Revolution and (Post) War, 1917-1922: Spring and Autumn in Europe and the World [1 ed.] 9781003399209, 9781032505961, 9781032505954

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Revolution and (Post) War, 1917–1922

This book focuses on the Russian Revolution of 1917, the legacy of the First World War, and Mussolini and Italian fascism – offering an important overview of the major themes of the early 20th century. Using a methodical approach and employing a wide range of sources, the nine chapters provide a re-analysis and synthesis of these three major subjects and look at how the world was reshaped during the period of 1917–1922. This volume also discusses lesser-known subjects in AngloSaxon historiography: the effects of the Russian Revolution in Spain and in the Islamic world, as well as the consequences of the Portuguese participation in the First World War in Africa, and the German memory of that conflict. By linking these themes, this book sheds a light on how since the early 21st century we have witnessed a rise of populism and extremism. Dealing with one of the most paradigmatic periods of Contemporary History, this book is essential for scholars and students of History, International Relations, Postcolonial Studies, and African Studies programs, as well as librarians and diplomats, and for advanced training institutions, peacebuilding organisations, international NGOs, and the wider public. Clara Isabel Serrano is Invited Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Coimbra and Researcher at the C ­ entre for Interdisciplinary Studies (CEIS20). Her main research areas are the political and cultural history of the 19th and 20th centuries, European perceptions and identities, and didactics of History. Sérgio Neto is Research Fellow at the Centre for Interdisciplinary S­ tudies (CEIS20) and Invited Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Coimbra. His academic background ­ ­includes research experience in several fields of humanities, with emphasis on the (anti)colonial question, the literature of the First World War, and the didactics of History.

Routledge Studies in Cultural History

131  Honor and Shame in Western History Edited by Jörg Wettlaufer, David Nash, and Jan Frode Hatlen 132  Modern Murders The Turn-of-the-Century’s Backlash Against Melodramatic and Sensational Representations of Murder, 1880–1914 Lee Michael-Berger 133  Histories, Adaptations, and Legacies of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy Randal Rogers 134  A History of the Cultural Travels of Energy From Aristotle to the OED Peter Hjertholm 135  Language Change and Nineteenth-Century Science New Words, New Worlds Catherine Watts 136  Eating on the Move From the Eighteenth Century to the Present Edited by Rita d’Errico, Stefano Magagnoli, Peter Scholliers and Peter J. Atkins 137  Revolution and (Post) War, 1917–1922 Spring and Autumn in Europe and the World Edited by Clara Isabel Serrano and Sérgio Neto

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Revolution and (Post) War, 1917–1922 Spring and Autumn in Europe and the World Edited by Clara Isabel Serrano and Sérgio Neto

First published 2024 by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 and by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2024 selection and editorial matter, Clara Isabel Serrano and Sérgio Neto; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Clara Isabel Serrano and Sérgio Neto to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Serrano, Clara Isabel, editor, writer of introduction. | Neto, Sérgio, editor, writer of introduction. Title: Revolution and (post) war, 1917–1922 : spring and autumn in Europe and the world / edited by Clara Isabel Serrano and Sérgio Neto. Description: New York : Routledge, 2024. | Series: Routledge studies in cultural history | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2023007653 (print) | LCCN 2023007654 (ebook) | ISBN 9781032505961 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032505954 (paperback) | ISBN 9781003399209 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: History, Modern—20th century. | Soviet Union—History—Revolution, 1917–1921—Influence. | World War, 1914–1918—Influence. | Mussolini, Benito, 1883–1945—Influence. | World politics—1900–1945. Classification: LCC D421 .R45 2024 (print) | LCC D421 (ebook) | DDC 909.82/1—dc23/eng/20230322 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023007653 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023007654 ISBN: 978-1-032-50596-1 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-50595-4 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-39920-9 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003399209 Typeset in Sabon LT Pro by codeMantra

Contents

List of illustrations vii Acknowledgementsix

Introduction: Spring and Autumn

1

CLARA ISABEL SERRANO AND SÉRGIO NETO

1 Debates and controversies. Historiographies around 1917

7

NICOLAS WERTH

2 The influence of the Russian Revolution in Spain

23

JOSEP SÁNCHEZ I CERVELLÓ

3 The impact of the Russian Revolution across the Muslim world: From the winds of freedom to geopolitical changes

45

JAUME CAMPS GIRONA

4 The most important of the arts: The October Revolution and film production

64

SÉRGIO DIAS BRANCO

5 1918, a decisive year – five core processes for the advancement of the October Revolution RUI BEBIANO

74

vi Contents 6 The historical legacy of the Great War

84

GERHARD HIRSCHFELD

7 The First World War in Mozambique: Cultural encounters between civilians and militaries

96

ANA PAULA PIRES

8 The (re)discussion of the Portuguese colonial heritage after the end of the First World War

112

JOSÉ LUÍS LIMA GARCIA

9 Benito Mussolini, the first modern dictator: Child of Italy’s war? 121 RICHARD BOSWORTH

References137 Contributors’ biographies 155 Index159

Illustrations

Figures 4.1 4.2 4.3

Zvenigora. Aleksandr Dovjenko, 1928 Public domain67 Liudyna z Kinoaparatom. Dziga Vertov, 1929 Public domain68 Jim Shvante. Mikhail Kalatozov, 1930 Public domain69

Tables 2.1 7.1

CNT membership in 1931 Mozambique. White Foreign Population, 1912

26 103

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the following people: All the contributors to this volume, for sharing with us their research developed over several years of work and their knowledge. It was the discussions, the exchange of ideas, the debate, and the friendship fostered with them all over the years that have led us to this book. We are also grateful to the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) and the Engenheiro António de Almeida Foundation involved in the funding of the several conferences that resulted in this publication. A special mention to José Oliveira Martins, Coordinator of the ­Scientific Board of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies (CEIS20) at the ­University of Coimbra (UC), and to Luís Trindade, its Vice-Coordinator, for encouraging us to dream bigger. Their unflagging support throughout this process, advice, and suggestions have been fundamental. A word of appreciation and recognition is due to António Rafael Amaro and João Paulo Avelãs Nunes, Coordinators of the CEIS20 Working Group on “History, Memory and Public Policies”, for their willing availability, and for their determined support of our ideas and proposals. Our thanks and indebtedness to Olga Solovova for reading and reviewing the texts and for the suggestions made. It is to Olga – the science manager who daily welcomes us at CEIS20 – whom we owe much of the encouragement for the achievement of this and many other projects in recent times. To CEIS20, the home that encourages us to think, dream, and dare. And, of course, special thanks also to our editor Max Novick and all the team at Routledge – Studies in Modern History – who have made this book possible. We are immensely grateful to Max Novick for his interest in this proposal and his openness to having the book project evaluated. And for the way, he followed through the peer evaluation and the editing processes.

x Acknowledgements Last, but not least, we would like to make a special mention to our families and close friends for giving us, along this (and other) paths, their support and love: Mi and Luiz, Belita and Zé Manel, Gonçalo, Cristina and Maria, David and Patrícia, Cláudia Santos, Manuel Correia, Susana Cardoso, Sandra and Sérgio Bernardino, Rosa Gomes, and Julião S. Sousa. This book is funded by national funds through the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), within the scope of the project UIDB/00460/2020.

Introduction Spring and Autumn Clara Isabel Serrano and Sérgio Neto

On 1 October 1961, the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Yevgeny Mravinsky premiered Dmitri Shostakovich’s 12th Symphony, The Year 1917. The piece was written to commemorate the 22nd Congress of the Communist Party. Though markedly descriptivist at times, this composition was dedicated to Lenin and inspired by the October Revolution. However, the 12th Symphony possesses neither the poignancy of its ­predecessor – the 11th Symphony subtitled The Year 1905 – nor that of its successor, the 13th Symphony, Babi Yar.1 While the first opus deals with the so-called dress rehearsal of the 1905 Revolution, and, according to some authors, invokes the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, the polemic Babi Yar Symphony opens alluding to the 1941 homonymous Nazi massacre, the death of Anne Frank, and the Dreyfus Affair, and then mentions several aspects of Soviet history and everyday life, such as queues in shops and fears. Moreover, the almost cinematic quality of Shostakovich’s music not only reflects the impact of the seventh art as it enlightens some of the key events of the 20th century. In any case, The Year 1917 leaves no one indifferent throughout its four movements, which take the listener to meet the revolutionary Petrograd, its wintry landscapes, the shots fired by the cruiser Aurora – an echo of the Potemkin – culminating in the “dawn of humanity”. And this reference to dawn and, by extension, to twilight accurately illustrates a rather strange sensation perceived by the contemporaries of the early 20th century,2 even beyond Russia: after all, was it Spring or Autumn?3 If we were to cast a dispassionate look at the years of the First World War (1914–1918), the numbers (10 million dead, 20 million wounded, 6 million prisoners, and 10 million refugees throughout Europe), later increased by the pneumonic influenza pandemic, seem to leave no doubt as to the rigours of the season. In fact, the first decades of the 20th century were, for Europe and for the rest of the world, a glimpse of what would be, in the words of Ian Kershaw, a journey “to hell and back”.4 Moreover, the aftershock of the Russian October Revolution – which would become a subject of study for DOI: 10.4324/9781003399209-1

2  Clara Isabel Serrano and Sérgio Neto historians and other social scientists, as well as a topic for writers, film and television producers, and other media – can be compared with the shock waves caused by the French Revolution of 1789–1799. The Storming of the Bastille, in Paris, and of the Winter Palace, in Petrograd, “became the symbols of these revolutions, both of which occurred in the largest European states of that time and shook profoundly the existing social and political orders”.5 The “red peril” and the experience of a war of enormous dimensions, which led many countries to struggle both politically and economically, prompted a renewed political and social order in several countries across Europe and in the world in the 1920s. Phrases repeated in oft-quoted books give an account of the ambiguity of “Spring and Autumn”. As early as 1914, a few hours before Britain entered the war, Edward Grey, the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, had been reported to declare that “the lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime”.6 An optimistic H. G. Welles, in his turn, described it as the “war that will end war”.7 At the end of the conflict, while Ferdinand Foch, Generalissimo of the Western Front, pragmatically characterised the Treaty of Versailles not as a peace treaty but rather as “an armistice for 20 years”,8 the pessimistic pages of Oswald Spengler decreed “the decline of the West”.9 With a more sophisticated approach, writers Thomas Mann10 and Joseph Roth11 would look nostalgically at the period before 1914. Stefan Zweig would recall the “world of yesterday” or the “Golden Age of Security”,12 known in France as the Belle Époque and in Britain as the Edwardian Era.13 However, it was in the tumult of the Roaring Twenties, when, according to Ernest Hemingway, “Paris [was] a moveable feast”,14 that a “lost generation” of writers and artists sought to interpret the new times (of fragmentation and massification). Take, for example, Les Six [the six] French composers whose music evokes the past but also looks to the future in an imperfect synthesis. Take T. S. Elliot’s poem The Waste Land, which was published in 1922.15 See the ironic, yet perceptive remark by the Swissborn writer Blaise Cendrars after announcing the “Seven Wonders of the Modern World”: “I still know 700 or 800 wonders that are born and die every day”.16 In reality, according to a famous essay by Leonard Bernstein, the symphonies of Gustav Mahler – a strong influence on Shostakovich – had already foreseen what was to come, and not only in terms of artistic expression with their idiosyncratic way of interpreting the official culture of the late Habsburg world.17 Mahler died in 1911. In the field of politics, France, Great Britain, and the United States of ­America’s victory in the War, as well as the emergence of the League of Nations (LoN), did not necessarily result in the triumph of democracy. On the contrary, post-war difficulties weakened them, which was also presented as an Autumn of its own. And so, Mussolini’s Italy, after the

Introduction: Spring and Autumn  3 so-called “March on Rome”, presented itself as Spring and marked this moment as the First Year of the calendar, based on a certain idea of renewal reminiscent of the French Revolution, in an appropriation of the sacred by the political.18 However, the apparent prosperity of the Roaring Twenties would soon come to an end. The collapse of the New York stock market dragged the world economy into the Great Depression, whose effects lasted until the early 1940s in most countries. At the same time, the rise of authoritarian regimes with revanchist desires and the accumulation of multiple economic, social, and political tensions transmuted the post-war environment into a pre-war one. Spring soon became Autumn. It is worth recalling that “Spring and Autumn”, the name of a period of early Chinese history, is at the core of the modern political experience. We should keep in mind the Revolutions of 1848, known as “The Springtime of Peoples”, and more recently the “Arab Spring”. In fact, the Portuguese Revolution of 25 April 1974, the so-called “Carnation Revolution” or simply April (to open, aperire, in Latin), not only occurred in Spring but also the flowers of the season have since become its symbol. Likewise, the Roman Floralia Festival and other pagan ceremonies that were revived on the May Day of flowers and bonfires also coincide with the First of May, International Worker’s Day. Needless to say how French Revolution promoted the renewal of society through the Tree of Liberty’s sign. Other examples could be added, but it is important to stress, however obvious it may seem, that there is no determinism implying that revolutions must occur in the Spring. It is the symbolism that matters. And so, each October has its own May… or April. Thus, based on a series of texts by renowned authors, the aim of this book is to analyse and discuss one of the most decisive periods of the 20th century, mediated by the Russian Revolutions of 1917, the end of the First World War, and by Mussolini’s political rise. Likewise, keeping in mind the colonial question, especially for the Portuguese case, as well as the complex issue of the historical legacy of the First World War, this book seeks to frame various themes that stem both from original research work and from synthesis and historiographical discussion. The nine texts that make up this volume provide an overview of a time of transition, an equinox of changes and impacts still apparent today, worthy of revisiting in a problematising and inclusive fashion. The first text, by Nicolas Werth, entitled “Debates and controversies. Historiographies around 1917”, seeks to renew the debate around the October Revolution. This event is often seen as the beginning of a “shorter 20th century” – as Eric Hobsbawm described it, in opposition to “the long 19th century”19 –, which ended in 1991 with the implosion of the Soviet bloc. Drawing on a wide range of works and a profound knowledge of the subject, the co-author of The Black Book of Communism20 sets

