National Communism Research Articles

«Ukrainian crisis» of the Society of Marxist Historians

The article is devoted to the discussion that unfolded at the turn of the 1920s-30s between "Moscow" and "Ukrainian" historians on the principles of interaction between the Society of Marxist Historians at the Communist Academy and the Ukrainian Society of Marxist Historians. The study of the discussion allows us to come to the problem of building a model of interaction between the center and the regions in Soviet historical science. New documents from the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences demonstrate that the Moscow Society of Marxist Historians, headed by M.N. Pokrovsky set a course to build a relatively centralized model, which was opposed by Ukrainian historians who defended the principles of national communism. The confrontation was open in nature, in which Ukrainian historians relied on the leadership of the Ukrainian SSR. During the so-called "Great Turning Point", a wave of political purges swept through, which hit the Ukrainian intelligentsia hard, among others. After that, the obstacles to the Society of Marxist Historians were removed. However, it also found itself in crisis due to the death of its leader, M.N. Pokrovsky. The fruits of the discussion have already been "reaped" by other institutions: first, the Institute of History at the Communist Academy, and then the Institute of History of the USSR Academy of Sciences. The consequences of the "Ukrainian crisis" were massive. The opponents of building a centralized model of historical science, in which the republican centers were subordinate to the Moscow ones, were eliminated. This directly affected the process of creating the histories of the peoples of the USSR: the overcoming of the territorial historical and cultural approach, associated primarily with the Ukrainian political and intellectual elite, began, and projects appeared to create not individual histories of the republics, but the all-Union history of the USSR.

Education, propaganda, and visual discourse in socialist Romania (1948–1989)

ABSTRACT The official discourse during the communist regime in Romania (1948–1989) has not been paid much attention by researchers and the official visual discourse, addressing adults and children, even less so. My study aims to address this research gap and identify the identity markers of the Romanian territory during socialism by exploring spatial representations and the territorial identity that were produced through official visual imagery. Using qualitative discourse analysis and critical visual methodology, I analyse the visual construction, through discourse, of themes and places created starting with the 1950s and were featured repeatedly during the 1970s and 1980s Romania (the period of national communism), and which constructed and highlighted traits of the country’s territorial identity. To achieve the research aim, I explore three types of research materials and ways of realising spatial education and socialisation through (propaganda) images or a visual pedagogy of space: (1) photographs in three textbooks about the Geography of Romania – a tool in educating people’s representations of their homeland, (2) official (state-produced and distributed) picture postcards reflecting progress during socialist Romania, and (3) comics about work and class identities in Cutezătorii [The Daring Ones] youth magazine – a tool in the edutainment of Romanian communist pioneers. These three official visual discourses were part of a coherent cultural visual discourse about the socialist nation, pervading representations about Romania, about its urban area, and about who the Romanians were meant to have been. This plural discourse was constructed through the visual intertextuality of these three widely distributed media.

Slovak National Communism in Interwar Czechoslovakia

Abstract Slovak national communism as a specific approach to the problem of Czech-Slovak relations gained a significant position within the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia soon after its establishment in 1921. This article analyzes the foundations of this phenomenon and the evolving attitudes of the first generation of Slovak communist intellectuals and Party functionaries. The article’s primary focus is on the Slovak communists’ views regarding the official state doctrine of a unified Czechoslovak nation, Czech-Slovak relations, and the issue of Slovak autonomy. The study highlights the significant external influences, particularly the directives of the Communist International and the pre-existing national stereotypes, that shaped the worldview and nationalist tendencies of Slovak communists.

