Hankevich, who, however, lost this election by winning 734 votes against 1011. However, in the anti-Ukrainian hysteria that had not yet subsided after the assassination of Andrzej Potocki, more than 40% of the vote, loyal to the Ukrainian and socialist candidates in the bourgeois Lviv district, looked like a tremendous success for Hankevich. Having identified the main reasons for this success, namely: his impeccable personal reputation, eloquence, popularity among the Lviv workers and intellectuals, genuine internationalism and willingness to represent different ethnic groups and different social strata, the author, referring to the memories of the Polish socialist Yevhen Morachevsky, calls another circumstance that explains the results of the vote quite differently. It is about 450 votes that Morachevsky bought in favour of Gankevich. The author notes that Morachevsky considers his dubious act as a peculiar feat - to pollute his hands to achieve a noble political goal, in which, in his opinion, he manifests the instinct and ability of a politician, thereby opposing himself to "dreamers" and idealists who did not compromise own principles.

Contemporary capitalism, uneven development, and the arc of anti-capitalism

Uneven and combined development remains crucial for understanding the continued widening and deepening of capitalism. However, the nature of the heterogeneous and uneven development of contemporary capitalism, especially since the 1970s, makes problematic the characterization of capitalist totality, as a coherent stage and as a singular, albeit uneven, combination. This complicates the successful pursuit of anti-capitalism, which now requires varied but interrelated responses at all scales and involving a range of approaches, from local community activism and non-capitalist alternatives to mass Leninist-inspired parties, and an international socialist movement. Thus, a far more uneven anticapitalism is appropriate; and a single, overarching anti-capitalist process, such as Permanent Revolution may not be the only or way forward. This is not an argument for a post-Marxist horizontal heterogeneity; but rather an exploration of the reasons and possibilities for a dialectical anti-capitalism, where beneficial encounters occur across the arc of anti-capitalism, within which proletariat mobilization remains a central component. Such confluence offers one starting point for contending with the perennial duality of reform and revolution, manifest today in the either/or of an anti-capitalism of total revolution and an agonistic, fractional post-Marxist politics working to reduce oppression and hardship within capitalism.

The search for the "Third Way" in the international left movement in the early 1920's.

In this general paper the situation of the international left movement in the new geopolitical conditions that emerged after the end of the First World War is discussed. Subject matter related to ideological differences between ideological currents in the Second International as well as to practical steps of its participants in the direction of gaining power in the states is considered.It is shown that military action in Europe intensified the split in the Second International, which existed in the form of a series of revisionist movements and movements in the middle of the unification before the First World War. The practical steps taken by the participants of the international labor movement in the direction of the restoration of the work of the Second International, which during 1914-1918 actually stopped its activities, are considered. Attention is drawn to the fact that mutual accusations of betrayal of the ideological principles of socialism, participation in the war on the side of the governments of the states of the Entente and the Fourth Alliance and the unresolved post-war problems have prevented the realization of this idea. That was the reason for the restoration of the Second International (Bern), the Vienna International (Vienna Community) and the Third (Communist) International. Specific examples show the differences in the ideological principles of the existence of the Communist International and other members of the international labor movement.Particular attention is paid to the process of uniting the participants of the Bern International and the Vienna Community into the Socialist Workers' International. It was investigated that an important precondition for the unification was the elaboration of a general socialist-reformist platform, around which all the directions of the international labor movement would be consolidated. Separately, the position of the members of the Comintern is shown, as well as the factors considered include as Bolshevik authorities in Russia and the unstable international situation in post-war Europe.It is concluded that the diversity of views on tactics and methods of constructing a socialist state, against the backdrop of changing the political map of the world (the collapse of empires), prevented the unification of participants in the international socialist movement and caused their final split in the first half of the 1920's.