4  Clara Isabel Serrano and Sérgio Neto out to critically revisit the so-called “liberal” and “revisionist” schools, as well as “post-modern” historians, and some of the most important debates regarding Red October. For their part, the Catalan historians Josep Sánchez i Cervelló and Jaume Camps Girona in their chapters, “The influence of the Russian Revolution in Spain” and “The impact of the Russian Revolution across the Muslim world: from the winds of freedom to geopolitical changes” try to circumscribe yet simultaneously expand the theme. Hence, their decision to review the turbulent years in Spain that preceded the outbreak of the Civil War and their attempt to understand the expansion of the emancipatory revolutionary ideals in the world still under European colonial rule. The fourth text, written by Sérgio Dias Branco, “The most important of the arts: the October Revolution and film production”, represents an incursion into the seventh art not restricted to chronology, since it reflects on the repercussions of the revolutionary years in the following Soviet film production. In this sense, the following text, authored by Rui Bebiano, “1918, a decisive year – five core processes for the advancement of the October Revolution”, links Werth’s and Branco’s texts, analysing the rapid concentration of political power in the hands of the Bolsheviks. We should also keep in mind the entry into force of the new Constitution, the organisation of the Red Army before the Brest-Litovsk Treaty, and the beginning of the period of “war communism”. On the other hand, it is important to stress the new type of legislation on labour and workers, the launching of the autonomous organisation of women aimed at reclassifying their social place, and, finally, the beginning of the establishment of a policy for the arts and culture. As regards the texts dealing with the First World War, the three contributions include one by Gerhard Hirschfeld, who discusses “The historical legacy of the Great War” based on its “industrial” and mass character, which paved the way for the “age of extremes”, to quote again Eric H ­ obsbawm. Next, Ana Paula Pires, “The First World War in Mozambique: cultural encounters between civilians and militaries”, and José Luís Lima Garcia, “The (re)discussion of Portuguese colonial heritage after the end of the First World War”, insert the theme of Lusitanian overseas into the larger context of the international actors of European imperialism. In fact, the colonial issue was for Portugal both a major constraint and an important mobilising factor. Entering the war on the side of the allies, by the hand of Great Britain, was a triple guarantee for the country: (1) against Germany’s territorial pretensions, (2) against British temptations to gamble with the Portuguese colonies, and (3) to maintain Portuguese pretensions in the post-war colonial scenario. Last but not least, Richard Bosworth in “Benito Mussolini, the first modern dictator: child of Italy’s war?” addresses the premise of Mussolini

Introduction: Spring and Autumn  5 as being the Prime Minister of Italy since October 1922, the undisputed leader of the regime since January 1925 and the first modern European dictator, as well as the first fascist and the first totalitarian. But what did all those positions mean in the circumstances of the 1920s and in a country that had experienced a vittoria mutilata? Nowadays, when populism is being revived around the world, which lessons can be taken away from the Italian case study? These are the questions that underlie Bosworth’s chapter. In fact, in the first decades of the 21st century, the world has witnessed a rise in populist speech and exclusionary politics.21 Some have argued, always recalling the famous saying of Karl Marx about History repeating itself, the scenarios of 1914, 1918, 1929, 1936, 1938, and so on. Others have pointed out Cassandra’s myth, underlining the fact that people usually don’t learn from history, while others suggested a sort of a spiral shape for the “course of history”, mirroring the ideas of Giambattista Vico. In a word, revisiting one of the most decisive moments of the early 20th century, this book also intends to understand the impact and the profound changes that underlie our own times of equinox. Notes 1 See Laurel E. Fay, Shostakovich: A Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). 2 Modris Eksteins, Rites of Spring. The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age (London: Black Swan, 1990). 3 See Phillippe Wolf’s play on words from Johan Huizinga’s book concerning the late Middle Ages. Respectively: Automne du Moyen Âge ou Printemps des temps nouveaux? [Autumn of the Middle Ages or Spring of the New Times?] (Paris: Aubier, 1986) and The Autumn of Middle Ages (Chicago: University Chicago Press, [1919] 1997). 4 Ian Kershaw, To Hell and Back, 1914–1949 (London: Penguin Books, 2016). 5 Anton Bebler, “On the Global Impact of the Russian October Revolution of 1917”, Prispevki za novejšo zgodovino, 58 (2018): 11. 6 Edward Grey, Twenty-Five Years 1892–1916 (New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1925), 20. 7 H. G. Wells, The War That Will End War (London: F. & C. Palmer, 1914). 8 Colin S. Gray, War, Peace and International Relations (London: Routledge, 2007), 99–114. According to John Keynes, it was a “Carthaginian peace”. 9 Oswald Spengler, Der Untergang des Abendlandes, vol. 1 - Umrisse einer ­Morphologie der Weltgeschichte [The Decline of the West: Form and A ­ ctuality] (Vienna: Braumüller, 1918). 10 Thomas Mann, Der Zauberberg [The Magic Mountain] (Berlin: S. Fischer, 1924). 11 Joseph Roth, Radetzkymarsch [Radetsky March] (Berlin: G. Kiepenheuer, 1932). 12 Stefan Zweig, Die Welt von Gestern [The World of Yesterday] (Stockholm: Bermann-Fischer, 1944).

6  Clara Isabel Serrano and Sérgio Neto 13 See Charles Emerson, 1913: The World before the Great War (London: P ­ enguin Books | Vintage, 2014). 14 Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast (New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1964). 15 T. S. Elliot, The Waste Land (New York: Boni and Liveright, 1922). 16 W. Laurent, “Blaise Cendrars, baroudeur optimiste”, in Le Temps Beaux-Arts (12 décembre 2014). Accessed 29 December 2022. https://www.letemps.ch/ culture/blaise-cendrars-baroudeur-optimiste. 17 Leonard Bernstein, “Mahler: His time has come”, in High Fidelity Magazine (16 April 1967). Accessed 30 December 2022. https://www.loc.gov/resource/ musbernstein.100020134.0?r=-0.067,0.285,1.139,0.461,0. 18 Roger Griffin, Fascism. An Introduction to Comparative Fascist Studies (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2018), 42. 19 See Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes. The Short Twentieth Century, 1914–1991 (London: Abacus, 1994). 20 See Stéphane Cortois, Nicolas Werth, Andrzej Paczkowski, Karel Bartosek and Jean-Louis Panné, The Black Book of Communism. Crimes, Terror, Repression (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1999). 21 See Michael Cox, “The Rise of Populism and the Crisis of Globalization: Brexit, Trump and Beyond”, Irish Studies in International Affairs, vol. 28 (2017): 9–17.

1 Debates and controversies. Historiographies around 1917 Nicolas Werth

In the introduction to the “summary” of the Russian Revolution of 1917, Critical Companion to the Russian Revolution, published under his direction, on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the Russian Revolution in 1997, the British historian Edward Acton stated: The Russian revolution occupies the strategic centre of contemporary history. The consequences of this revolution were immense for the whole 20th century history. The new state that emerged from this revolution immediately challenged the Western world dominated by the capitalist system, immediately transforming the international order.1 This was written twenty years ago, at a time when the whole world was still reeling from the collapse and implosion of the Soviet Union and, more broadly, of communism as a system – a system under which, we recall, half of European lived. I am still not sure if after twenty-five years, in 2022, one can continue to write that the “Russian revolution occupies the strategic centre of contemporary history”. The bipolar system of the Cold War has given way to a multipolar world and the political acuity of the Russian revolution of 1917, still effective until 1997 (cf. the worldwide success of the Black Book of Communism, a book in which I was heavily involved), has now largely faded away (except perhaps in Latin America, the last place where debates on communism, or rather anti-capitalism, are still relevant). This is evidenced by the relatively small number, on a worldwide scale, of scientific colloquia, or public commemorations, dedicated to the R ­ ussian Revolution of 1917. First of all, it must be stressed, in Russia, where the centenary of the Revolution is not commemorated, either at a political or scientific level. The 1917 Revolution is a deeply disturbing historical episode in Vladimir Putin’s Russia. According to the official analysis, it is a “tragic” moment in Russian history, a moment of weakening and destabilisation of the Russian state (embodied by the 300-year-old Romanov DOI: 10.4324/9781003399209-2

8  Nicolas Werth dynasty, today perfectly virtuous, Tsar Nicholas II had been – I  remind you  – canonised a few years ago as a “Holy Martyr” by the Russian ­Orthodox Church). The year 1917 is also a moment of “rupture” and “disorientation” of the nation, of society, and of the Russian people, paving the way to a terrible civil war, to new “troubled times” as Russian had already experienced throughout its multi-secular history – in the mid-13th century, when Kievan Rus was annihilated by the Mongol invasions, in the early 17th century when Moscow Russia, following a serious dynastic crisis, was almost annihilated by the expanding Kingdom of Poland. ­ ovember, ­Significantly, the great national commemorative holiday of 7 N the most important Soviet holiday, in honour of the Great October Socialist Revolution, was abolished and replaced (on a small scale) by the National Unity holiday celebrated on 4 November. It celebrates the 4th of N ­ ovember 1612, the liberation of Moscow from the Poles in… 1612. The meaning of this new commemoration is evidently the exaltation of Great Russia throughout the centuries, of constancy of the Russian State “united” with its people in the defence of the homeland. Today, 9 May 1945, the feast of the ­Victory in the Great Patriotic War has eclipsed the 7 November 1917 (25   ­October in the Julian calendar), the triumph of the Great October Socialist Revolution. What an extraordinary turn of events! Here was a revolution – the 1917 October Revolution, of course, not the February one! – described as “The Great October Socialist Revolution” being given the status, for some 60 years – from the end of the 1920s to the end of the 1980s, of the “most important event in the history of mankind”, an event that “opened a new era of the history of mankind” – that of socialism and freedom, not only (almost forgotten), but suddenly described as a “tragedy”, even worse, as betrayal, in the country where it occurred and which had praised it! In his speech to the Federation Council in July 2012, Vladimir Putin stated in no uncertain terms: The Bolsheviks committed an act of national treason in October 1917 (…). They made Russia lose the victory that was already within the grasp of Russian people in the Great War (…). They robbed the Russian people of the victory it deserved.2 It is true, Putin added, “that they atoned for their fault before the country in the course Great Patriotic War thanks to the foresight of their leader, Stalin!”3 What a turn-up for the history books, indeed! Stalin would have atoned for Lenin’s mistake… I will stop here. My proposal is not so much to deal with the political uses and memoirs of 1917 in Russia today, a fascinating subject in itself,

Debates and controversies. Historiographies around 1917  9 but nevertheless another matter, but to analyse the very rich and conflicting historiography sparked by the Russian revolutions of 1917. October largely eclipsed February. François Furet, the great historian of the French Revolution, in a brilliant book published in 1996, Le Passé d’une Illusion, underlined this and explained it through what he called “the universal charm of October”.4 The attraction of October in Europe (outside Russia) and then in the world hinged on two things: “October was able to ‘take up’, more than a century later, the strongest political representation of modern democracy – the revolutionary idea”.5 The October Revolution of 1917 followed in the footsteps of the French Revolution as something of the same order, necessarily positive, opening up a new era in the history of mankind. It, thus, immediately acquired the status of a universal event, and this was at the end of the most terrible war that Europe had ever known, a war that brought the idea of revolution back to the heart of European politics. “What also gives the Russian revolution of 1917 a universal character” Furet adds, “is its cry against war”. If October eclipsed February, it is because October – and not February – put an end to the war. By reappropriating the revolutionary myth and taking Russia out of the war – at what cost! – the Bolsheviks garnered sympathy among “men of goodwill”. The October Revolution of 1917 fulfilled an expectation that had been inseparable from European political culture since the French Revolution: a change towards a fairer, more egalitarian, more sovereign, more peaceful society. It was necessary to wait until the end of the 20th century for the illusion to fade away, for the myth to disappear, and for man’s eternal aspirations for more justice, law, and freedom to find their way back to the paths laid out by the Enlightenment. One hundred years have passed since 1917. After this too-long introduction, let me finally discuss my topic: the historiography of the Russian revolutions (plural)/the great debates and controversies related to this event. Three major currents of interpretation confronted each other regarding the Russian revolution of 1917. A few years later, a fourth current emerged. For Soviet historiography, the Great October Socialist Revolution was “the greatest event in the history of mankind”, the resolution, p ­ rogrammed according to the “laws of history” discovered by Marx and implemented by Lenin, of the class struggle. The unfathomable contradictions of capitalism in Russia, compounded by the semi-feudal exploitation of the peasantry, led to three major revolutionary crises: 1905–1906, February 1917, and October 1917. The imperialist world war, which began in August 1914, accelerated the revolutionary process and brought about the final crisis of capitalism in Russia. Guided by a new type of party, the Bolshevik party led by Lenin, the Russian proletariat, supported by the poor peasantry, established its “hegemony” over the grassroots movement that overthrew