Attitude of the Kremlin towards “heresy” shown by J. Paleckis in 1946–1950

The aim of this article is, referring to the documents from Russian State Archive of Social Political History and other sources, to reveal how the leaders of the Central Committee of the All-Soviet Union Communist party (bolsheviks) and officers from the Central Committee apparatus valued manifestations of national communism demonstrated by J. Paleckis and his conflicts concerning the issues of sovietization of Lithuania with A. Sniečkus. The other purpose of this paper is to find out whether J. Paleckis, emphasizing specific conditions in Lithuania and wishing to mitigate the course of sovietization, received any support from the leaders in the Kremlin; why A. Sniečkus, who used to criticize J. Paleckis, did not try to remove him from the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Lithuanian Communist Party or dismiss him from the position of the chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic. This article presents efforts made by J. Paleckis in order to find allies in Moscow, establish patron-client type relationship with Andrei Zhdanov, a secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Soviet Union Communist party (bolsheviks). The analysis of the sources allows us to draw some conclusions. It could be maintained that the secretaries of the Central Committee of the All-Soviet Union Communist party (bolsheviks) and leaders of divisions of the Central Committee apparatus closely watched the conflict displayed between J. Paleckis and A. Sniečkus and the majority of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Lithuanian Communist party (bolsheviks) led by the latter. These communists were anxious for unhealthy working climate in the Central Committee of the Lithuanian Communist party (bolsheviks). J. Paleckis‘s political conflicts were caused by manifestation of his national communism ideology, tendency to take care of local interests and his intersection with strict Marxist classic position taken by A. Sniečkus and by majority of other members of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Lithuanian Communist party (bolsheviks). It could be stated that political “heresy” of J. Paleckis, who was involved into a risky political games behind the scenes in order to make efforts and mitigate the course of sovietization policy, and his proposals to write into the agenda some elements of national communism seemed to the leaders of the Central Committee of the All-Soviet Union Communist party (bolsheviks) not just unnecessary but even hazardous. J. Paleckis’s attitude did not comply with provisions and interests of the authorities in the Kremlin, therefore, his efforts were not supported and were valued only negatively. On the other hand, the line of sovietization of Lithuania, to which A. Sniečkus adhered and his methods of governing the party, substantially coincided with the principal position of the authorities of the USSR, as well as with the general line of the Communist party, and, therefore, a prospect of losing the post of the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Lithuanian Communist party was negligible. J. Paleckis‘s efforts to compete with A. Sniečkus strengthened the authority of the latter. The first secretary of the Central Committee of the Lithuanian Communist party deliberately avoided taking considerable sanctions against J. Paleckis, he did not seek to dismiss J. Paleckis from the position occupied. This would have not been beneficial to A. Sniečkus, because a potential strike from Moscow could be directed against J. Paleckis, a “nationalist” and “heretic”. If J. Paleckis had been removed from the political arena, nobody would have covered A. Sniečkus against potential Moscow repressions. Continuous stress caused by confrontation with J. Paleckis allowed A. Sniečkus to manifest himself as a flawless implementer of political line of the Centre and, because of this, to enhance his position as the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Lithuanian Communist party.

“Raiders of the past”: Bulgarian state Security’s cultural historical intelligence in service of Regime’s quest for “socialist patriotism”

ABSTRACT The essential purpose of this article is to revisit the functions and role of the Bulgarian State Security’s Department XIV, also known as the Cultural Historical Intelligence Department (CHI or Kulturno istorichesko razuznavane). This analysis examines how the department served as a policy support tool for the regime’s pursuit of legitimacy in the late 1970s. It also explores how the department supported cultural nationalism while combatting ‘ideological subversion.’ This overview aims to add to a more nuanced understanding of the foreign intelligence apparatuses’ roles and functions in the former Eastern Bloc totalitarian states in the shadow of their Soviet counterpart. In this case, nuances are sought to improve understanding of Todor Zhivkov’s totalitarian regime’s inception and instrumentalization of CHI in the quest for internal and external credibility and prestige while attempting to trace a path to a unique form of national communism.

The Red Thread: The Passaic Textile Strike

The Red Thread: The Passaic Textile Strike

Khrushchev as National Communist

Khrushchev as National Communist

Making Sense of the Violent Past: War Veterans’ Organizations in Post-Stalinist Czechoslovakia

The article examines the de-Stalinization of war veterans’ organizations in Czechoslovakia. Building on testimonies and journalistic works concerning the victims of Stalinist purges and persecution and the attempts to rehabilitate them, the author elaborates her argument with the case study of the prominent war victims’ organization “Association of Antifascist Fighters”. During Stalinism, all veterans who had not fought side by side with the Soviet Union were treated with suspicion and often expelled from the veterans’ association. In the framework of the reform socialist experiment of the 1960s, the country's Stalinist heritage of violence was largely rejected. What made the Czechoslovak reform socialist approach unique was its distancing from the Soviet influence on Czechoslovak communist tradition. In this way, Stalinism, and the violence that accompanied it, was turned into a Soviet matter, while the national communist tradition was to be cured of the effects of this influence.

