Leftist Movements Research Articles

"The Politics of Paranoia": Wyndham Lewis’s Critique in Left Wings Over Europe: Or, How to Make a War About Nothing (1936) Based on Richard Hofstadter’s Ideologies

The current paper explores Wyndham Lewis’s critique of left-wing ideologies in his 1936 work Left Wings Over Europe: Or, How to Make a War About Nothing, through the analysis of Richard Hofstadter’s concept of "the paranoid style in politics." Hofstadter’s theoretical framework provides a practical structure for understanding Lewis’s vehement opposition to socialism and communism. In Left Wings Over Europe, Lewis represents leftist ideologies as destabilizing forces responsible for inciting conflict and navigating Europe toward needless war, particularly in the context of rising tensions leading to World War II. Not only does this research analyze how Lewis’s paranoid narrative aligns with Hofstadter’s insights, highlighting how Lewis's portrayal of leftist movements reflects broader fears of subversion and ideological warfare in 1930s Europe. but also explores how Lewis’s personal experiences and political anxieties shaped his critique, offering insight into the role of political paranoia in shaping intellectual and cultural discourse during times of upheaval. Ultimately, the paper contributes to a deeper understanding of how paranoia influences political thought, particularly in moments of crisis.

From the History of Soviet-French Literary Relations in the 1930s: An Unknown Letter from French Writers to A. M. Gorky about V. Serge (Based on Materials from the A. M. Gorky Archive)

The article examines Soviet-French literary contacts in the socio-political aspect on the basis of two unknown and not introduced into scientific circulation letters from the Archive of A.M. Gorky: a letter of five French writers dated June 28, 1932 A.M. Gorky and a letter from V. Serge dated September 28, 1932 to Gorky’s secretary P.P. Kryuchkov. French writers of leftist views (J.-R. Bloch, C. Vildrac, J. Guéhenno, L. Werth, F. Jourdain), who sympathized with the USSR, turned to Gorky with a request to help Serge leave the USSR. A month later, V. Serge himself turned to Kryuchkov with a request to respond to this letter. The son of Narodnaya Volya emigrants, Serge came to Soviet Russia in 1919 to participate in the revolutionary transformations of society and promote the world revolution. Sergeʼs connections with the anti-Stalinist opposition led to persecution by the GPU, two arrests (in 1928 and 1932) and exile to Orenburg for three years (in 1933). Thanks to an international campaign in the French and Belgian press launched by left-wing intellectuals, Serge left the USSR in April 1936. The still unknown first letter in his defense, sent by French writers to Gorky, is the most important evidence of the political strategies of leftist writers of the 1930s, attempts to influence socio-political processes within the leftist movement, as well as attempts to humanize the Stalinist regime.

Introduction to Abraham Serfaty’s ‘Letter to the Damned of Israel’

Abstract This article introduces Abraham Serfaty’s ‘Letter to the Damned of Israel’ (https:// doi.org/10.1163/1569206X-bja10054), written in 1982 while he was imprisoned. Serfaty, a Jewish-Moroccan Marxist, reflects on antisemitism, anti-Zionism, and the oppression of both Palestinians and Jews by Zionism. This introduction explores Serfaty’s political thoughts on the relationship between Palestinian liberation, Zionism, and the Jewish Question. It highlights his belief in the importance of Arab-Jewish identity and the role of Arab Jews in the anti-Zionist struggle. ​It also discusses Serfaty’s engagement with various international issues and his influence on the Moroccan leftist movement, particularly through his involvement with the Marxist-Leninist organisation Ila Al Amam and the journal Souffles. ​

Interviews with guerrilla leaders and military commanders in Latin America, 1959 to the 2000s

ABSTRACT In Latin America and the Caribbean, the period of the Cold War was characterized by coups d’état, revolts by competing military juntas, and anti-communist dictatorships. It was also a time of revolutionaries and insurgents, students taking up arms, churchgoers converted into radical rebels, Catholic priests and nuns transformed into guerrilleros, slum dwellers becoming members of underground leftist movements, and peasant associations joining insurrectional movements. Young people became radicalized, youth wings of political parties joined the underground resistance, and liberation movements appeared in nearly all of the countries in Latin American and in several Caribbean island states. Rather than provide any hypothesis about this insurgency and military counter-insurgency, this article draws attention to an additional layer of oral history by reviewing older, original documents and recording extensive interviews with key figures, giving voice to several operatives who hold direct insights into the workings of these movements over a long period of time.