10  Nicolas Werth tsarism in February 1917. The efforts of the provisional ­government to c­ onsolidate the power of the bourgeoisie in March and October 1917 did not resist the pressure of the proletariat, which drove the petty b ­ ourgeoisie and the middle peasants away from the petty-bourgeoisie ­ parties ­(Mensheviks and Socialist-revolutionaries) and seized power in the historically unprecedented form of a “dictatorship of the proletariat”. Liberal historiography, for its part, has sought to demonstrate that, far from being the result of some kind of “class struggle”, the 1917 revolution was an unfortunate and dramatic “accident” of history, which diverted Russia from its resolute march, started at the beginning of the 20th century, and in particular after the 1905–1906 revolution, towards Progress and its convergence with Western democracies. Claiming the primacy of the political over the social (“the cause of the fall of tsarism came from above, not from below”,6 wrote Bernard Pares, the pioneer of studies on the Russian revolution in Great Britain), the decisive role of political leaders in relation to the masses, liberal historians see the Bolsheviks’ seizure of power in October 1917 as nothing more than a successful military coup d’état, the result of a skilful conspiracy plotted by a handful of indoctrinated fanatics with no real basis in the country. A third historiographical current rejected both the Soviet and liberal interpretations and sought to demonstrate that “the October 1917 revolution could have been a mass movement and that only a few participated in it”.7 Described as “revisionist”, this movement, which appeared in the 1960s and 1970s in the United States in reaction against the dominant liberal school, brought together, around its “founding fathers”, Leopold Haimson and Reginald Zelnik, social historians wishing to analyse revolutionary processes not “from above” but “from below” to highlight the many institutions born in the course of the 1917 revolutions (committees, soviets, Red Guards), but also the popular representations and the multiple forms of “doing politics” in the barracks, factories, villages, on the periphery of the Russian Empire that had “entered the revolution”. Over forty years, the “revisionist” historians have largely contributed to changing the fixed lines of the confrontation between Soviet and liberal historiography. The fourth current that has recently emerged among English-speaking historians (especially Americans), which can be described (even if I don’t like this term, which doesn’t mean much) as “post-modern”, argues for a broader and longer approach to the Russian revolutions: to situate these revolutions back into a more global perspective of the crisis of civilisation opened up by the First World War and to take more account of the imperial dimension of the Russian Empire. To situate 1917 in a “continuum of crises”8 and in its European imperial dimension.9 1917–1918 was marked by the fall of the great European empires (Russia, Austria-Hungary, ­Germany, and the Ottoman Empire).

Debates and controversies. Historiographies around 1917  11 This is a brief outline of the major historiographical currents that have marked this history. I will now turn to some of the main topics of debate, which I will focus on herein. The first topic, a classic one, focuses on the causes of the revolution (see historiography of 1789), that is, the state of the Russian Empire in its last years of existence or, in other words, the “Russian way of development”. Why did the Russian autocracy, the political system that had been in place for several centuries, suddenly collapse in February 1917? According to liberal historiography, outlined as early as 1921 by the historian Pavel Milioukov, one of the founders of the Constitutional Democratic Party and Minister of Foreign Affairs in the first provisional government (March–April 1917), in his History of the Second Russian Revolution, a pattern repeated in its broad outline until the 1990s by the American historian Richard Pipes, the first revolution, that of 1905, had allowed Russian society to successfully carry out its “constitutional experiment” thanks to the establishment of a draft parliament, the Duma, the first step towards a democratic regime. On the other hand, between 1905 and 1914, Russia was firmly on the path to a rapid and spectacular modernisation thanks to strong economic growth, the promise of a higher standard of living for the working classes, striking progress in the education of the “masses” enabled by compulsory primary education, and the bold reforms of Prime Minister Piotr Stolypin (appointed in July 1906 and remained in office until his assassination in September 1911) aimed at dismantling the traditional peasant commune system, premised on the periodic redistribution of land, and creating a conservative peasantry of small landowners. In the decidedly optimistic liberal view, it was only lack of time that prevented the smooth transformation of Russia from a hybrid, half-autocratic, half-constitutional regime to a fully-fledged constitutional monarchy, or, indeed, a parliamentary democracy. Only the First World War – an unfortunate “accident” in history – interrupted Russia’s march towards modernity and convergence with Western democracies and, ultimately, facilitated the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks, a handful of fanatical and disciplined revolutionaries with no real basis in the country. In contrast, the Marxist-inspired interpretative scheme, developed mainly by Soviet historians, highlighted the inevitable, zakonomernyi (lawful) character of the “three Russian revolutions” that had taken place between 1905 and October 1917. The first one was an aborted bourgeois revolution in which the working proletariat, led by the Bolshevik party, neverthe­ ctober 1917 less managed to carry out a kind of “dress rehearsal” for the O revolution. After this bourgeois revolution was crushed, there followed a period of repression of the workers’ movement which resulted in a temporary drop in the number of strikers and an apparent backflow in the workers’ movement. But, in fact, during these years (1907–1912),

12  Nicolas Werth the working-class proletariat was preparing, under the ­leadership of the ­ olshevik party, for resuming the “class struggle”, while the Russian impeB rialism crisis was worsening. The growing number of strikers during the first half of 1914 (highlighted in a seminal study by the American historian Leopold Haimson published in 196510) reflected, on the eve of Russia’s entry into the Great War, the inevitable crisis of the Russian autocratic regime and of its economic and social system. Since the 1970s and 1980s, several works by historians dealing with both the political and economic and social history of Russia in the early 20th century have called into question these two major interpretative schemas, liberal and Marxist. In particular, they have demonstrated the failure of the famous “constitutional experiment” so vaunted by historians of the liberal school, an unprecedented and unsuccessful attempt to graft a constitutional form onto an autocratic regime. After having momentarily given in to the “multi-class revolution”11 of 1905, accepting, in particular, the establishment of an indirectly elected assembly, the Duma, with very limited powers (no initiative for laws, no control over the calendar of parliamentary sessions, decided by the Tsar, no accountability of ministers to the Duma), Nicholas II quickly backed down on these timid concessions by amending the electoral law (in the 3rd Duma, elected at the end of 1907 after the rapid dissolution of the 1st and 2nd Dumas, the majority of which had been won over by the liberal and socialist opposition, the curia of large landowners and the 1st urban curia, i.e. less than 1 per cent of the population, made up two-thirds of the electoral college) and further restricted the slender prerogatives of this assembly, convinced that any attack on the autocratic principle of which he was the depositary was a form of disavowal, or even betrayal, of his mission as “Sovereign Autocrat of all the Russias”. However, 1907 was by no means a return to 1904. In the meantime, and to borrow the words of Minister Serguei Witte, a “revolution of the minds” had taken place that “went beyond the existing regime”: concepts and ideas that had hardly left the restricted circle of the progressive intelligentsia such as universal suffrage, a constituent assembly, and individual freedoms had become hugely popular in the most diverse circles of the country in a few months. In a country truly awakened to political life, autocracy, now reviled by part of the public, had ceased to be the only reference and the only political horizon. New institutions, however ephemeral, such as the soviets, an authentically revolutionary form of direct representation of the working world, saw the light of day. The liberals, who in 1905 had seemed to be the main beneficiaries of this political awakening, had not managed, however, in the face of the autocracy’s tenacious resistance, to make their concept of a liberal and parliamentary revolution capable of peacefully leading the country along a constitutional and democratic path. At the same time, without ever having had real power, the

Debates and controversies. Historiographies around 1917  13 liberals, who were in the majority in the first two Dumas, had been close enough to power to discredit themselves in the eyes of part of the working classes, whom they had not been able to lead, caught up in street violence, which had been left to the influence of other currents of ideas, particularly socialist ones. In short, the liberal option was already worn out well before February 1917. Russia’s “march towards modernity”, another favourite theme of liberal historians, was also strongly called into question. Stolypin’s reform did not calm the always explosive agrarian issue (after a brief lull, following the harsh repression of the peasant movement in 1906–1907, peasant unrest resumed in 1910). As soon as it occurred (mainly in the western and s­ outhern peripheral regions of Russia), the dismantling of the peasant commune did not, in most cases, lead to either re-parcelling or an increase in income. Only a minority of farmers (barely 10 per cent) received a consolidated plot, a decisive step that only transformed the peasant into a fully-fledged small landowner, owner of a viable farm. In the most densely populated agricultural regions of central Russia, the hunger for land and the hatred of the large landowner remained as strong as ever. On the other hand, Stolypine totally neglected the question of the workers. As the ­Prussian example had shown, an enlightened conservative policy could only succeed if it combined both repression of revolutionary political parties and a social effort on behalf of the workers. In Russia, however, during these years of strong economic growth, not only did the standard of living of the workers not improve, but their working conditions remained very difficult (60 hours of work per week, many accidents at work, with little or no compensation, miserable and unhealthy housing, increased working patterns and hours, often very violent relations between foremen and workers) and social legislation was in its infancy. Although authorised at the local level, the unions were in reality closely controlled and even infiltrated by the police and were not trusted by the workers. In short, the policies of the Tsarist regime did not allow the emergence of workers’ reforms as in other European countries. Another mistake of Stolypin and of the Tsarist regime was an excessive “Russification” policy based on a nationalist ideology that could only turn the national minorities, which represented more than a third of the population of the Empire, against the regime. The Marxist interpretative scheme was itself as misguided as the liberal scheme. In delving into the social history of Russia at the beginning of the 20th century, looking at “history from below”, the culture and political representations of the various strata of society and particularly of the peasantry, which made up more than 80 per cent of the population of the Russian Empire, historians such as Teodor Shanin, Marc Raeff, ­Dorothy Atkinson, Victoria Bonnell, and Edward Acton have shown that there were many other forms of social violence besides the violence of capitalist

14  Nicolas Werth exploitation. There were other lines of fracture in society than the one opposing the proletariat to the bourgeoisie, the two most important being: on the one hand, the fracture between urban and dominant Russia and rural Russia, politically dominated, isolated, and withdrawn into its local and community structures, and, on the other hand, the fracture between the Russian centre and the peripheries of the Empire, populated by national minorities. Other historians, specialists in the working-class world, such as Leopold Haimson, Reginald Zelnik, Stephen Smith, and Diane Koenker, have, for their part, emphasised the great diversity of the Russian working class and the multiple facets of its struggles and political commitments, which cannot be reduced to a simplistic equation between the working class and Bolshevism. Finally, the fiction of a monolithic, disciplined Bolshevik party “guiding the working masses” has long since been discredited by the pioneering studies of Alexander Rabinovich and Robert Daniels. A second “classic” topic of debate was the reasons for the failure of the provisional government(s) between February and October 1917. Why did the “men of February” fail in their attempt to bring about a democratic transformation in Russia? This question is at the heart of all the memoirs written by the great non-Bolshevik players of 1917 while emigrated, Nikolai Sukhanov, Irakli Tseretelli, Viktor Chernov, Pavel Milioukov, and Alexander Kerenski. Why did a government that had, as late as June 1917, gathered undisputed popular support (as attested by the composition of the 1st Pan-Russian Congress of Soviets, largely won by the moderate socialists) fail a few months later? Taking up many of the explanations put forward by these political leaders turned writers of their defeat, liberal historiography has highlighted the idealism and political amateurism of the “men of February”, “well-spoken but who understood nothing about the workings of the state”,12 or “doctrinaires who have nothing but an abstract and bookish approach to political realities (…), obsessed by the history of the French revolutions of 1789 and 1848 and hypnotised by the fear of a military counter-revolution”.13 By immediately dismissing all provincial governors and vice-governors, essential cogs in the bureaucratic machine, the Liberals immediately “promoted anarchy after centuries of servitude”.14 They failed to exploit the wave of nationalism and patriotism among the soldiers in March–April 1917 to stifle the Bolsheviks’ “defeatism” and to exploit the tensions, real at the time, between the fighters and the striking workers to their advantage. Another oft-cited mistake was the authorisation, granted to combatants in the Declaration of the Rights of Soldiers dated 11 May 1917 (signed by the Minister of War Kerensky) to join a political organisation. Two months after the promulgation of Order no. 1 establishing the soldiers’ committees, this measure accelerated the decomposition of the army as a fighting force governed by obedience to military orders and, even more so, as