International Socialist Movement on the eve of the First World War

International Socialist Movement on the eve of the First World War

Fraternité! Schöne Augenblicke in der europäischen Geschichte

Bernd Jürgen Warneken’s new book promises to offer readers a hopeful vision of European history as a succession of emancipatory movements, and to ‘save beautiful moments in social history from those who would spurn them’ (p. 10). He has selected a series of ‘beautiful moments’ for ‘thick description’ beginning with the French Revolution, specifically the 14 July 1790 Festival of the Federation. The second and longest section begins with another commemoration of the storming of the Bastille—the July 1889 founding conference of the Socialist International—and continues through a series of subsequent events in the international socialist movement, including the antiwar movement, the outbreak of World War I, the ‘Christmas Truce’ and finally international meetings of pacifist veterans in the 1920s and early 1930s. The final section is dedicated to Germany’s recent migration history, with two subsections on the ‘wildcat strikes’ of ‘guest workers’ that broke out in factories across West Germany in August 1972, and finally a section on ongoing efforts to build mosques in German cities since the 1990s.

Sobre el socialismo en Cuba by Mao Xianglin (review)

Mao Xianglin. Sobre el socialismo en Cuba. Beijing: China Intercontinental Press, 2014. 410 pp.Professor Mao Xianglin is a Chinese scholar who for three decades has done research and published two previous books on Cuba. He is adviser to the Center for the Study Cuba, Institute Latin American Studies, and researcher in the Center for the Study World Socialism, both at the Chinese Academy Social Sciences (CASS), and a foreign correspondent for the U.S. Handbook Latin American Studies. In 1982 we met in Beijing-he was one the translators to Chinese my book Cuba in the 1970s-but his help was not acknowledged (as then was considered vanity). Things have changed for good, and now both the names and biographies the translators to Spanish Mao's book are included.The preface to the book is written by a former CASS vice president and the Cuban ambassador to the People's Republic China. Twelve chapters deal with the history Cuban socialism, the Communist Party, the political system, the armed forces, the economy (1509-2004), education, health care, religion, foreign affairs, Chinese relations with Cuba, and Mao's reasons of the vitality Cuban socialism. For Chinese readers, Mao's desire to provide a comprehensive Cuban panorama forces brief treatment in quite complex themes. The author mainly relies on Cuban and Western sources, and only a dozen Chinese books on Cuba or Latin America are in the bibliography, an indicator the scarcity Cuban scholarship in the PRC and the rarity this book.1Lack space forces a focus on China-Cuba relations that starts in 1847 when culies (coolies) arrived in Havana and later the Chinese participation in the War Independence. The author subsequently deals with Mao Zedong's endorsement the Cuban Revolution, Fidel's regional pioneering break in relations with Taiwan and establishment relations with the PRC, and the latter moral support Cuba in the United Nations and against the United States. Of particular importance are the conflict in 1964, when the Cuban government asked the Beijing ambassador to stop distributing propaganda (in Cuba's armed forces), Fidel's criticism China in 1966 on trade agreements, Beijing's answer that deteriorated the bilateral relations, and the 1970s freeze given the conflict with the Soviet Union. (In the ideological struggle for the international socialist movement that Mao analyzes, he fails to specify that China accused the Soviet Union being a second, social imperialist power and that Cuba sided with the Soviets.) In 1984 both countries signed an exchange experts, and Flavio Bravo, president Cuba's National Assembly, traveled to China, the first Cuban high official to visit that country in twenty years. In 1989 there was a swap visits by the chancellors both countries. The collapse the socialist bloc in 1990 provoked a grave socioeconomic crisis in Cuba, including severe oil scarcity, which virtually paralyzed transportation: China sent bikes and a bicycle factory. President Jiang Zemin visited Cuba in 1993 at the worst point in the crisis, then Fidel traveled to China in 1995 and Raul Castro in 1997. …

Ignacy Daszyński. Ein Sozialist, polnischer Patriot und transnationaler Akteur vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg

The Polish-Galician Socialist Ignacy Daszynski was without doubt one of the most significant Social-Democratic politicians of Cisleithania, and later of the Polish Republic. From 1897 he was a Deputy in the Cisleithania’s Reichsrat, where he would become a most active and eloquent Parliamentarian. Through his close relationships and even friendships, with the most recognized exponents of the Second International, figures like Karl Kautsky or Viktor Adler, he played a role too in the international socialist movement and secured therein support for his national political agenda: He understood himself to be first of all a Pole, followed immediately by his identity as a Social Democrat, and he joined social and nationalist aspirations tightly. The reestablishment of a Polish state occupied for him the highest priority. Before the First World War, Daszynski succeeded in gaining the support of his international comrades for the Polish national project. Furthermore, he skillfully managed to initiate strategic friendships with significant European socialists. In this way, he was recognized and accepted quite early in socialist circles outside of the Habsburg monarchy. He broke through, as did many of his contemporaries, linguistic and other barriers and was a part of networks that spanned national borders. In the process, his foreign language abilities helped him as much as his close personal contacts. In the present article, Daszynski is viewed as one of the most linguistic ethnic, and national boundary transcending Social-Democratic actors from the time before the re-founding of the Polish state. He is appraised from perspective of contemporary transnationally influenced historiographical research. His activities within Social Democratic political forums are similarly considered for its transnational meaning. An essential impulse for this research was given by the Marcel van der Linden connected publication, Transnational Labour History, which examines the labor movement in the context of interwoven, connected processes between states and organizations, and at the same time, stresses the formation of complex socialist networks, and the processes of exchange of people and ideas.

THE RSDLP FOREIGN DELEGATION AND ITS ROLE IN THE EUROPEAN SOCIAL-DEMOCRATIC MOVEMENT IN THE 1930-IES

The article considers the little-studied aspect of the Rus-sian Social Democrats’ [Mensheviks] activity in emigra-tion, especially, the RSDLP Foreign Delegation governing body (1922–1951). Recognizing “the transitional nature of the era” and participating in the discussion of the inter-national socialist movement, the Mensheviks last played a public role in the political life of pre-war Europe and development of the “tactical formula” of the common activities organization.

‘We must maintain a balance between propaganda and serious athletics’ – the workers' Sport Movement in Canada, 1924–1936†

In its heyday, the international socialist movement sought to create a completely alternative way of life for its members and potential recruits, with its own political organizations, rituals and traditions, solidarity networks for health and welfare, and cultural organizations for the arts and sports. Some of the most ambitious European socialist or workers' sports organizations had their own facilities, their own system of training coaches and instructors, their own newspapers and their own calendar of events. In 1913, the European associations banded together to form the Socialist Workers' Sport International. When the socialist movement split into social democratic and communist camps in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution and World War I, the newly formed communist parties sought to turn sport into a weapon of recruitment and struggle. One such effort was the Workers' Sports Association of Canada (WSAC). Initiated by a top-down directive from the Communist International in Moscow, it nonetheless resonated with the sporting activities of hundreds of left-wing and working-class people and clubs in both urban and hinterland Canada, especially among immigrants who brought the socialist tradition from Europe and felt shut out of mainstream Canadian sport. For a time, despite the tensions between the Community Party of Canada organizers who demanded strict adherence to the political line of the day, and the coaches and athletes on the ground who wanted to focus on their sport, the WSAC provided both a pan-Canadian network of opportunities and a public face for these activities. This article was my first attempt to document this history. It was a ‘recovery project’ because despite extensive historical literature on Canadian parties of the left, no one else had ever mentioned sport.

Dance of the Furies: Europe and the Outbreak of World War I, by Michael S. Neiberg.