The TWENTIETH-CENTURY Colonialism within Ukrainian Academic and Public Discourse in the Era of Independence

The article analyses the notion post-, anti- colonialism in Ukrainian political and public discourse since 1991. The author focuses on the debate about coloniality and its reflections on Ukrainian political thought in ХХ century. The first part of the article devotes to the problems of applying postcolonial theories to the Ukrainian context and the specifics of the relationship between the Soviet Union’s center and the national republics that represented the periphery. The second part analyses the influence of the legacy of Ukrainian national communists on the notion of colonialism in contemporary Ukrainian historiography, while the third part focus on the processes of decolonization represented in public discourse. Finally, the author analyses how Euromaidan launched the politics of decommunization and how it affected the post-Soviet space.

Perceptions of the bolshevik danger at the western border of Romania in the interwar period

At the western border of Romania, the communist-Bolshevik ideology made its presence felt at the end of 1918 on the Hungarian chain, in the conditions of ideological turmoil of this type generated by the Bolshevik socialist group in Budapest formed around Kun Béla. In Oradea there was a socialist group even before the First World War. Its leader was Katz Béla in the fall of 1918. Bolshevik ideas were often spotted in the county in the immediate future, facilitating the formation of a fairly important communist group throughout the interwar period. At the end of 1919, the socialist leader Eugen Rozvany, recently returned from the front, a member of the Socialist Party of Transylvania and Banat, made his presence felt in Oradea. He joined the communist movement in 1920, where he held an important position until his departure to the USSR in 1932, placing himself at the head of the Bihor and even national communist movement. He was the one who seriously imprinted the communist movement in Bihor and beyond. Breiner Bela was added immediately. Along with them, new leaders were formed who turned to communism in a very short time, such as Sándkovitz Sándor (Alexandru Sencovici) and Mogyorós Sándor (Alexandru Moghioroş). Oradea and Bihor played an important role in the national communist movement. This is demonstrated by the fact that after the Second Congress of the Communist Party of Romania, held in 1922, the communist movement in the country was organized into eight regional secretariats. One of them was in Oradea. The Communist Party of Romania, the Bihor county organization, was a political structure overwhelmingly dominated in the interwar period, as can be seen, by members of the Hungarian and Jewish communities. They made the law in the organization, and if someone did not agree with its conduct, he was quickly shot dead. This is also the case of Eugen Rozvany, who, when he had a different position from the local communists on “the self-determination of the peoples of imperialist Romania”, he supported the idea of the Romanian national state, was unmasked, removed from the party, whose fate was sealed.

The “Pure” Romanian: (Re)writing Romanian National Identity in Dan Puric’s Romanian Soul

This paper investigates Romania’s auto-image as described by Dan Puric in his book Suflet Românesc ( Romanian Soul ). By employing imagology, this article first shows how Romanian national identity is constructed in opposition to Western culture and modernity. And by drawing on imagology and Hayden White’s approach to historiography, I provide a discursive analysis of the Romanian auto-image provided in the text. I show that Puric’s writing of Romanian national identity is a Romantic one rendered in the anarchist mode. The author alleges that Romanians are born with a “Romanian soul,” which guarantees their adherence to a Christian Orthodox worldview, one to which Western culture and modernity are inimical. The dominant metaphor used to represent Romanianness is the folktale, whose main traits—being set in illo tempore , a focus on a stark moral antithesis between good and evil where the former prevails, and favouring intuition over reason—are allegedly shared by “pure” Romanians. After revealing the pillars of Romanianness in Puric’s view, I trace the intellectual and cultural continuities between his Romanian auto-image and Romania’s far-right views on nation and nationhood, as well as the national communist view on Romanianness. As far as the former is concerned, I highlight the structural similarities between Puric’s nationalism and anti-Semitic discourse. With respect to the latter, I draw attention to Puric’s reliance on two of the several national communist myths identified by Romanian historian Lucian Boia: the myth of continuity and the myth of conspiracy. Puric’s book dovetails with national communist discourse by postulating the alleged continuity between the peoples and cultures that have existed in Romania’s current geographic location across the centuries and retains its communist fears of foreign conspiracy.