Debates and controversies. Historiographies around 1917  15 a force for repressing social disorder, especially in rural areas, which was left to chaos… In addition to the weakness of a government reluctant and powerless to assert its authority and resort to force, liberal historiography has underlined the deep division of the moderate socialists, Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, each confronted with the rise of a radical wing (“Menshevik-Internationalists” and “Left SRs”) rejecting the transformation of their party into a “government party”. The refusal, after the failure of the Kornilov coup d’état, of the majority of moderate socialists to break the alliance concluded at the beginning of May 1917 with the liberals for a constitutional-democratic party increasingly concerned with order and the maintenance, at any cost, of the complicated policy of “revolutionary defencism” – which amounted to continuing the war despite the increasingly clearly expressed aspirations of the combatants for peace –, are also considered to be two major political errors. Errors due to a fear of a “counter-revolution” and the belief that any separate peace would again turn Russia into a satellite of Germany, and the Russian socialists into easy prey for the militarist bourgeoisie. For Soviet historiography, the failure of the provisional government was that of the Russian great bourgeoisie, represented by the K-D party, and the small and middle bourgeoisie, represented by the moderate socialists. Forced to ally with the latter in the second and third governments, the K-D remained the dominant political force in the coalition from February to October 1917, a force which did not stop “turning further to the right”. Contrary to the historians of the liberal school, Soviet historians have emphasised not the weakness but the determination of the “bourgeois government” to break, with the help of the employers (and the weapon of the blockade) the workers’ movement and to repress (more than 200 army interventions in September-October) the peasants who attacked large big estates. Linked to Anglo-French imperialism, the Russian bourgeoisie naturally pursued the war, which was its raison d’être. As a simple ­auxiliary force, the “petty-bourgeois parties” (Mensheviks and Socialist-­ Revolutionaries) did not dither, throughout 1917, between an alliance with the bourgeoisie and an alliance with the proletariat and the poor peasants, which rendered them powerless. At this time of intense class struggle, the search for the “middle way” was doomed to failure. Revisionist historians have been rather less harsh than the moderate socialists, pointing out that their most prominent leaders, such as ­Tseretelli, Skobelev, and Chernov, were remarkable politicians, not “dreamers” but experienced revolutionary activists and men of action. In a few months, they managed to implement a series of structural reforms which, had they been carried out, would have made Russia a model of social and economic progress. The idea of the Socialist-Revolutionary leader ­T chernov, Minister of Agriculture, to transfer confiscated land from landowners to

16  Nicolas Werth peasant-controlled farming communities for redistribution could solve the agrarian question15; the measures taken by Skobelev, the Menshevik ­Minister of Labour, in the field of social legislation, laid the foundations of a genuine workers’ reformism16; more difficult to implement in the Russian context of 1917, the projects of the Menshevik economists led by Groman on a “state regulation of the economy” brought innovative solutions to the crisis of the exchanges between towns and countryside. For revisionist historians, the leaders of the K-D party, who systematically blocked or masked the major reforms proposed by the moderate socialists, bear an overwhelming responsibility for the failure of the provisional governments. However, the Menshevik and Socialist-Revolutionary leaders showed, from July–August 1917 onwards, great political short-sightedness, refusing to see the “turn to the right” of the K-D party and to gauge the legitimate impatience of the masses, privileging as interlocutors the members of the apparatuses (executive committees) of the soviets and other institutions born of the February revolution and ignoring in an extraordinary way the “base”, a “base” which was rapidly radicalizing in a climate of growing social violence. The question of violence – a “Russian” violence inherited from a long “specific” history or even from the particular nature of the “Russian man” or a “class violence” facilitated by a new political discourse emphasising the “class struggle” – was at the heart of a third major historiographical debate around 1917. Pointing to the capacity of Bolshevik propaganda alongside politically immature masses, liberal historiography highlights the blind, primitive character, rooted in the traditions of the peasant’s bunt (revolt), of the violence of the urban and rural crowds in 1917. A recent book by ­Russian historian Vladimir Bouldakov, Krasnaia Smuta (Red Chaos), went even further in this direction, promoting the idea that the 1917 revolution revealed the “genetic material” of “homo rossicus”, a material made of violence, anarchy, and “innate inaptitude for democracy”. “Lenin only needed to collect power (…), a power shattered by violent mobs”.17 In fact, in a less caricature form, a number of contemporaries and political authors – not least the great Russian writer Maxim Gorky, who was close to socialist circles, or the historic leader of the Menshevik party, Yuri Martov – had in their time denounced the “explosion of zoological instincts”, the “violence of the soldiery”, the “Russian bunt in which socialist psychology has no part”, the “plebeian war against privilege” which had deviated from the socialist revolution, transformed into a “pogrom of hatred, revenge and frustration”. Analysing, with the hindsight of defeat and exile, the Bolshevik phenomenon, the Menshevik leader Yuri Martov came to the conclusion that Bolshevism was precisely the political expression of the culture of war and peasant violence in 1917, the peasant-soldiers. Faced with the

Debates and controversies. Historiographies around 1917  17 onslaught of the “grey coats”, the Russian proletariat had been no match for it, and the traditions of Russian social democracy, embodied, according to him, by Mensheviks, had been swept away, defeated. The peasant and warlike stikhia (unleashed, anarchic, and uncontrollable force) had swept everything in its path, deeply changing political life. Bolshevism had won, because it had broken – sociologically speaking – with the socialist family, with its workers’ roots. In the wake of Gorki (and, to a lesser extent, Martov), historian Orlando Figes, author of the seminal work Révolution Russe, 1891–1924: la T ­ ragédie d’un Peuple, made, as far as he was concerned, the resentment of the nizy towards the verkhi the driving force of the social war and the violence in 1917 and the most powerful engine of the propaganda and ­success of the Bolsheviks.18 In contrast, Soviet historiography has celebrated the class ­consciousness shown by the poor and middle-class workers and peasants, who were able to express and win their legitimate demands in an organised manner through political organisations defending their class interests, foremost among which was the Bolshevik Party. A certain number of so-called “revisionist” social historians reject these two historiographical traditions and emphasise the specificity, coherence, and political rationality of the demands and actions carried out, first and foremost at the local level, by different groups, communities, or c­ ollectives that entered “the revolution”. These demands and forms of action are inscribed both in the “long term” – the revolutionary events of 1905– 1906 being a reference and an ever-present lesson in history – and in the “short term” in 1917. The political awareness and revolutionary progress of this or that peasant community, this or that enterprise or shop floor, this or that regiment or battalion, took place “not as a result of orders or propaganda from outside, nor as a result of some anarchic outburst of violence, but as a result of a simultaneously strange and admirable effort to assimilate and understand what was happening”.19 As proof thereof, the slow progression, impervious to the slogans of the political parties and largely based on the rhythm of the work in the fields, of the peasant revolution; or the unpredictable and diverse progression of the revolution in the army, depending on the position of the unit, the proximity or distance from the major urban centres, the intensity of the fighting and the threat posed by the enemy, and the relations between the officers and the troops; or even the wide range of partisan preferences of the working world – the Mensheviks preserving, against all odds, their positions acquired as early as 1905–1906, among railway workers or printers, the Bolsheviks consolidating theirs among the workers of the large metallurgical factories and the socialist-revolutionaries still keeping the confidence of the women workers toiling in the food industry enterprises.

18  Nicolas Werth The fourth subject of debate is the specific, unique character of the ­Bolshevik party, the ultimate “grand” of the revolution. Soviet historiography and liberal historiography have stressed, each for substantially different reasons, the specificity, unity, discipline, and monolithic organisation of the Bolshevik party in 1917. For the former, the success of the Bolsheviks was due to the fact that the party “objectively” represented the interests of the vast majority of the population – the working proletariat, the poor and middle peasants – and that it was a new kind of vanguard party, perfectly organised, centralised, ideologically homogeneous in accordance with the schema developed by Lenin as early as 1902 in What to do?, the founding text of Bolshevism. Rejecting any idea of a conscious adherence of the masses to Bolshevik ideas and insisting, on the contrary, on the political immaturity of the masses “intoxicated by the hope of a golden age”,20 liberal historiography has also emphasised the exceptional organisation and unfailing discipline of the Bolsheviks, masters in the art of infiltrating the soviets, of propaganda, demagogy, and coup d’état. In reality, as the “revisionist” historians Alexander Rabinowitch, ­Robert Daniels and Robert Service have shown, the Bolshevik party in 1917 was far from being a monolithic, centralised, disciplined organisation, a machine obeying a single political line embodied by Lenin. Like the other parties, the Bolshevik party was crossed by multiple currents; it was also a largely decentralised party (as witnessed by the weakness of the secretariat of the central committee, in charge of relations with the local party organisations, composed of only a dozen people), a “catch-all” party21 which attracted socialist militants and sympathisers from all sides, ­Mensheviks, Socialist-Revolutionaries or anarchists, but also a large number of newcomers to politics, mainly popular elements, with little political training – and even less in terms of Marxist doctrine, but ready for any form of violent action to throw down the “old world” and build a new one where they would have their place. At the end of July 1917, on the occasion of the 6th party congress, the activity report acknowledged that 90 per cent of the nearly 170,000 registered party members had joined since February. In comparison with the pre-war years, the proportion of intellectuals had considerably decreased in the face of the influx of workers (65 per cent of new members) and peasants or, more precisely, soldierpeasants (more than 30 per cent of new members). After the failure of the Kornilov coup d’état, the increasing memberships (80,000 new members in September–October 1917) further accentuated the “plebeianisation” of the party.22 The massive renewal of recruitment into the Bolshevik party (a phenomenon which, incidentally, did not spare the other parties) has led some historians to question the very meaning of joining Bolshevism in 1917.

Debates and controversies. Historiographies around 1917  19 In  studying the new political vocabulary introduced in the ­ Russian ­campaigns in 1917, Orlando Figes also showed that for many peasants, the Bolshevism until then totally unknown in the villages, were often described as those who want “more” (bolche, in Russian) – more land, more ­freedom. Allan Wildman, on the other hand, has analysed in detail the ­different aspects of the soldiers’ “trench Bolshevism”, drawing inter alia, on the reflections of insightful contemporaries such as General ­Brusilov, who wrote: The soldiers wanted peace so that they could go home, pay their bills to the landowners, and land I’ve freely without paying taxes, without having to submit to any authority whatsoever. The soldiers gradually turned to the Bolsheviks, because they thought that was their programme. They had no idea what communism, the International or class division meant. However, they imagined themselves perfectly at home again, having shared all the land, having made all the landowners disappear, and no longer having any duties or obligations before the State, the Nation. This unfettered freedom, this anarchic freedom – that is what “Bolshevism” was for them.23 While the multiplicity of Bolshevisms in 1917 was also its strength, it brought with it the seeds of short- and medium-term confrontations: the conflict between the “trench Bolshevism” of the peasant-soldiers and the Bolshevism of the revolutionary Marxist intellectuals at the helm of the party apparatus, which had erupted since 1918; the latent conflict between this “patented” Bolshevism and the plebeian Bolshevism of the new members of working-class origin that Stalin succeeded in using to his advantage in the 1930s. This brings me to the fifth major debate – the most “classic” one, the best known without a doubt – October: revolution or coup d’état? For the liberal school, it is quite simply a coup d’état, a military conspiracy masterfully organised by Lenin and Trotsky. For the Marxist and Soviet historians, it was a proletarian revolution, the inevitable outcome of the worsening class struggles controlled and guided on the proletarian side by the Bolshevik party, a type of party unheard of in history. For revisionist historians, October was both: “sometimes a revolutionary mass movement and a coup d’état in which only a few participated”.24 At first glance, this is a paradoxical analysis, but I will try to explain it because I think it is the right one. The Bolshevik seizure of power on 25 October 1917 was a carefully prepared coup d’état. Lenin’s personal role as theorist and strategist of the takeover was decisive. Lenin prepared all the stages of a military coup d’état, which could neither be overtaken by an unforeseen “mass” uprising

20  Nicolas Werth nor stopped by the “revolutionary legalism” of Bolshevik leaders such as Zinoviev or Kamenev, who wished to come to power with a plural socialist majority among the Soviets. However, this coup d’état is set against the backdrop of a vast, ­multiform, and autonomous social revolution. It is expressed in very diverse forms: a large peasant revolt, a fundamental movement rooted in a long history, marked not only by the hatred of the peasantry, liberated for barely two generations from serfdom, towards the landowner, but also by a deep distrust of the peasantry towards the city, the outside world, and towards any form of state interference; a profound decomposition of the army made up of millions of peasant-soldiers exhausted by three years of war; a ­specific workers’ claim movement, based on revolutionary ­slogans  – ­ ationalities ­workers’ ­control and “Soviet power”; emancipation of the n and non-native peoples of the former Russian Empire. Each of these movements has its own temporality, its own internal dynamics, and its own aspirations, which cannot be reduced either to Bolshevik slogans or to the political action of this party. Throughout 1917, these movements acted as dissolving forces that strongly contributed to the destruction of institutions and all forms of authority. For a brief but decisive moment – ­October 1917 – the action of the Bolsheviks, a political minority acting in the existing institutional void, is consistent with the aspirations of the majority, even if the medium- and long-term objectives were different for each other. M ­ omentarily, the ­political coup d’état and the social revolution converged, or to be more exact, telescoped, before diverging towards decades of dictatorship. To conclude, I would like to point out a recent trend in the historiography of the Russian revolutions of 1917, illustrated in particular by the research carried out by American researchers such as Peter Holquist, Joshua Sandborn, and Michel Reynold, or British researchers such as Peter Gatrell and Orlando Figes. Their approach aims to inscribe, in a comparative perspective centred on the peripheries (for the Russian Empire, the western fringes – Poland, the Baltic States, as well as the southern fringes – Caucasus or eastern fringes – Turkmenistan), the Russian revolutionary events in the crisis of the great European empires. Sandborn speaks of a process of “decolonisation” within the Russian Empire from 1914 onwards (with the rise of national identities – Jews, Polish, German, Muslim, Armenian, Georgian, Ukrainian, etc.). Holquist also insists on the crisis of the Empire. Imperial crisis – “apocalypse” – in a context of total war.25 These historians insist on the major role of soldiers in the revolution, on the major role of displaced persons and refugees (more than 6 ­million) in the destabilisation of society long before 17 February.26 Taking into account, in greater depth, the formidable transformations generated by a new kind of war in a multi-ethnic, multicultural Empire – these are,