Life on the Margins

Abstract This article examines a group of Polish, Jewish, and Polish Jewish women who volunteered in the auxiliary forces of the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War. They traveled to Spain from various west European states, such as Belgium and France, and from Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Palestine. Although only a small percentage of these women traveled directly from Poland, in official documents they were categorized as Polish regardless of what country they traveled from. The article compiles the available fragments of historical knowledge on these women, addressing the various routes, reasons, and circumstances that led them to Spain. Their participation in the war was not an obvious outcome, but the discrimination and poverty they experienced in Poland made them more open to global leftist movements that encouraged their service in the International Brigades. These women represented the margins of many communities, as women, as representatives of the Jewish minority in Poland who had a complicated relationship with the Polish state, and as members or sympathizers of various left-leaning groups. Their lives were marked by multiple borders and often open hostilities that they encountered on their way to and from Spain. Their stories – as stories of people from the margins who left behind only fragmentary sources – remain largely forgotten and unclaimed by historiographies of the Spanish Civil War. This article aims to piece together fragments of the existing documents to begin telling their story.

The Leadership of Behice Boran in the Turkish Workers’ Party (October 1, 1970 - October 10, 1987) (A Historical Study)

Behice boran was the first Turkish woman to lead a political party in Turkey. Throughout her political career, she witnessed three military coups in Turkey and had different reactions to each. The year 1960 marked the actual beginning of Boran’s political journey and was also a pivotal point in Turkish history as it saw the first military coup, which allowed the formation of parties and labor unions. This led to her becoming the leader of the Turkish Workers’ Party in 1970. However, the party faced a setback following the second military coup in 1971, which differed politically from the first due to the presence of the right-wing on the political scene, restricting the leftist movement. Boran was arrested for the third time during the period (1971-1974), and she criticized this coup. She was released from prison in 1974 and managed to re-establish the party in 1975, but it was closed again following the third military coup in 1980, leading to her fourth arrest. Due to her deteriorating health, she was released and decided to leave Turkey, seeking political asylum in Belgium, where she remained in exile until her death in 1987 after spending seven years in exile.

A successful transnational cold war intervention? Revisiting the Heung Yee Kuk’s “goodwill” tour of Britain’s Chinatowns, 1967–1970

ABSTRACT Most ethnic Chinese living and working in Britain in the late 1960s were from Hong Kong’s New Territories. Many of these British migrants blamed the Hong Kong government for importing cheap foodstuffs and driving farmers off the land to build new infrastructural projects. In 1967, Hong Kong experienced a wave of social and political unrest commonly referred to as the 1967 Leftist Riots. The unrest spread to parts of Britain’s Chinatown, where a leftist movement emerged in sympathy with the anti-colonial rioters. In response, the Heung Yee Kuk, a legal advisory organisation that represented established interests in the New Territories, proposed to send a ‘goodwill tour’ to Britain’s Chinatowns to demonstrate that the Hong Kong government was committed to their welfare. The unlikely alliance proved politically expedient as both had good reason to foster the political loyalty of Britain’s migrant Chinese. In particular, both parties understood the economic necessity of quieting the unrest to ensure the continued flow of remittance back to the colony. The detailed report of migrant Chinese grievances with the British and Hong Kong governments produced by the Heung Yee Kuk delegates led to welfare reforms for the Chinese communities of Hong Kong and Britain.

Envisioning Abolition in Our Local Asian American Communities

Abstract: The Chinatown Art Brigade hosted a teach-in in 2021 inspired by the uprisings for Black liberation and growing public discussion of abolitionist demands during the summer of 2020. The public dialogue highlighted the myriad ways Asian American leftist movements resist the carceral state through work in housing justice, mutual aid, sex worker organizing, racial justice, participatory defense, and prisoner solidarity.