Egoism and Class Consciousness, or: Why Marx and Engels Wrote So Much About Stirner

AbstractInterest in The German Ideology has largely focused on the ‘chapter’ on Feuerbach—invariably the focus of the various abridgements in which the work is usually read. But this does not reflect the weighting of the text itself, which is dominated by Marx and Engels's critique of the radical egoist philosopher Max Stirner. Which begs the question: just why did they spend so much time and effort writing about Stirner? In this paper, I will provide an answer—which comes down to three related points. The first concerns the critique of reason; the second, egoistic self-interest. On both of these two points, Stirner makes a novel contribution—contributions which Marx and Engels feel clear affinities with. However, Stirner can ultimately be seen to get these two points, as it were, the wrong way around. This then leads to the third point: Stirner's misunderstanding of the nature of Communism. To clarify the nature of Communism, then, Marx and Engels were compelled to turn Stirner on his head.

Hétköznapok a Lónyay Utcai Református Gimnázium „Soli Deo Gloria” Bethlen Gábor Collegiumában az 1930-as években

"Everyday Life in the „Soli Deo Gloria” Gábor Bethlen Collegium of the Lónyay Street Reformed High School in the 1930s. The history of the Reformed youth organization called „Soli Deo Gloria” is a quite well-known part of Hungarian church history. Yet, this historical interest has avoided presenting the everyday life and work in the local communities of the „Soli Deo Gloria”. In this article, we examine the usual activities of the Gábor Bethlen Collegium of the Lónyay Street Reformed High School in the 1930s. The records of the weekly gatherings in the first half of the decade offer a unique possibility to gain a deep insight into the personal connections and dynamics or the topics of the gatherings. The youth community discussed almost every „hot topic” of the pre-war Hungarian society such as political issues (national socialism, communism, fascism, or independency and loyalty to the Habsburg dynasty) or social and theological problems. Thus, the local level of the youth organization could successfully educate a committed Christian and socially engaged new generation of intellectuals. Keywords: youth organization, Soli Deo Gloria, political issues, Calvinism "

Economic Strategies and Immigration in the Soviet Union’s Western Borderlands: Lithuania, Latvia and Belorussia in the 1950s and 1960s

The article looks at Soviet territorial planning from the perspective of Lithuania, Latvia and Belorussia, the western frontier republics of the USSR. It explores why the impact of Soviet long-term territorial planning on economic and social development and ethnic composition was more significant in Soviet Lithuania than in neighbouring Latvia and suggests two reasons for this. First, the purge of Latvian leaders in 1959 stopped the preparation of strategies oriented to the republic’s interests. Second, the ‘bourgeois’ intellectual legacy developed back in the 1930s was brought into play at the end of the 1950s and used in support of national communist ideas in Soviet Lithuania.

Compensation Claims of the Hohenzollern

The article focuses on the debate over compensation from Brandenburg, sought by the current head of the House of Hohenzollern, Prince Georg Friedrich. The legal basis for these claims is the Compensation Act, which guaranteed adequate compensation to owners who had been subjected to expropriation by the Soviet Military Administration in Germany in 1945. In 1994, however, those who collaborated with National Socialist or Communist regimes or encouraged others to do so were excluded from this law. The key question is whether the then Crown Prince Wilhelm had significantly aided and abetted the Nazi regime. This would preclude compensation. The main sources are expert assessments commissioned by both parties to the dispute to be prepared by reputable specialists. The undisputed facts are presented on the one hand, and the controversial assessments are discussed on the other. In addition, the political and legal reappraisal of the dispute is also addressed. The proceedings allow conclusions to be drawn about the culture of expert witnesses in the Federal Republic of Germany and the working conditions of historians.