Debates and controversies. Historiographies around 1917  21 for these historians, the new avenues to deepen our understanding of the Russian revolutions of 1917 and to go beyond the “old” debates between “revisionists”, “liberals”, and “Marxists”. The result today is a much more complex and nuanced representation not of an accidental process, nor of a three-stage process, but as Orlando Figes rightly argues, of revolutions which exploded in the middle of the First World War and set off a chain reaction of more revolutions, civil, ethnic, and national wars. By the time it was over, it had blown apart – and then put back together – an empire covering one-sixth of the surface of the globe.27 To inscribe “the compact eruption” of 1917 at the heart of the Great War, to take into account the imperial, even colonizing, dimension of the ­Russian Empire; to analyse not a single political revolution, but many social and national revolutions; to open the perspective for understanding the events of 1917 by setting the narrative to the early 1890s when the reaction of the Russian people to the famine of 1891 first set them on the road to a collision with the Tsarist autocracy and taking it to the end of the civil and national wars in 1921–1922 – these are some of the most promising avenues for renewing and deepening the history of 1917 today. Notes 1 Edward Acton, Rethinking the Russian Revolution (London: Arnold, 1990). 2 Vladimir Putin, “Meeting with Russian Ambassadors and Permanent ­Representatives in International Organisations”, President of Russia – Events, no. 262, 9 July 2012. Accessed 28 December 2022. http://en.kremlin.ru/events/ president/news/15902 3 Ibid. 4 François Furet, Le Passé d’une Illusion: essai sur l’idée communiste au XXe siècle (Paris: Robert Laffont – Calmann Lévy, 1995). 5 Ibid. 6 Bernard Pares, The Fall of the Russian Empire (London: Jonathan Cape, 1939). 7 Marc Ferro, La Révolution de 1917, vol. 1, La chute du tsarisme et les origines d’Octobre (Paris: Aubier-Montaigne, 1967). 8 Peter Holquist, Making War, Forging Revolution: Russia’s Continuum of ­Crisis, 1914–1921 (Cambridge: Mass University Press, 2002). 9 Joshua Sanborn, Imperial Apocalypse. The Great War and the Destruction of the Russian Empire (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014). 10 Leopold Haimson, Russia’s Revolutionary Experience, 1905–1917 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005). 11 Martin Malia, The Soviet Tragedy: A History of Socialism in Russia, 1917–1991 (New York: Free Press, 1994). 12 Adam Ulam, Russia’s Failed Revolutions (London: Basic Books, 1981). 13 Leonard Schapiro, The Russian Revolutions of 1917: The Origins of Modern Communism (New York: Basic Books, 1984).

22  Nicolas Werth 14 Richard Pipes, La révolution russe (Paris: PUF, 1993). 15 Graeme Gill, Peasants and Government in the Russian Revolution (New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1979). 16 Stephen Smith, Russia in Revolution: An Empire in Crisis, 1890–1928 (­Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017); Diane Koenker, Moscow Workers and the 1917 Revolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981). 17 Vladimir Bouldakov, Krasnaia Smuta (Le chaos rouge) (Moskva: Rosspen, 2010). 18 Orlando Figes, A People’s Tragedy. The Russian Revolution, 1891–1924 (­London: Pimlico, 1996). 19 Teodor Shanin, Russia 1905–1907. Revolution as a Moment of Truth, vols. I and II (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985/1986). 20 Leonard Schapiro, The Russian Revolutions of 1917. 21 Robert Service, The Bolshevik Party in Revolution. A Study in Organizational Change, 1917–1923 (London: Arnold, 1979). 22 Marc Ferro, La Révolution de 1917, vol. 1. 23 Alexei Brussilov, A Soldier’s Note-Book, 1914–1918 (Westport: Praeger ­Publishers, [1930] 1971). 24 Marc Ferro, La Révolution de 1917, vol. 1. 25 Peter Holquist, Making War, Forging Revolution. 26 Peter Gatrell, A Whole Empire Walking. Refugees in Russia During World War I (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999). 27 Orlando Figes, A People’s Tragedy.

2 The influence of the Russian Revolution in Spain Josep Sánchez i Cervelló

Introduction Considering that the Iberian Peninsula lies more than 3,000 km from ­Russia, it is safe to say that initially, the impact of the Russian events was scarce. However, between 1927 and 1929, the first works on the revolutionary process began to appear in Spain, which were essentially journalistic and intended only to interpret the event rather than the historical process. None of these works referred to its impact in Spain and was broadly characterised by emphasising the idea that revolutionary Russia had lost its way and had put an end to private property, family, religion, social order, and so on. Moreover, they tried to warn the public of the red evil,1 hence the publication of a wealth of writings demonising Bolshevism. Indeed, these works always offered reflections on the impossibility of such a regime change being implemented in Spain. Between 1927 and 1929, however, more important studies came to light in Spain on the revolutionary process although they continued to be mainly travel chronicles or journalistic accounts. Sofía Casanova2 was the only Spanish correspondent who was in St.  Petersburg when the revolution broke out. She worked for the monarchy-­supporting newspaper ABC and lived through the seizure of the ­Winter Palace and the October Revolution of 1917. As she stated in her first chronicle: Yesterday, at 4 p.m., I saw the cadet guards and artillery pieces pass towards the Winter Palace, the seat of the government radio. As I approached the Liteyny Bridge to see the ships anchored in the Neva, I was aware of the extreme excitement in this part of town. The proletarian crowd waiting for orders from their warlords came from the populated suburbs, the men carrying weapons distributed to them the night before under their jackets.3 This journalist was also one of the first people to interview Trotsky.4 DOI: 10.4324/9781003399209-3

24  Josep Sánchez i Cervelló Spain before the October Revolution The events in Russia alarmed King Alfonso XIII, who, fifteen days after the fall of the Czars suspended constitutional guarantees, frightened by the mobilising activity and discontent of the workers’ movement. Indeed, the three most critical events took place in the summer of 1917 in Spain inspiring socio-political tensions that shook the government and the ­ restoration system: the Juntas de Defensa (Defence Committees),5 the ­ Asamblea de Parlamentarios (Parliamentary Assembly), and the general revolutionary strike. The first phase of the revolutionary course was led by the military, affected by the economic upheaval caused by the Great War that eroded the stable standard of living of civil servants and the military. The military then resorted to corporative solutions: “establishing juntas practically throughout the public administration to protect themselves against the increasing deterioration of their purchasing power”.6 Obsessed by the Russian Revolution, Alfonso XIII instructed the Minister of Defense, ­General Manuel Aguilera, to dissolve the Juntas. On the other hand, the Lliga Regionalista (Regionalist League), which represented the interests of the industrial and financial bourgeoisie of Catalonia, believed that Spain could only regain its former glory as a nation of nations if it were led by the most dynamic region, that is, Catalonia. However, realising that the state was reluctant to defend the industrial interests of its region and to support the landowning elites of central and south Spain, the League decided to reform the monarchy and end the ruling dynasty. On 14 June 1917, the deputies and senators of the Lliga Regionalista published a manifesto alleging that military disobedience made it impossible to continue with a regime based on fabricated elections. The government then forced the suspension of constitutional guarantees and, the Parliament being closed, the Lliga invited all MPs to meet in an assembly in Barcelona on 19 July, an initiative which was supported by Republicans and Socialists. The assembly, attended by 55 MPs and thirteen senators, adopted a far-reaching resolution before it was dispersed by the police: it accused the regime of being oligarchic, demanded the election of the ­Cortes Constituyentes (Constituent Parliament), through elections presided over by a government representing the will of the nation, and the establishment of three committees to study the constitutional reform that would include autonomy for the regions that so wished, national defence, education, and the judiciary, and the measures required for solving the urgent socio-economic problems.7 At the same time, the situation was dramatic for the working class, facilitating a rapprochement between the two most important unions in the country. Thus, through the so-called Zaragoza Pact, the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (National Confederation of Labour, CNT) and the Unión General de Trabajadores (General Union of Workers, UGT) created a joint trade union

The influence of the Russian Revolution in Spain  25 committee which ended up calling a 24-hour general strike on 18 December of that year. The strike, which was also joined by the middle classes and was widely accepted throughout the country, was an enormous success: The success of the 1916 strike, the experience of joint action, and the tendency of the unions to interfere in politics against the backdrop of the political crisis that hastily ended the Romanones government expanded the workers’ claims from the new year. According to the tradition of revolutionary unionism, any general strike would have to be open-ended. Indeed, when the meetings between the delegates of the UGT and the CNT resumed in March 1917, they agreed to call a general strike with no definite time limit for its termination. In the tradition of both unions, it was not possible to think of an indefinite strike that was not a prelude to revolution. This was also true in this case: the strike aimed at achieving a complete transformation of the economic and political structure of the country.8 The strike was, of course, practically neutralised with the arrest of its ­steering committee on 14 August. However, in Barcelona, the CNT mobilised its members and the government only managed to quash it after ­several days of fighting between the strikers and the army, which in the case of Sabadell had to use artillery to make the revolutionaries surrender, causing thirty-seven fatalities throughout Catalonia. The repression in Asturias was, however, far harsher. The difficulties of the underprivileged classes

Spain being neutral in the Great War meant that exports could be directed to both sides, selling from raw materials to manufactured goods as well as Catalan textiles and Basque iron and steel products, inter alia. This caused a surplus in the trade balance, which especially benefitted the industrial bourgeoisie, traders, and the landowning and financial oligarchy, who had the most to gain from the war. The workers, however, bore the brunt of the matter, since prices soared while wages stagnated, while the urban and industrial proletariat had more organisational capacity to pressure employers to maintain their purchasing power. In rural areas, landless day labourers starved, and conflicts and violence increased with riots in Malaga, Alicante, and Barcelona, where a state of war was declared, A Coruña, Cadiz, and so on. In other towns, grocery stores were robbed. The riots spread throughout Spain, calling for amnesty for the strike committee, imprisoned in Cartagena, and in general for all political ­ and social prisoners and defendants, with rallies and demonstrations on 25  November and 1 December in the main cities. One of the most

26  Josep Sánchez i Cervelló popular slogans read “Long live Russia!”, as in this country the p ­ roletarian r­ evolution was a fait accompli, which would allegedly lead to the salvation of humankind.9 The Imperialist war waged by the Spanish army in the Rif punished the poorest of society with recruitment, while the wealthy classes avoided military service by paying their way out of the military. This issue also poisoned the political panorama, with the alienation leading to the Annual disaster (22 July 1921).10 To evade his responsibilities, the king ended up imposing the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera. The Bolshevik three-year hold in Andalusia and Catalonia (1918–1921)

This period is used to define the period of struggles of the Andalusian day labourers11 and the rabassaires12 and Catalan day labourers.13 The number of members of the Andalusian branch of the CNT in this period significantly increased, reaching a total of 100,854 in December 1919, of a total of 550,000 in the whole of Spain.14 For its part, the Federation of Agricultural Workers of the UGT had 67,000 members in Andalusia in 1920 and 25,000 in Extremadura.15 As Sánchez Marroyo contended: In the Andalusian rural areas, where anarchist organizations were very authoritative, tensions rose, especially in 1919. Entire provinces were in a permanent state of agitation, with outbreaks of great violence. In Cordoba, a congress of agricultural workers’ societies was held which established as its main demands that the lands of the municipalities and of the State and a part of the large estates be given to proletarian Table 2.1  CNT membership in 1931 Region

Number

Catalonia Andalusia Levante Asturias and Leon Aragon Galicia Madrid North Balearic Islands

299,310 113,310  58,526  25,463  24,200  13,218   9,217   3,763   1,025

Source: Octavio Ruiz Manjón-Cabeza, coord., Historia General de España y América. Tomo XVII. La segunda república y la guerra (Madrid: Rialp, 1986), 119.