Un eleno en la defensa del gobierno popular en Chile, 1973: Real Atahualpa Venegas Venegas, ‘Jorge’

On September 11, 1973, one of the bloodiest dictatorships in Latin America began with the violent overthrow of Salvador Allende’s government. In this article, I analyze the resistance organized by the Elenos, militants of the National Liberation Army, based on the testimony of a Socialist Party member who later went into exile in Mexico. I apply oral history methodology to examine his involvement in defending the Popular Unity government. My analysis aims to identify the individual and collective resistance strategies employed during and after the coup, contributing to the broader understanding of leftist movements' resistance in Chile.

Борьба за эстетическую монополию в первые годы советской власти

The article analyzes cultural development in the first post-revolutionary years. It examines a short but extremely meaningful period when, in an atmosphere of revolutionary enthusiasm, nihilists from art try to destroy the pillars of realism and create new, proletarian art. In the context of the revolution rejection and the emigration of the creative intelligentsia of tsarist Russia, as well as due to the involvement of RCP(b) leadership in the fronts of the civil war, the struggle for an aesthetic monopoly unfolds among artists of leftist movements.

Can the village speak? Leftist Assignment Theater and documentary theater in Taiwan

ABSTRACT This essay examines the genre of documentary theater with a particular focus on environment issues by the theater group “Assignment Theater” (chaishi juchang). Chung Chiao, the founding leader of Assignment Theater, was inspired by Taiwanese leftist writer Chen Ying-zhen and began his collaboration with People’s theater groups in many Asian countries since the 1990s post-Cold war period. Chung investigates histories, social issues and current circumstances through testimonial performances and documentary dramas with villagers, aiming to develop esthetic and critical reflections on social and cultural issues. In 2016, Chung directed and produced a work of documentary theater entitled Return to Hometown: A Story of Taixi Village by focusing on how villagers were suffering from severe air pollution, marginalization, and the complexity of their experiences since the launch of the Formosa Plastics Corp’s (FPC) sixth naphtha cracker complex in 1998. The essay starts with a critical question raised by Spivak’s “Can the Subaltern Speak” in the hope of re-locating the question in Return to Hometown. It continues to explore how Assignment Theater positions itself in the historical context of the leftist movement in post-war Taiwan by paying attention to the people. By re-examining the above, the essay discusses the ways in which environmental discourses, the village people, documentary theater, and the imagined subject of Taiwan nationality, etc. are interwoven.

Coup (September 12, 1980) in Turkey

The internal situation in Turkey worsened at the end of the seventies due to the conflict and clash of the Turkish left and right, in addition to the development of the Islamic movement, the Turkish left movement, and the armed Kurdish movement, and the emergence of economic problems such as widespread unemployment, deteriorating living conditions, decline in personal income, sit-ins and demonstrations by workers and the niqab. At the level of internal reasons that led to a coup (12 September 1980). In terms of external reasons, major political transformations occurred within the countries neighboring Turkey, such as the coming of Saddam Hussein to power in Iraq, the outbreak of the Iranian peoples’ revolution or the Iranian Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979, and finally the occupation of Afghanistan by Soviet Union forces. (1980) At that stage, there were concerns among the military establishment Turkish and protector of Kemalist principles.The concern of the United States of America about the weakness of the Turkish political system in the face of riots, violence, demonstrations and clashes in the streets, as well as American concerns about the dominance of Islamic and leftist movements over the reins of government in Turkey led to an agreement and a signal to the Turkish military establishment of the necessity of... a military coup and the restoration of political stability to the country. Therefore, the military establishment in Turkey carried out a military coup on the morning of September 12, 1980, with a military statement, taking control of government institutions and the reins of government, sending party leaders and politicians to prisons, and declaring a state of emergency in the country.In this research, we attempted to study the coup (September 12, 1980) in Turkey, especially its influential internal and external causes. We divided the research into two sections, the first section entitled (Internal causes of the coup on September 12, 1980) and the second section (External causes of the coup on September 12, 1980). We concluded the research with summary conclusions at the end of the research.