The Ukrainophilism of P.E. Shelest in the Interpretation of Modern Ukrainian Historiography

The author of this article explores the discussion in contemporary Ukrainian historiography of the “Ukrainophilia” of the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, Pyotr Efimovich Shelest (1963‒1972). Ukrainian historians are trying to determine the extent to which the Soviet leader proved to be a consistent follower of the political line of the Union centre, the areas in which he defended the interests of the republic, and whether he should be considered a representative of National Communism. The purpose of the article is to analyse the key provisions of and evidence for the conception of Shelest's “Ukrainophilism” and “localism” developed by Ukrainian scholars. Particular attention is given to the conclusions of Yu.I. Shapoval on the inconsistencies in Shelest and his actions, his peculiar dual loyalty (all-union and republican), and his constant manoeuvring between two political discourses (centralist and anti-centralist). According to the historian, Shelest's views were formed during the Stalinist era. This point of view has been widely accepted in contemporary Ukrainian literature. The article specifies that Shelest as a politician was a product of Soviet Ukrainianisation of the 1920s. It was at this time that the seeds of the paradox that contemporary Ukrainian scholars have been writing about were sown.

Rewarding Members of the Resistance Movement in Belgium in the Context of Public Diplomacy of the USSR during the Cold War

The article deals with the problem of implementing the Soviet policy of “soft power” in the conditions of the Cold War on the example of awarding Belgian participants in the anti-fascist Resistance by the Soviet government combat awards. On the basis of official documents identified in the RGANI, GARF and RGALI, it is shown what role the Soviet “award diplomacy” played in the construction of a collective memory of the Second World War in Belgium and the joint participation of Belgian and Soviet citizens in the Resistance. The initiators of the awards for Belgian citizens formally and informally were such quasi-public organizations as the Soviet Committee of War Veterans, the Union of Writers of the USSR, the Soviet Committee for Cultural Relations with Compatriots Abroad (Rodina society). At the same time, the candidates were coordinated with the national communist parties, which could also initiate the award. The final decision-making took place at the level of the Central Committee of the CPSU, in agreement with the Soviet embassy. During the Cold War period, 4 actions of rewarding the Belgians took place, as a result of which 23 members of the anti-fascist Resistance received Soviet military awards. Among them was the national Belgian heroine — the Russian emigrant M. Shafrova-Marutaeva. As a result of the analysis of award campaigns, the author comes to the conclusion that, being part of a complex of memorial events, they served as an effective tool for broadcasting the official Soviet policy of remembrance of the war to the West. The representation of the image of the winner in these actions emphasized the symbolic legitimacy, political authority and even moral superiority of the Soviet Union in the international arena.

National Communist Parties In Ukraine: Ukrainian Historiography

The article attempts to systematize the works of Ukrainian historians devoted to the National Communist Parties of Ukraine. The author shows the peculiarities of perception by Ukrainian researchers of the Ukrainian Communist Party (borotbists) and the Ukrainian Communist Party (Ukapists), depending on their views and the time of writing. There are three stages in the extensive Ukrainian historiography on this issue. The first works were written by contemporaries of these events and, in turn, are divided into works created by historians in exile and studies by historians — supporters of the Soviet government. The second stage of historiography was marked by the unification of the picture of the revolutionary past within the framework of the official Soviet doctrine. The third stage of historiography — the period of independence of Ukraine — is characterized by increased interest in the topic and positive assessments of the National Communist parties.

The Use of Language in the Making of Romanian Nationalism from Dimitrie Cantemir and Mihai Eminescu to the Iron Guard and National Communism

AbstractThis article explores the role that language played in the development of national identity in Romanian cultural discourses from the writings of Dimitrie Cantemir in the 18thcentury to those of Mihai Eminescu in the second part of the 19thcentury. The article also makes use of the theories of Daco-Roman continuity and the theory of Latin descent. Seen in relation to the Latinization of Romanian that occurred in the 18thand the 19thcenturies, these concepts are considered as contributing to the emergence of the so-called Romanian exceptionality. Cantemir’s and Eminescu’s writings are analysed in relation to the rise of fascism in interwar Romania as well as to the transformation of internationalist communism into nationalism after the purges of the 1950s and the re-orientation of the Romanian socialist regime towards the Right. The use of language for political purposes is ultimately considered as one of the elements that contributed to the hold that fascism and nationalism had on the Romanian psyche, so much so that nationalism survived (and was indeed boosted) throughout the socialist period and into post-socialism. The article concludes that this has contributed to the ongoing identity crisis of the national self-image and will continue to do so in the 21stcentury.