The influence of the Russian Revolution in Spain  27 organizations for their benefit so that they could exploit them. Other claims included the eight-hour working day in the fields, the fixing of wages by joint committees, and that the large landowners should take responsibility for unemployed workers. It was a realistic vision, far from the mythical distribution of land.16 Regarding the Catalan rural areas, Francesc Bonamusa pointed out that: The strength of the CNT’s mobilization stood out above all in the ­ arragona region, through the Federación Nacional de Obreros AgríT colas de España. Three important anarcho-unionist agricultural federations of the Tarragona municipalities known for their long wine tradition participated in the CTN’s Congress at the Teatro de la ­Comedia (1919): the Federació de l’Alt i el Baix Priorat, the Federació Agrària Comarcal de Valls and the Federació d’Obrers Pagesos d’El Vendrell, in a total of 9,242 organised farmers. In addition to these three federations, there were also regional trade union organizations such as those of ­Barcelonés, Ebro and Montblanc, as well as other municipal organizations. It was in Vilafranca del Penedès where, due to the anarcho-unionist force, the UR found it more difficult to establish itself.17 The Unió de Rabassaires (UR) was established in 1922, and the f­ ollowing year, when the dictatorship was proclaimed, it reduced the scale of its activity. Prior to that, however, the peasants who worked the vineyards had already mobilised in the run-up to the increase in the price of fertilisers and the loss of purchasing power of tenants. The origins of this union date back to the crisis caused by phylloxera and the fall in exports, seeking better living conditions. Both the rabassaires and the sharecroppers organised themselves into various organizations of a republican nature, among which the Unió de Treballadors del Camp (1872-1874), the Lliga de Viticultors Rabassaires de Catalunya (1882-1883), the ­Federació de Treballadors Agrícoles de la Regió Espanyola (18931896), and the Federació Nacional de Obrers Agricultores de España (1913-1918). Other organizations were of a regional nature, such as the Federació Comarcal Obrera Agrícola de l’Alt i Baix Penedès and the Federació Provincial d’Obrers del Camp de Tarragona. Indeed, the powerful Unió de Rabassaires had emerged in the twenties and thirties thanks to this previous union and associative network18 having organised strikes, demonstrations, and rallies to maintain the ­purchasing power, which was becoming increasingly lower.

28  Josep Sánchez i Cervelló In 1932, during the Republican period, the UR already had 21,542 members, and in July 1936, this figure increased to almost 25,000, making it the largest union in the Catalonian rural area. When in August 1936 a decree established compulsory unionisation, the number of UR members increased further to 85,000.19 The spectre of communism haunts Europe The hopes raised by the news of the Russian Revolution among the poor masses of the city and of the rural areas reflected in conflicts and strikes, marking a turning point. The distribution of land carried out by the ­Bolsheviks inspired the workers of the south who, from 1918 onwards, organised themselves into trade unions to claim their rights. However, the most important protests took place in the big cities, such as the railway strike of 13 August 1917, which represented the emergence of the radicalised working class, with huge conflicts such as the Canadian strike in 1919, allowing the establishment of the eight-hour working day in the fields. It was also a period of great labour unrest with very high peaks of violence, particularly in Barcelona, coinciding with the most critical years of the pistolerismo backed by the state.20 When the Russian Revolution began, the press highlighted the dangers of communism, exaggerating its importance in mobilising the conservative sectors, saying that The Government cannot ignore that there are about a thousand citizens of Russian origin in Barcelona engaged in a very active and underhand revolutionary propaganda and who contribute in many ways to the public unrest in the big city, traitorously blending in all the opinion movements and stimulating their savagery and seriousness. Being under the protection of the law, paying their taxes as small industrials, and working as street vendors, they defy the vigilance of the authorities and move about with absolute impunity. No one stops them from having free access to all homes or from always communicating with the working classes. They enter well-to-do houses to buy used clothes and all sorts of family and household items at high prices, engaging in perfect espionage activities and obtaining valuable information. They then sell these items to the poor for insignificant amounts, giving them all sorts of facilities for the payment thereof, and such displays of gallantry and affection of those who receive them explicitly show their friendship and gratitude as they feel flattered and favoured. And thus, a frequent and justified communication channel is established, facilitating the future work of propaganda, and opening the way for future small loans, shameless alms, and, ultimately, the astute suggestion for

The influence of the Russian Revolution in Spain  29 securing criminal partnerships when the time comes for the planned social revolution. Although this is how almost all the Bolshevikist (sic) agents in ­Barcelona operate, propaganda is devised in a thousand other ways, greatly extending its range of activities within the proletariat classes without regard to means or efforts and sacrifices. Bolshevikism (sic) has tried to make its propaganda effective even within some bodies whose primary mission is to ensure public peace and the rights of the nation in all aspects. The agents have enormous amounts of money at their disposal, which facilitates their work. The result of this is so blatant and their methods and consequences are so obvious that a great feeling of uneasiness in Barcelona has emerged; how is it possible that the civil governor of that province is doing nothing about it, and that the Police is passive in the face of an event of such unusual gravity and which represents such serious and perhaps immediate dangers (….) the unionism of Barcelona, in its current organization, is as dangerous as Bolshevikism (sic); the origin can lie in Spain, but the seed of atrocities are like those of Russia. Catalan unionism does not resemble any other Spanish workers’ organization.21 The article clearly calls for the application of the law of flight.22 As regards land, the main problem was derived from landlordism, but in Catalonia, this poor distribution of property was non-existent. The main problem in Catalonia was the rabassaire issue. As one well-documented article put it: The distribution of land in Catalonia, except for a few places, shifts the issues from the agricultural problem to the extension and harshness of the other Spanish regions. This problem is deeply felt (…) in Catalonia (…). Despite the institution of the heir, one of the purposes of which is to maintain the family property intact, the division of land has occurred naturally (….). It is not because the agricultural property has been divided up that the injustice in the use of each plot has been destroyed. It is true that there is no lord who exploits numerous “slaves”, but there are many lords who use and exploit many agricultural workers, under the label of sharecroppers, settlers, or tenants. This very interesting aspect of the problem must be emphasised (….) the significant conflict of the rabassaires falls within these aspects. It was not a memorable revolution for farmers because of the manifest inequality in the distribution of land, but rather the interpretation to be given to the contracts between landowners and farmers used for the cultivation of vines. At the origin of the conflict of the rabassaires was the abuse of the landlord in interpreting the duration of

30  Josep Sánchez i Cervelló the contract. (…) The passivity of those who benefit from the reform ­contrasts with the unusual a­ ctivity of those who see in it a hint of danger to their vested interest. These people, who are obstinate in living and live far from civilised countries, who lack the sensitivity to learn about other phenomena, have instead the delicate and selected sensitivity of the seismographic apparatus to record the tremors at the other end of Europe23 or beyond the Atlantic, and unnecessarily form a defence perimeter, because the attack is of academic mildness, almost harmless (…). There are many small landowners who know how to join associations, and unions, form production, and consumer cooperatives, and reach out to credit institutions that they have themselves formed and promoted (…). It is outrageous to disregard the voices of those who work for them, and they should not forget the Catalan counties that obtained the greatest benefit in the struggle of the rabassaires, who, according to Costa, echoed the turmoil in ­Ireland prior to the land law.24 The Russian influence affected the centre-left The mobilisation of the working class was quite significant in these years. In this respect, the social radicalisation that affected even the republican parties is paradoxical. Thus, Marcelino Domingo, leader of the Partit Republicà Català (Catalan Republican Party, PRC), which had been founded in Barcelona in April 1917, actively participated in the general strike in that year. In his parliamentary interventions, he stood out for his criticism of the war in Morocco and of the corruption within the military institution. For this reason, the newspaper in which he edited La Lucha (The Fight) often suffered strict censorship and was prosecuted on many occasions. Due to his involvement in the general strike, he was arrested on a warship anchored in the port of Barcelona, where he was almost executed, despite having parliamentary immunity and the arrest being illegal. The consequences of this event would make mark him forever: The participation [of Domingo] had an important component of political naivety, miscalculated risk, and haste, which ultimately could not have been the result of propagandistic intentions, but rather of a miscalculation. Companys himself documented that the various warnings to Domingo on his very likely arrest were not considered by the Tarragona native. Domingo, however, played the role of “martyr of republicanism”, surely without knowing it, and this publically honoured him as one of the best examples of the opposition to the regime, a symbolic charge that he would not relinquish.25

The influence of the Russian Revolution in Spain  31 Another leader of this party, the lawyer Francesc Layret, also played an important role in the creation of the party, which was based on the ideological foundations of Pi y Margall’s 1894 federal program, as well as on secularism and the modernisation of society. In 1919, the party applied to join the Komintern (Communist International, CI) at Layret’s behest, who believed that the Russian Revolution combined national liberties with social justice. Layret’s aim was to make the PRC a class party capable of imposing itself on the weak Catalan socialism. But his assassination triggered by the Free Syndicate26 made the PRC forget about Russia.27 In fact, in November 1920, the death of Layret, Companys’s imprisonment28 in Mahón, and the suspension of the El Pueblo de Tortosa, the principal vehicle of the Partido Republicano Español (Spanish Republican Party, PRE), caused a crisis to the party, which was compounded in December by the loss of the seat held by Domingo as deputy for Tortosa, even though those elections were marked by fraud.29 While the Russian influence had a substantial impact on the Spanish political centre-left, which was where the republican currents were found, it had a much greater impact on the left-wing political forces and on the trade union sphere. The impact on anarchists Teresa Abelló pointed out that the Russian Revolution and the cross-­border expansion affected Spanish workerism. Its impact was greater in anarchist rather than socialist syndicalism, the former being more c­ ombative. The libertarians were initially enthusiastic about what happened in Russia because it showed that utopia was achievable, and they wanted to see the Bolshevik revolution as “the definitive” social revolution. In some sectors, authoritarianism and repressive violence were justified as “ ­ transitory elements”.30 According to the anarchist historian Gómez Casas: After the Bolsheviks conquered the Winter Palace in October 1917, the news of this amazing event reached Spain, began to spread everywhere, and, naturally, the Andalusian rural areas could not be omitted from this impact. The Russian Revolution shone a bright light on every w ­ orking sector of the country, and in all regions. Not even ­anarcho-syndicalism escaped this contagion.31 The anarchist chronicler Manuel Buenacasa also commented that: The Russian Revolution strengthened, even more, the subversive, socialist, and libertarian spirit of the Spanish workers. For many of us, I would

32  Josep Sánchez i Cervelló say for the majority, the Russian Bolshevik was a demigod, the bearer of freedom and common happiness. Who in Spain, being an anarchist, rejected the label of Bolshevik? Only a few were not blinded by the flash of the great explosion.32 In fact, during the 2nd Congress of the CNT, held in December 1919, the congressmen decided that the workers of the arms and ammunition factories were to refuse to manufacture equipment for the fight against the Red Army; the Congress also undertook to declare a general strike if the Government sent troops to Russia.33 The 4th National Congress of Farmers and Farm Workers (National Farmers’ Federation), of a confederate nature, which took place in Valencia in December 1918, unanimously agreed to congratulate the Russian peasants for putting into practice our motto: “the land to the tiller” and passed a motion for “the Spanish farmers to declare a general strike if the government tried to intervene against the Russian revolutionaries”.34 The repression was especially directed against the CNT from 1918 onwards, when it was established as a single trade union, and was, from then on, the main unifying force in Catalonia. According to the Employers’ Federation of Barcelona, government repression aimed at destroying the CNT. To this end, factory owners declared a lockout and closed factories, following which many employers who were Somatenistas (Vigilantes in Catalonia)35 armed themselves with hunting rifles and took over the city. They were joined by other reactionaries such as parallel police, platoons formed by extreme right-wing members, in addition to public order forces and the army.36 The libertarian union used every means to try to prevent the revolution in Spain. Initially, the CNT considered joining the Komintern on condition, at the congress held in Madrid at the Teatro Comedia (December 1919), but the split within the anarchist syndicalism prevented its effective integration, although most of the delegates initially supported the proposal, on condition that the anarchist ideology of the Confederation was respected. However, this was not possible because the Bolshevik leaders imposed that to join the Komintern they would have to accept the 21 conditions drawn by the Russians to separate the reformist organisations from the revolutionary ones. Considering this, the anarchists held a National Conference in Zaragoza on 11 and 12 June 1922, in which they decided to abandon the Komintern definitively and strengthen the links with the International Workers’ Association (IWA). In this meeting, to ensure that it was a good decision it was established that a delegation would go to Moscow to reliably assess the reality of the revolutionary process, and this makes a definitive decision. Three delegates were chosen to go to Russia: the first one who managed to enter the country

The influence of the Russian Revolution in Spain  33 was Ángel Pestaña, the director of the newspaper Solidaridad Obrera (Workers’ Solidarity) and one of the top leaders of the CNT, while the other two entered Russia later. Pestaña against the Communist control of the revolution

To take advantage of the trip that lasted almost three months, because it was very difficult to enter the country due to the iron control imposed by the western powers, Pestaña remained there for sixty days and soon became disenchanted with the Revolution. He participated in the 2nd Congress of the Komintern held in Moscow from 19 July to 7 August 1920. He pointed out that: If we are to believe all those who have spoken before me, the r­ evolution in Europe and in the whole world is subordinated to the organization of the Communist Parties in every country. It has been affirmed, but without convincing evidence, at least to me, and if there is no evidence, there is no reasonable hypothesis that without the Communist Party, there is no revolution, capitalism will not be destroyed, and the working classes will never conquer the right to be free. This a gratuitous claim that is out of place for their claims, since they want to use it to deny the history and the genesis of all the revolutionary movements carried out by mankind along the slow and arduous road in the pursuit of happiness. They have told us to look at Russia, to ­contemplate this beautiful spectacle (…). And I told them: What are we to admire? What is the contemplation they propose to use? Here we see nothing, but a revolution already achieved and the testing of a social organization system, but the results are not sufficiently clear for us to conclude anything (…). Revolution is the violent manifestation of a state of mind conducive to a change in the rules governing the life of a people and which, through the persistent task of several generations (…). The revolution is the idea that the multitudes have understood that there is a better social state, and that, by either finding the legal laws to manifest themselves or by opposing the capitalist classes (…). You are telling us that without the Communist Party, the revolution cannot be made, that without the Red Army, its conquests cannot be preserved, and that without the conquest of power, there is no possible emancipation, and that without dictatorship the bourgeoisie cannot be destroyed. This is making claims without providing evidence. Because if we calmly observe what happened in Russia, we will not find proof of such affirmations. You did not just make the revolution in Russia; you cooperated in its making and were more fortunate in gaining power.37