Dance of the Furies. Europe and the Outbreak of World War I, by Michael S. Neiberg. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 2011. 292 pp. $29.95 US (cloth). This well-researched and well-written, though at times unnecessarily repetitive, book makes six (6) key arguments. Firstly, few Europeans expected, let alone wanted, a war in 1914. More important issues--the murder trial of Henriette Caillaux in France, the Home Rule crisis and the suffragette movement in Great Britain, the strike wave in Russia, and the recent electoral gains of the SPD in Germany--preoccupied them. Furthermore, the recent tragedy at Sarajevo was not the first example of political violence in the Balkans. Previous crises, there and elsewhere, had been resolved peacefully. Why would things be different this time, in the wake of murders thought of primarily in personal rather than political terms? And last, but not least, guarantee of peace: was not a recently emerging international socialist movement, with threat of a general strike, an important force against war? Such certainty that a diplomatic solution would be found and that a continental war would be avoided explains their sadness, their fear, and their shock at outbreak. Secondly, gender, class, and ethnicity were as important as nationality in apprehending the wartime experiences of individuals and groups. Thirdly, Europeans accepted the necessity of war because they saw it as a defensive and existential one, waged against aggressive and barbaric invaders, who threatened their homelands. Tales of violence and stories of atrocities, whether real or embellished, naturally fueled genuine hatred and a desire for vengeance and convinced them that their cause--just and righteous--was worth fighting for. Had not the foe failed to respond to the sincere efforts of their own government to avoid the conflict? Satisfied then that the intentions of their respective government had been peaceful, civilians and soldiers rallied to the flag. Indeed, given such frightening prospects of invasion and occupation, who could legitimately refuse to fight a war that could likely determine a nation's future survival? Even the International Socialist Bureau embraced, in late July 1914, the concept of a justifiable struggle against an aggressive enemy. Fourthly, by the end of 1914--the year that witnessed both the highest casualty rates of any year of the war and some serious allegations of mismanagement and corruption--many Europeans had already become disenchanted with the lofty rhetoric of shared sacrifices and national unity and with the official explanations offered by their governments to justify their entrance into and continuation of the war. Fifthly, Europeans realized quite early that their presumption of a short war--one that explains, if not their enthusiasm, at least their determination in responding to the call to arms--had been inaccurate. A sense of disillusionment, nourished by the lack of decisive victories on land and at sea, set in fairly rapidly among soldiers and civilians. Indeed, Neiberg argues, the massive numbers of dead and wounded as well as the pitiful sight of hundreds of thousands of civilians, who found themselves in the path of enemy armies and who, as refugees, flooded the roads of Europe at the very beginning of the hostilities, brought home the cruel realities of modern warfare, such as its ability to make men feel like sacrificial lambs instead of heroes (p. 189). As a result, the high idealism of the opening days of August 1914 became yet another casualty of war. Finally, despite their concerns, doubts, and suspicions, Europeans kept fighting. They did so, not just because the two sides could not find any common ground for a negotiated settlement, but also in order to avenge the enormous human and material losses suffered, to remove the real threats to their lives that the presence of foreign armies represented, and out of an awareness that anything short of total victory or total defeat was unthinkable. …

The Labour Party and the politics of war and peace, 1900-1924

This rich analytical account of the Labour party's foreign policy between the party's formation and the fall of the first Labour government in 1924 demonstrates that the party's policy development during this period was far more sophisticated than has previously been considered. The party was neither merely the ideological cipher for ex-Liberals in the Union of Democratic Control; nor did it enter government devoid of policy ideas. Rather, as the author shows, the party sought consistently to construct and eventually to implement a genuinely radical foreign policy. This involved significant input from the wider labour movement, and was also influenced at important moments by contacts with the international socialist movement. Rejecting doctrinally rigid approaches to Labour policy development, the author demonstrates that many ideological currents flowed through the early Labour party, and, crucially, that one of the strongest traditions influencing the formation of the party's post-war foreign policy objectives was Gladstonian internationalism, rather than the anti-war Cobdenite radicalism of the UDC and its allies. Before the war, Labour is shown to have been actively engaged in attempts by progressives to establish ideological links between socialism, radicalism and liberalism in ways appealing to the new mass electorate. Thereafter, it built on these traditions to help consolidate its claim to be the legitimate heir to nineteenth-radical traditions in foreign policy.

“All I Do Is Think About You”: Some Notes on Pragmatist Longing in Recent Literary Study of Amiri Baraka

This essay examines Amiri Baraka's improvisatory, always changing commitment to literary and performative formal innovation in the service of his radical politics. It charts the coupling of romantic longing with radical political prescription in Baraka's career and suggests a reading of his poem “Nightmare Bush'it Whirl” as a corrective to recent trends in neopragmatist approaches to Baraka studies. As a recording, “Nightmare” interpolates Stevie Wonder's “All I Do” and conflates romantic longing with a catalog of various defeats and anticipated victories in the international socialist and Black radical movement. This essay presents an immanent critique of Richard Poirier's categories as it applies to recent scholarship on Baraka's poetics, including Andrew Epstein's book-length study Beautiful Enemies: Friendship and Postwar American Poetry. It attempts to theorize a critical encounter between Poirier and Baraka by offering up a reading of Poirier's mention of Baraka in the pages of Partisan Review, and it applies Poirier's critical categories to a sampling of Baraka's literary production.