Российская революция и корейское партизанское движение на Дальнем Востоке

The Great Russian Revolution of 1917-1921 not only gave impetus to the movement for the liberation of Korea from the colonial rule of Japan, but also created a situation in which Koreans living on the territory of the former Russian Empire had to determine their side in the unfolding grandiose cofrontation of the blazing civil war. Under these conditions, Korean partisan detachments of various ideological orientations appeared in the Russian Far East. Most of them took an active part in the fight against foreign invaders and White Guards. However, the vicissitudes of the development of the Korean partisan movement in the region turned out to be very tortuous and contradictory. They were influenced by both the situation and evolution of the Korean independence movement, as well as acute ideological and political contradictions within the emerging Korean leftist movement. The article examines the mutual influence of conflicts within the Russian and Korean leftist movements in 1918-1922.

State Repression and Opposition Survival in Pinochet’s Chile

Why do some groups survive government repression while others get eliminated? This paper offers a corrective to the widely held theory that locally embedded opposition organizations with large and interconnected networks of civilian supporters are better adapted to survive. It argues that extreme and selective violent repression from a capable state requires strict compartmentalization and social detachment. These measures slow the speed and reach of repression. I test these propositions by examining the top targets of the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile. Cross-checking individuals on the Pinochet’s target lists against the victims lists, the article shows that the Revolutionary Leftist Movement (MIR) had a significantly lower rate of victimization than the other top targets. Archival and interview data demonstrate that MIR’s higher survival rate is due to the mechanisms proposed. This study renders intended repression observable and offers implications for the survival of a wide range of actors.

Re-examining the rise of left in India

This review paper offers a concise overview of the evolution of India's Leftist movement. It contends that the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia spurred neighbouring countries to break free from the tyranny of imperialism. To address this, the review identifies Satyabrata Rai Chowdhuri's ‘Leftism in India 1917–1947’ a remarkable work to comprehend Indian leftism at its initial Phase. In addition, other fundamental sources have been located to determine the opportunities and obstacles of leftism in India. Furthermore, it engages and recognises those (individuals) who were motivated by left ideals and orientations. Eventually, they played a significant role in the formation of left-wing parties in India.

Audience as constructivism discourses: Rethinking on the Media Audience Study

This article aims to analyze and interpret the following two basic contents. Firstly, we would examine the theoretical viewpoints on the use and gratification of Herta Herzog and Elihu Katz together with encoding/decoding theses of Stuart Hall, which are recognized by the scholastic world as the researches that paved ways for the study of Media Audience. The views of those theorists have led to the discourses on behavioral psychology and meaning construction of the audience in the interactions with the media. The mid-20th century findings have yielded the two research paradigms that focus on the public activism, as opposed to the assumptions of their passivity in the theoretical perspective of the effects study tradition. We evaluate these discourses in the context of the cold war, the Leftist movements, and the ideological innovations of the neo-Marxist school. Secondly, by assessing the two public discourses’ contributions, we will further consider the view of public ethnography and especially the trend of media constructionism. These are two theoretical tendencies in media public research that have taken place from the 1980s to the present. On the basis of the assessment of the strengths as well as the limitations of these tendencies, especially constructionism- a theoretical trend with the ambition to study the public in relation to the media production world, we will yield new claims about the Media Audience study theory.

Говард Фаст и советские писатели. Статья 2. «Жертва самого невероятного мошенничества": 1955-1959

The article reconstructs Howard Fast’s literary contacts with Soviet writers during the Khrushchev Thaw and traces the history of his painful break with the Communist movement. Based on Fast’s autobiographical books, personal correspondence, as well as articles in the Party press (Masses and Mainstream, Daily Worker), the paper demonstrates that at the beginning of 1956 the writer condemned the Stalinist regime as “bloody” and “criminal”. However, in his correspondence with the Soviet friends (Boris Izakov and Boris Polevoy) Fast tried not to enter into direct confrontation and only lamented the plight of the leftist movement in America. His Soviet friends learned about the writer’s departure from the US Communist Party from the press only in February 1957. Having every reason to believe that Fast would have informed them about such a serious step personally in a confidential manner, prominent functionaries of the Foreign Commission of the Soviet Writers’ Union became upset and furious having read Fast’s exclusive interview to Harry Schwartz, a newsman working for the New York Times. At this point Fast declared a fullfledged information war on the USSR: he accused the Soviet government of being anti- Semitic, antidemocratic and terroristic. In turn, Moscow launched a campaign to discredit Fast. After 1958, the writer was no longer mentioned in Soviet reviews, correspondence with him ceased, and all working contacts were broken off. In his post-communist period, Fast turned to the autobiographical genre, writing two books: The Naked God and Being Red, where, among other things, he provided insights into his difficult relationships with the representatives of the Soviet literary establishment. Fast’s correspondence with Boris Izakov and Boris Polevoy from the funds of the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art is published in the addendum.