34  Josep Sánchez i Cervelló Later, in March 1922, while detained in prison in Barcelona, he wrote the second part of the memoir, which he delivered to the CNT, in which he pointed out that the Revolution definitively separated Bolsheviks and Mensheviks: What we could call the umbilical thread that united them was ­definitively cut with the coup d’état of 11 November 1917. The Mensheviks dispersed and cruelly persecuted by their former co-religionists have died or have been merging with related political elements, and the Bolsheviks, power wielders, leaders, and guides of the revolution were constituted as a party and within their incorporation to the world of ideas under the name of Russian Communist Party (…) they thought of a means that would put them in contact with the world proletariat, so that the latter, exercising decisive influence in the politics of their respective countries, would force the governments to recognize the Government of the Soviets and thus at the same time would allow the Russian communists to consolidate their power, and break the circle of fire and hunger with which they tried to muffle them. Since in the diplomatic order they were denied belligerence, they wanted to conquer the social order (…) the social democrats of all the Central European countries did not entirely agree with them, they defended the Revolution and praised it; what they did not want to recognize were the methods of the Bolshevik dictatorship. Aware of this situation in Moscow, they decided to strike a blow. Skilled in these struggles and political juggling tricks, they did not want to miss the opportunity. The more time passed, they thought, the more difficult it would be for them to impose their methods and theories. Besides, everything was favourable to them and cooperated to their success, including the stupidity of governments in Europe, subjected to isolation. The starting point was to take advantage of the sympathy that the revolution shone on the working classes and to accelerate the exasperation that these were feeling against their governments because of the blockade and the campaign maintained against Russia.38 The other confederate delegates who went to Russia were Hilario Arlandis, who arrived in April 1921, and Gastón Laval. Both, in addition to Pestaña, reported their experiences to the Zaragoza Conference of April 1922. Arlandis was disqualified by the Conference for his not-very-objective and sectarian vision of the Revolution. Gaston Leval, on the other hand, in a letter addressed to the plenary, criticised the other two delegates. “The Assembly is determined to discuss these opinions with the greatest passion, all of them being disgusted with the Third International”.39 In the Zaragoza Assembly of June 1922, most attendees reaffirmed the defence of libertarian communism and the CNT’s rejection of the

The influence of the Russian Revolution in Spain  35 Komintern. For this reason, delegates were sent to the IWA Berlin ­Congress, which was being reorganised by unions that had never made pacts with political forces and had remained neutral in the World War.40 UGT in defence of the Russian Revolution amid a sea of doubts The metal workers’ union of Vizcaya, aligned with the UGT, demanded that the government “lift the blockade of Russia and re-establish trade relations with the Land of the Soviets”. In this sense, in the Conference in the Spring of 1919, the Partido Socialista Obrero Español (Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party, PSOE) spoke out against all kinds of interventions in Russia and the general strike in case such interference should take place. The Agricultural Congress of the UGT of Andalusia and Extremadura in 1920 also expressed “its sympathy for the Russian Republic of the Soviets and demanded its recognition by the Spanish Government”.41 The repercussion of the echoes of the Russian Revolution was felt in the debates of the UGT members, and in those of the PSOE. Some were in favour of joining the Third International, but their theories were defeated both in the union and in the party, and this later caused the communist split. In 1919, Largo Caballero and Besteiro participated in the founding of the International Labour Organization (ILO),42 and in the establishment of the World Federation of Trade Unions, re-founded in the Amsterdam congress of July–August 1919.43 The UGT held its 14th Congress in Madrid from 26 June to 5 July 1920. The socialist union followed the footsteps of the PSOE and discussed the entry into the Red International of Labour Unions. As per the presentation: Considering that the Third International is the most effective weapon for the world social revolution since it was born during the Russian Revolution, which made the bourgeoisie fall from political power to put it in the hands of the working class, sustaining it later through the dictatorship of the proletariat, we, therefore, propose that Congress approve the following agreements: 1) Immediate accession of the G ­ eneral W ­ orkers’ Union of Spain to the Third International; 2) The General Workers’ Union will continue to form part of the International Trade Union, to which our delegates will take as soon as possible the final decision to propose and approve the accession to the Moscow International. The result of the vote, however, was 110,902 against and 17,919 in favour, and 3,920 abstentions.44 The UGT Congress also approved a declaration of the principles that the UGT wanted to achieve through trade union measures. Moreover, it was also believed that to match the political and economic struggle without this premise would mean that unionism would be reduced to having a merely

36  Josep Sánchez i Cervelló corrective rather than a transforming role of the capitalist ­structure. For this reason, the permanent cooperation that had always existed between the ­ ongress PSOE and the UGT had to be understood.45 It was not until this C that the union assumed the class struggle as a basic principle. Also, in this Congress, they agreed to remain part of the Amsterdam ­International ­Federation of Trade Unions.46 At the 15th Congress of the UGT, which was also held in Madrid between 18 and 24 November 1922, attended by members of the newly formed Partido Comunista Obrero Español (Workers’ Communist Party of Spain, PCOE) feelings ran high between communists and socialists over the control of the union. The Socialists tried to prevent the communists from being admitted to the Congress, by placing armed guards at the doors, following orders from Largo Caballero. However, some communists managed to get in and loudly protested the attempt to discriminate against them. During great tension, a communist fired a shot that killed a bricklayer militant of the Socialist Youth and left three others seriously wounded. The police entered Congress and arrested some communist leaders. The UGT, for its part, expelled twentynine trade union sections led by communists to counteract infiltrations.47 The following resolution was also approved at this Congress: The General Workers’ Union will honour itself by proposing to the Workers’ International that, without prejudice to the languages peculiar to the sections, Esperanto be adopted as the language for communicating with each other, and that a central body be created exclusively to promote its study and dissemination among the Spanish workers’ organizations.48 The PSOE at a watershed The Communist International rose from the ashes of the Second International, which was not capable of avoiding First World War, although in its different congresses resolutions in this sense had been approved and the national parties had defended this course of action. George Lichtheim, a historian of Socialism, stated that: The crisis of Socialism originated when the illusion that the International could stop the outbreak of the European War collapsed. On the other hand, the crisis of Communism originated when faith in the worldwide revolutionary mission of the European proletariat collapsed (…) when internationalism was sacrificed on the altar of Realpolitik.49 The 11th Congress of the PSOE (October 1918) was the first act in which the victory of the Bolshevik revolution was solemnised.

The influence of the Russian Revolution in Spain  37 The topic came up at various moments of the Congress, and was always praised, an attitude that was reflected in the resolutions adopted in this regard, all of which were taken by absolute unanimity, and are a clear testimony of the enthusiasm aroused among the working class of Western Europe for that revolutionary event. It made sense; Socialism ceased to be a utopia and entered for the first time in a country during accomplishment, perfect. The working class managed for the first time to seize political power destroyed the capitalist system and began the first experiment of economic reorganization of society based on collectivist formulas.50 At this Congress, just after the end of First World War, two resolutions were adopted: one hailing the triumph of the Russian revolution and opposing the blockade to which it was subjected by the capitalist powers; the second resolution demanded that the Socialist International investigate the question of freedoms after some Mensheviks were expelled from Russia. Under the influence of the Russian revolution, the inclusion of the territorial issue51 was also approved within the minimum program. This resolution had been approved at the Congress of the Catalan Socialist Federation of the PSOE, in Reus in 1914, but when Russia recognised the national rights of the peoples and President Wilson had postulated in favour of the self-determination of the colonies, the proposal had a better chance of being approved. For this reason, the Catalan question appeared, for the first time, in the outcomes of the congress, defining Spain as “a republican confederation of all the small Iberian nationalities”. As a result, thereof, the regional groupings of the PSOE were to organise themselves in a federative way, each one operating with total autonomy to build an alternative state to that of the Restoration. Andreu Nin and Serra i Moret, among others, took part in this territorial paper.52 From 1918 to 1921, the PSOE organised four congresses, three of which were extraordinary, in 1919, 1920, and 1921, evidencing the stress that the structure suffered. In April 1921, Pablo Iglesias noted: “let us not split”,53 but this was not possible because the French, German, Italian, and Austrian Socialist Party had already fractured. In fact, with the foundation of the Third International (March 1919), all the socialist parties were pressured into joining the Communist International. The Extraordinary Congress of the PSOE in December 1919 decided to consult its members on the accession to the Third International. As per the results of the votes, 14,010 were against and 12,497 were in favour of temporarily remaining in the Second International until further information was available. The Congress of June 1920 decided that two delegates from both party lines would go to Russia to learn about the benefits of the revolution.

38  Josep Sánchez i Cervelló The two chosen members were Fernando de los Ríos (Ronda, 1879–New York, 1949) and Daniel Anguiano (Haro, 1882–Mexico, 1963). The first was an intellectual of the institution Libre de Enseñanza and the second one was a chartered account and worked for the Northern Railways. Both attended the second Congress of the Third International. Upon returning to Spain, they presented totally different reports. Anguiano recommended the accession to the communist International, while Los Ríos la demanded that they should remain in the Second International. The differences between democratic socialism and Marxism-Leninism: freedom, what for?

The Second International tried to recreate itself and turned towards reformist socialism and having the parliamentary system as a strategy. The Third International used subversion to make the capitalist order collapse, opposing both the power of the bourgeoisie and the Second International, because it did not follow its political orientation. During his visit to Russia, Fernando de los Ríos and Anguiano met with Lenin and commented that: Access was difficult.54 During our long conversation, notwithstanding his perfect knowledge of our theoretical and tactical ideas, he has not asked a single question whose answer could be embarrassing to us or say a veiled annoying phrase (…). He asks us about Spain (…). – How and when do you think – we asked – we could move from the current transition period to a regime of full freedom for unions, press, and individuals? – We – replied Lenin – have never spoken of freedom, but of the dictatorship of the proletariat; we exercise it from power to the proletariat, and since in Russia the actual working class, that is, the industrial working class, is a minority, the dictatorship is exercised by that minority and it will last as long as the other social elements do not submit to the economic conditions imposed by communism since for us it is a crime to exploit another man as is to keep the flour that someone needs. The psychology of the villagers is refractory to our system (…) but the villagers have reached a conclusion, namely that, if the Bolsheviks are bad, the others are unbearable. We tell the villagers that either they submit, or we will consider that they have declared civil war against us, that they are our enemies (…). The period of transition of dictatorship – Lenin continued – will be very long among us…, perhaps forty or fifty years; other peoples, like Germany and England, will be able to shorten this period because they are more industrialised (…). Yes, yes, the problem for us is not one of freedom, because, with respect to freedom, we always ask: freedom, what for?55

The influence of the Russian Revolution in Spain  39 The PSOE in the labyrinth and the communist splits Communist propaganda had intensified since the 1918 Socialist Congress and the “third parties” were gaining ground within the socialist organisations, strengthened by the actions of the activists sent by the Third International. In June 1920, the Extraordinary Congress of the PSOE approved the conditional integration into the Communist International, as long as the autonomy and independence of the party were preserved. 8,269 militants voted in favour of the proposal, 5,016 against it, and 1,615 abstained.56 But when the twenty-one conditions were known, most of the delegates opposed the integration. It was then decided to send Anguiano and de Los Ríos to Moscow. On 16 December 1919, an Extraordinary Congress of the PSOE was held, and due to a lack of consensus and to avoid a split, the congress opted for a compromise solution: to continue in the Second International but defend the merger of the two Internationals, the Socialist and the ­Communist. This option, however, did not please the Third-Party members of the Federation of Socialist Youth who, on 13 April 1920 in the Casa del Pueblo in Madrid, founded the Partido Comunista de España (Spanish Communist Party, PCE). The voting at this congress revealed the small difference between the two sectors. Thus, the “third party” obtained 12,497 votes against the 14,010 supporters of the Second International.57 Of the 6,000 members of the Socialist Youth, between 1,000 and 1,500 moved to the PCE. The first general secretary of the new party was Ramón Merino Gracia. The Spanish Communist Party gained a competitor because on 13 April 1921, after the Third Extraordinary Congress of the PSOE, in which the gap opened between those in favour of continuing the socialist International and those who wished to join the Third International, as the case of Antonio García Quejido, founder of the PSOE and the UGT, declared that the members of the Executive Committee in favour of the III International should separate from the PSOE to form the PCOE. The Executive Committee was formed with García Quejido, Daniel Anguiano, Virginia González Polo, Evaristo Gil, Manuel Núñez de Arenas, and Facundo Perezagua.58 Another communist leader who had stood out for his pompous eloquence in the PSOE Extraordinary Congress of 1919 was the delegate from Valladolid Ramón Merino Gracia, who also switched to the communists. Initially, he defended that the Russian revolution was “a gesture of rage of the masses against the Czar and not a true socialist revolution because according to Marxist orthodoxy, Russia was not ready for it”.59 But soon after he would be one of the leaders of Spanish communism, a supporter of the Third International, signing the “third party” manifesto, and then leaving the PSOE and ending up being