Edición y comunismo: Cultura impresa, educación militante y prácticas políticas (México, 1930–1940)

Sebastián Rivera Mir explores the overlap between a Leninist “doctrina del libro”—the belief that spreading Marxist theory led to revolutionary transformation—and Mexico's broader print culture in the 1930s (p. 42). In this carefully researched and elegantly written volume, the world of Communist publishing radiates out from the books themselves to a complex web of editors, printers, vendors, and readers. It was truly transnational, as were parallel editorial traditions throughout Latin America. Europe in general and Moscow in particular were central: for much of the period, the vast majority of Communist books circulating in Mexico were theoretical texts written by Russian (Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Vyacheslav Molotov) and European Marxists and published in Spain. Even as production moved to Mexico in the 1930s, decisions in Moscow often determined which books were published. Thus, the early militant posture of the Comintern's Third Period, its shift to an antifascist Popular Front strategy, and subsequent Soviet purges and the short-lived Soviet-Nazi alliance in the late 1930s inevitably shaped editorial efforts in Mexico. The world of Mexican editorials was also peopled by militants from Europe, Latin America, and the United States, some sent by national Communist parties, some seeking political refuge, and some drawn by the cultural effervescence of Cardenista Mexico. And in turn, Mexican publications crossed porous borders and offset the earlier influence of Spain.The author inserts Mexico's “edición comunista” within a national history and print culture that goes back to nineteenth-century liberalism. The central institutional actors are Mexican: the Mexican Communist Party (PCM), the Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM), the Universidad Obrera de México, the Secretaría de Educación Pública, and unions like the Unión de Obreros de Artes Gráficas. So too are his three case studies, the “no tan rojo” Ediciones Frente Cultural, the PCM's own Editorial Popular, and the semimaverick Editorial América (p. 85). Rivera Mir suggests multiple ways that Mexicans made European texts their own: the decisions of Ediciones Frente Cultural to publish books from a variety of socialist traditions; the golden age of quantity and quality of Marxist book production under Lázaro Cárdenas; the interventions of editors and translators in the prologues, footnotes, and texts of European authors; and the eventual decision of the PCM's Editorial Popular to focus on national affairs and texts written by their own leaders.Nowhere is the narrative richer than in the author's re-creation of editorial networks and the people who participated in them, “desde libreros a escritores, pasando por traductores, dibujantes, distribuidores e impresores,” people who often “se transformaron en activistas incansables” (p. 16). We learn how editor Carlos Rojas Juanco worked without pay and often without eating, and how the young Benita Galeana, then barely literate, sold Communist publications in the Mercado Hidalgo and the Carolina textile factory (a rare glimpse of women in a print world dominated by men). One short chapter re-creates an even more understudied world of print, that of conservative militants and their publishers. The parallel worlds of Communist and conservative print were often antithetical: Luis Islas García left the PCM youth organization to become a militant Catholic and author of anti-Communist books. Rivera Mir makes clear that the world of edición comunista contained all the contradictions of global Communist culture in the 1930s, as when a book by Nikolay Bukharin disappeared from the Ediciones Frente Cultural list of titles in newspaper ads after he was purged in the Soviet Union. Particularly interesting is Rivera Mir's profile of militant bookseller Rodrigo García Treviño, who in his brief role as editor of Editorial América insisted on the right to dissent from the flip-flops of PCM policy.This book about books re-creates the world of edición comunista and also hints at its limits. For example, Rivera Mir observes that many of the books that he painstakingly tracked down had uncut pages or margin notes only in early chapters. The Communist ideal of a militant readership was sometimes at odds with a membership, rural and urban, with limited time and literacy to digest dense Marxist texts (consider the unread books on my shelves). These theoretical books seem mostly divorced from the better known and undoubtedly more accessible forms of Mexico's radical print culture, periodicals like El Machete and illustrated pamphlets and posters. Future research might explore the extent to which editors, press operators, and vendors of these distinct forms of Communist publication overlapped. Similarly, to what extent were prints, songs, and stories, often linked to forms of popular culture, able to convey changing Communist doctrine while balancing indoctrination with the urgencies of socialization and the appeal of nationalism? Edición y comunismo provides a pioneering model and new directions for research on radical print culture.