The CIA in Ecuador by Marc Becker

Reviewed by: The CIA in Ecuador by Marc Becker Evan C. Rothera Becker, Marc. The CIA in Ecuador. Durham: Duke University Press, 2020. Marc Becker, currently professor of history at Truman State University and a widely respected authority on Ecuador, excels at using underexplored or recently declassified caches of documents to analyze Ecuadorian politics. Becker's The FBI in Latin America (Duke University Press, 2017) skillfully employed [End Page 434] FBI records to illuminate leftist activism in Ecuador. Similarly, The CIA in Ecuador draws on CIA surveillance documents to explore social movement organizing efforts among the Ecuadorian left. This volume is simultaneously a study of Ecuadorian politics, CIA perceptions of the left in Ecuador, and an extended discussion of how surveillance documents reveal much about the subjects of surveillance as well as the people who created the documents. Becker begins with a 1949 radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds in Quito. Sadly, the radio station delayed explaining that the invasion was a hoax. Rioting by angry crowds left more than a dozen people dead. Communists did not have anything to do with the broadcast or the riot, but this did not stop the CIA from assuming that "radicals must have been behind the mayhem" (2). The CIA report about the broadcast and the riot illustrate both "the pervasiveness of US surveillance operations as well as the potential possibilities, boundaries, and obstacles to their knowledge and understanding of leftist movements in Latin America" (2). Although many of the CIA documents about the Ecuadorian left were deeply flawed, they represent one of the few bodies of information available. Used carefully, as Becker does, these sources can illuminate much about Ecuador during the long 1950s, or the end of WWII through the Cuban Revolution. CIA documents, which saw through the world through the lens of the Cold War, often mischaracterized or misunderstood the Ecuadorian left. Some CIA officers feared communists would disrupt society, but the Partido Comunista del Ecuador (PCE) opposed "extraconstitutional alterations in power" (52). The US government's belief that "Moscow gold" funded the PCE was overblown, but it nevertheless produced extensive surveillance of the Ecuadorian left. Despite the flawed nature of the records and the biases of surveillance officers, they nevertheless yield important insights and serve as a crucial lens with which to examine the Ecuadorian left. The CIA's monitoring of Communist Party activities, Becker explains, sometimes produced the only records scholars have about the Ecuadorian left during the 1950s. Ironically, the CIA's obsessive attention to the communists inadvertently created an important record and reminds us that state organizations and actors often preserve traces of the very ideologies, people, and practices they would like to see disappear. Thanks to the CIA's surveillance, scholars have a detailed summary of what happened at the Fifth PCE Congress in 1952, not to mention other moments during this period. CIA surveillance, Becker concludes, "provides scholars with an opportunity to peek [End Page 435] inside communist party structures to understand how militants organized themselves to advance their political agenda" (183). "The 1950s were a period of continual transitions for the communist party in Ecuador" (93) and, ultimately, the "intense and continuing organizing efforts in the years after the Second World War laid the groundwork for subsequent militant mobilizations that would not have happened were in not for those earlier, less visible actions" (5). That CIA surveillance documents illuminating these earlier and less visible actions became such an important source for Becker's narrative is, as stated above, an ironic consequence of the mass of paper generated by extensive surveillance efforts. These records reveal, in extensive although often inaccurate detail, things about both Ecuador and the US. Furthermore, they provide a historian working several generations after their creation with a rich source base to tell the history of the Ecuadorian left during an understudied period. The CIA did not ignore the Western Hemisphere. Ultimately scholars should be thankful they did not, because "CIA surveillance provides insights into the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats that the party confronted. Our understanding of the past is richer for the documentary record they left behind" (25). Once again Marc Becker has taken a trove of...