Text and Context in the Argument of Lenin’s What Is to Be Done?

AbstractLars Lih’s Lenin Rediscovered aims to overthrow what he labels the textbook-myth of Leninism through a comprehensive reconstruction of Lenin’s relationship, both to the Kautskyite orthodoxy that dominated the international socialist movement, and more local polemics. While the resulting rereading of Lenin’s early Marxism is a powerful counter to the ‘textbook-interpretation’ of Leninism, Lih has perhaps ‘bent the stick’ too far in an attempt to prove Lenin’s orthodoxy. Importantly, he misconstrues Lenin’s critique of ‘economism’ through a too-narrow reading of ‘economism’. Lih would have been better served to recognise the importance of Lenin’s polemic as an attempt, not simply to paint his opponents on the Russian Left as ‘economists’, but, more importantly, to grasp the organic nature of reformism and thus the true scale of the difficulties involved in challenging its hegemony within the workers’ movement.

For White Men Only: The Socialist Party of America and Issues of Gender, Ethnicity and Race

This article examines the experience of distinct groups within the Socialist Party of America, considering the period from its founding in 1901 to the eve of World War One. The Socialist Party, befitting its membership in the international socialist movement of that era, was committed to representing the workers of the world in the Marxist struggle to achieve political and economic equality within a cooperative commonwealth. Accordingly, variables of gender, ethnicity and race were subsumed within the Social Question. Ideally, workers in every capacity and of all backgrounds would march together under the Red Flag and create a new egalitarian society. While, indeed, many lawyers, ministers and others of the middle-class belonged to the Socialist Party and often held office within it, thereby derisively being likened by critics to an assemblage of dentists, the party was very much working class in composition, as shown by James R. Green and others.

Radical Pacifism and the General Strike Against War: Jessie Wallace Hughan, the Founding of the War Resisters League, and the Socialist Origins of Secular Radical Pacifism in America

Founded by Jessie Wallace Hughan, a socialist pacifist, the War Resisters League (WRL) has remained the major secular, mixed‐gender, radical pacifist organization in America. This article, which explores the neglected story of the WRL's socialist roots, examines Hughan's socialism, the founding of the WRL, and the transatlantic socialist and pacifist origins of Hughan's theory of war resistance. In this context, I examine the Socialist International's pre–World War I proposal to wage a “general strike against war,” British No‐Conscription Fellowship, Independent Labour party, No More War Movement, and War Resisters' International. This article argues that the international socialist movement and European socialist pacifism shaped Hughan's war resistance; that Hughan and the WRL advocated a general strike to prevent war and advance social—and socialist—reform/revolution, a nonviolent technique borrowed from the socialist and labor movements; and that the WRL represents a socialist pacifist ideology and organization.

The Star in the East: South African Socialist Expectations and Responses to the Outbreak of the Russian Revolution

Although the militant socialist left-wing of the largely conservative (white) South African labour movement was only a peripheral phenomenon, it identified itself closely with the left-wing international socialist movement overseas and promoted class solidarity. The outbreak of the First World War led to a schism in the South African Labour movement between the larger pro-war faction and the militant anti-war and revolutionary syndicalist left-wing. The latter saw the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 as confirmation that the dawn of the socialist millennium was breaking. The South African militant socialists enthusiastically identified themselves with the aims of the Russian Revolution. Left-wing socialists initiated militant municipal strike action by contributing to the short-lived existence of the Johannesburg and Durban Boards of Control, or 'Soviets'. The Johannesburg International Socialist League (ISL) and the Cape Town Industrial Socialist League vigorously endorsed the formation of the Communist International in 1919. The former also took the initiative to unite all the important followers of the Bolshevik Revolution in the country into the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA) in 1921. In the wake of the 1917 Revolution leftwing socialist organisations, such as the ISL, the Industrial Socialist League and the CPSA, were among the first political organisations to endorse non-racialism and the class struggle in pursuing a socialist revolution and a future socialist South Africa.