La hora del silencio by Cristina Feijóo

Reviewed by: La hora del silencio by Cristina Feijóo Janis Be Cristina Feijóo. La hora del silencio. Buenos Aires: Astier Libros, 2022. 208 p. Cristina Feijóo's most recent novel, La hora del silencio, is as intricate, oneiric, and haunting as the classic work to which it openly pays homage, Juan Rulfo's Pedro Páramo. The gendered retelling—set within the claustrophobic confines of Villa Devoto, a women's prison with striking parallels to Comala—takes place during Argentina's last military dictatorship. The protagonist, Leonora, is a political prisoner who embarks on a journey of self-discovery not unlike her literary predecessor, Juan Preciado. In so doing, Leonora reveals cunning survival strategies to combat the harsh conditions of political imprisonment even as she unveils myriad complexities of the leftist movement from an intensely personal perspective. Narrated primarily in first person and in present tense through the protagonist's prison diary, La hora del silencio is simultaneously intimate and immersive. What's more, the protagonist's persistent efforts to "put [her]self together" (50) mirror the active role required of readers who must similarly work to integrate the novel's disparate narrative fragments. Leonora consciously and overtly channels Damiana Cisneros in order to access her own (back)story, understand her identity, find a sense of purpose and belonging, and ultimately accept her fate. As she confides in her journal, "La vieja Damiana era sabia y con ella hicimos [End Page 327] un pacto: yo contaría mi historia usando su voz y ella contaría historias entramadas con la mía" (11). The graceful ease with which Leonora performs this and other literary assimilations and ventriloquisms becomes plausible given Feijóo's lyrical prose and linguistic agility. The storyline, which incorporates multiple voices and perspectives in addition to distinct registers, unfolds in overlapping loops. Proliferating embedded tales and secondary characters simultaneously echo and shed light upon the protagonist's plight. The result is a highly stylized, complex narrative that can be likened to a tapestry or mosaic. As the novel advances, carefully building to a dramatic conclusion, the protagonist achieves greater self-understanding and eventually finds her own voice. Readers gradually draw closer to Leonora herself, increasingly privy to the internal workings of her conniving mind. As the above might suggest, La hora del silencio defies simple generic classification. Like Rulfo, Feijóo situates her novel beyond the realm of traditional or linear time for "el tiempo es un perro que se muerde la cola" (66) while simultaneously exploring liminal spaces and interior states. Boundaries such as those that delineate consciousness and dreams, the corporeal and the ethereal, life and death remain porous. At times characters inhabit "sueños vivos" (64), which can include meeting fictional characters from other literary works, having out-of-body experiences, fusing or melding with each other, and struggling to distinguish between what is inside or outside of the prison walls or even one's physical body. In short, the masterful work questions the very nature of reality and sanity, while exhibiting traits of both the fantastic and magical realism. At the same time, La hora del silencio represents historical fiction at its finest. Not coincidentally, the cover art showcases a photograph by Daniel Berbedés from the Parque de la memoria—a commemorative public space honoring the victims of state terrorism and dedicated to "remembrance, homage, testimony and reflection." To this end, the novel offers detailed portrayals of the day-to-day hardships that political prisoners endured for years: from strict food rations to cruel punishments, from traumatic searches and seizures to the torments of solitary confinement. A particularly harrowing episode recalls the Masacre del Pabellón 7 when on March 14, 1978 over sixty prisoners died due to police repression and the brutality of prison personnel, specifically from fires, smoke inhalation, being beaten, or from gunshot [End Page 328] wounds. Feijóo artfully conveys the chaos, fear, and uncertainty by dramatically yet realistically narrating the unfolding scene through auditory rather than visual witnessing, given the need to take cover as well as direct orders to stay away from the windows or be shot. Another traumatic event features the political...

Brief Synopses of New Arabic-Language Publications

Brief Synopses of New Arabic-Language Publications