40  Josep Sánchez i Cervelló secretary general of the PCE. He was arrested in Barcelona in February 1925 along with the elite of Spanish communism. He was imprisoned in Modelo de Barcelona until August 1927, where, due to his relationship with Father Gafo, he converted to Catholicism. Although he was sentenced to twenty-five years, he was acquitted, as were his chief comrades in the PCE. Later, at the beginning of the Civil War, he joined the Francoists and fought in the defence of Oviedo.60 From 9 to 14 April 1921, a new Extraordinary Congress of the PSOE was held at the Casa del Pueblo in Madrid. In this congress, de los Ríos spoke about what he had seen in Russia and pointed out that the ­Communist Party imposed a dictatorship that monopolised political power.61 In the final vote of the International, 8,808 voted for Vienna International and 6,025 for Moscow International. On the other hand, as the Komintern only supported one national party in each country, the CI members sent to Spain pressed for the confluence of both Communist Parties, which was not easy. Finally, the Unification Congress was held in November 1921, having as intermediary the Italian senator and member of the Komintern António Graziadei,62 and in March 1922, the PCE held its first congress, with Merino Gracia as its general secretary.63 Conclusions The Russian Revolution had a great influence on Spain. Even the centreleft was attracted by the proletarian Revolution. In Catalonia, which was the factory of Spain, and where there was a mobilised and class-conscious labour force, the Republicans of the PRC wanted to join Communist International. However, when its promoter Francesc Layret was assassinated by gunmen paid by employers, they abandoned this utopia. The CNT temporarily joined the Komintern at the December 1919 ­congress and left it at the Zaragoza National Conference of June 1922. Pestaña was sent to Russia to report on the Bolshevik laboratory and showed to be opposed to communism. The structures which suffered most from the impact of the Revolution were the PSOE and the UGT. The PSOE, during a deep division, held an extraordinary congress in December 1919, to establish a consensual line of action, but was able to avoid its internal division. However, most of the militants opted to remain in the Second International. In June 1920, another congress approved the conditional integration in the Communist International, but with the proviso that the autonomy and independence of the party be maintained. They also decided that two delegates, from the two-party lines, Fernando de los Ríos and Daniel Anguiano, would go to

The influence of the Russian Revolution in Spain  41 Russia to obtain information, but they did not agree, the former because he distrusted the Revolution, and the latter because he approved it. The PSOE congress in April 1921 discussed, once again, the path to ­follow, but no consensus was reached because there were serious differences. The division left deep wounds that lasted until after the civil war. Congress rejected the twenty-one conditions proposed by the CI. A similar path was followed by the UGT at the 14th Congress in June 1920, which rejected the Internacional Sindicat Vermell (Red International of Labor Unions, ISV). At the 15th Congress of the UGT, in November 1922, the socialist leaders expelled twenty-nine communist unions so that they would not “enter” the union. The communist split deeply affected both socialist organisations. After the 1919 PSOE congress decided that the structure would remain in the Second International, the Socialist Youth disagreed and, on 15 April 1920, opted to leave the PSOE and become the Spanish Communist Party. On 14  November 1921, the “third parties” also left the PSOE to form the PCOE. Although the CI then forced the two CPs to unite, the conflicts did not stop due to the individualism of their members. At the end of October 1924, a meeting of the executive committee of the CI was held in Moscow to pacify the Spanish communists and put a stop to the confrontations. The degradation of the party was such that in 1930 it only had 500 members. Oscar Perez Solis, a founder of the PCOE, was elected secretary ­general of the PCE in 1923 and a member of the Komintern Executive. During the Civil War, he joined the Falange. Ramon Merino Gracia, in turn, was elected secretary general of the new PCE, but shortly after he went to defend reactionary policies. He was a member of the Patriotic Union, of the Sindicatos Libres de Maestros, and later of the Sindicato Vertical during Franco’s regime. Therefore, when the time came for the Republic, the PCE was an insignificant force. Notes 1 For example in Ricardo de Beobide, Los bolcheviques: pinceladas trágicas de la Revolución Rusa (Barcelona: Librería Salesiana-Sarria, S.d.); Sergio de ­Chessin, La locura roja: aspectos y escenas de la Revolución Rusa (1917-1918) (Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1920). 2 Sofía Casanova (A Coruña, 1861-Poznań, 1958) was the first Spanish woman to become a permanent correspondent in a foreign country and a war correspondent. Her activity throughout Europe allowed her to experience events such as the First World War, the fall of Czarist Russia, the emergence of the Bolshevik regime, and the Second World War. She wrote for newspapers such as ABC, La Época, El Liberal, and El Imparcial, for the magazine Galicia, for other Galician publications, and for the international press, such as the Gazeta Polska and the New York Times. Of Catholic and monarchical convictions in

42  Josep Sánchez i Cervelló the Spanish Civil War, she joined the Francoist ranks. See Isabel Bugallal “Sofía Casanova no interesa a nadie, su figura no da juego”, La Opinión, A Coruña (3 Decembre 2009) and María del Carmen Simón Palmer, “Sofia Casanova, autora de la Madeja”, Actas del Tercer Congreso Internacional de Estudios Galdosianos (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria: Cabildo Insular de Gran Canaria, 1990), 531–536. 3 Sofía Casanova, “ABC en Rusia. La Revolución maximalista,” ABC, no. 4.952, 19 January 1918, 3. 4 Sofía Casanova, “ABC en Rusia. En el antro de las fieras,” ABC, no. 4.634, 2 March 1918, 3. 5 Corporate union movement of the Infantry. 6 Francisco Villacorta Baños, Profesionales y burócratas. Estado y poder corporativo en la España del Siglo XX, 1890-1923 (Madrid: Siglo XXI de España, 1989), 372–373. 7 Francisco J. Romero Salvadó, “‘España no era Rusia’. La revolución española de 1917: anatomía de un fracaso”, Hispania Nova: Revista de historia contemporánea 15 (2017): 416–442. 8 Santos Juliá, Un siglo de España. Política y Sociedad (Madrid: Marcial Pons, 1999), 53. 9 Melchor Fernández Almagro, Historia del reinado de Alfonso XIII (Madrid: Sarpe, 1986), 30–31. 10 Federico Grom, “El impacto de la Revolución rusa en el movimiento obrero español”, La Izquierda Diario, 15 March 2017. ­Accessed 26 December 2022. https://www.laizquierdadiario.com.uy/El-impacto-de-la-Revolucion-rusaen-el-movimiento-obrero-espanol 11 Juan Díaz del Moral, Historia de las agitaciones campesinas andaluzas. Antecedentes para una Reforma Agraria (Madrid: Editorial Reus, 1929); ­ Jacques Maurice, “A propósito del trienio bolchevique”, in La crisis de la Restauración. España, entre la primera Guerra Mundial y la Segunda República: II Coloquio de Segovia sobre Historia Contemporanea de España, coord. José Luis García Delgado (Madrid: Siglo XXI de España, 1986), 337–350. 12 Tenant subject to the rabassa morta contract pertaining to vineyard growers. 13 See Jordi Pomés i Vives, La Unió de Rabassaires: Lluís Companys y el republicanisme, el cooperativisme i el sindicalisme pagès a la Catalunya dels anys vint (Barcelona: Abadia de Montserrat, 2000). 14 Manuel Tuñón de Lara, dir., Historia de España. Revolución Burguesa, Oligarquía y Constitucionalismo (1834–1923) (Barcelona: Labor, 1987), 514. 15 Actas del I Congreso de Historia de Andalucía: Andalucía Contemporánea (siglos XIX y XX) (Córdoba: Monte de Piedad y Caja de Ahorros de Córdoba, 1978), 545. 16 Fernando Sánchez Marroyo, La España del siglo XX: economía, demografía y sociedad (Madrid: Akal, 2003), 276–277. 17 Francesc Bonamusa, “Remences i rabassaires” Revista HMiC [Universitat ­Autònoma de Barcelona], no. 9 (2011): 13. 18 Ibid., 12. 19 Jordi Pomés i Vives and Carles Sàiz i Xiqués, Joaquim Pou Mas (1891–1966). Dinamisme i ambició:  de cooperativista agrari a conseller de la Generalitat (Barcelona: L’Abadia de Montserrat, 2000), 83. 20 Ivan Miró i Acedo, Anna Fernàndez Montes and David Soler García, La ­economia social y solidaria en Barcelona (Madrid: Marge Books, 2016), 137. 21 “Un grave peligro el sindicalismo bolchevikista”, La Acción, no. 1,037, 3 ­January 1919, 1.

The influence of the Russian Revolution in Spain  43 22 The so-called law of flight was no law at all. It referred to the summary execution by the police of syndicalists and leftists. 23 A clear reference to the Bolshevik Revolution. 24 Pinilla Fornell, “Señores de la Tierra”, El Sol, no. 149, 21 April 1918, 6. 25 Josep Maria Poblet, La catalanitat de Marcel·lí Domingo (Barcelona: Teide, 1978), 67–72. 26 A gangster organization in the hands of employers and the government that sought to subdue the workers’ movement. 27 Lluis Nicolau D’Olwer, Democràcia contra dictadura: escrits polítics, 1915– 1960 (Barcelona: Institut d’Estudis Catalans, 2007), 567. 28 Future president of the Generalitat de Catalunya. 29 Josep Sánchez i Cervelló, “Marcel·lí, una figura polièdrica i cristalina”, in Marcel·lí que torna, coord. Josep Sánchez i Cervelló (Tarragona: Amics de l’Ebre, 1995), 256. 30 Teresa Abelló, El movimiento Obrero en España, siglos XIX y XX (Barcelona: Hipòtesi, 1997), 99. 31 Juan Gómez Casas, Historia del anarcosindicalismo español: epílogo hasta nuestros días (Madrid: La Malatesta, 2006), 137. 32 Manuel Buenacasa, El movimiento obrero español (1886–1926) (Madrid: ­Júcar, 1977), 50. 33 Ibid., 70. 34 Anarcoefemèrides de l’11 de juny. Accessed 26 December 2022. http://www. estelnegre.org/anarcoefemerides/1106.html 35 See Jaume Camps Girona, “El sometent franquista contra els patacons. Una anàlisi socioeconòmica d’aquella força paramilitar”, in Las Brigadas Internacionales: nuevas perspectivas en la historia de la guerra civil y del exilio, coord. Josep Sánchez i Cervelló and Sebastià Agudo (Tarragona: Universitat Rovira i Virgili | Publicacions URV, 2015), 25–51. 36 Soledad Bengoechea, El locaut de Barcelona (1919–1920) (Barcelona: Curial, 1998), 18. 37 Ángel Pestaña, Lo que yo vi: Setenta Días en Rusia (Barcelona: Tip. Cosmos, 1924), 183–189. 38 Ángel Pestaña, Consideraciones y Juicios acerca de la Tercera Internacional (Madrid: ZYX, 1968), 7–9. 39 Manuel Buenacasa, El movimiento obrero español…, 86–87. 40 Gerald Brenan, El laberinto español (París: Ruedo Ibérico, 1962), 143. 41 Manuel Buenacasa, El movimiento obrero español…, 70. 42 Unión General de Trabajadores (1888–2005). Un Breve Resumen de N ­ uestra Historia. Accessed 26 December 2022. https://130aniversariougt.es/wp-­ content/uploads/2018/08/historia-ugt.pdf 43 Manuel Redero San Román, Estudios de historia de la UGT (Salamanca: ­Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca, 1992), 92. 44 El Socialista, 1 July 1920, 2. 45 Colectivo sindicalista de UGT, Unión General de Trabajadores (Madrid: Avance, 1976), 21–22. 46 Pablo Iglesias, “El fin de las 21 condiciones”, El Socialista, 9 April 1921, 1. 47 El Socialista, 19 November 1922, 1. 48 Manuela Aroca Mohedano, “Spain’s Unión General de Trabajadores in the international context (1888–1936)”, Ventunesimo Secolo, vol. 15, no. 38 (2016): 13. 49 George Lichtheim, Breve historia del socialismo (Madrid: Alianza, 1975), 328. 50 Luis Gómez Llorente, Aproximación a la Historia del socialismo español hasta 1921 (Madrid: Cuadernos para el Dialogo, 1972), 359.

44  Josep Sánchez i Cervelló 51 Which had been approved at the 4th Congress of the Catalonian Federation of the PSOE held in Reus on 28 and 29 June 1914. 52 Joaquim Capdevila, Mariona Lladonosa, and Joana i Soto, ed., Imaginaris nacionals moderns. Segles XVIII-XXI (Lleida: Universitat de Lleida, 2015), 215–216. 53 Pablo Iglesias, “No nos dividamos”, El socialista, 28 March 1921, 1. 54 Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin (Moscow, 1888–1938) was a communist leader and a theorist of political economy. In 1906 he joined the Russian PSD, for which he had to go into exile in 1911. From 1917 he was part of the Central Committee of the party and from 1919 of the Politburo. He was arrested by Stalin in 1937 and shot the following year. See S. Cohen, Bujarín y la Revolución bolchevique. Biografía política 1888–1938 (Madrid: Siglo XXI Editores, 2017). 55 Manuel Iriarte, “El proceso de construcción del PCE: de su escisión del PSOE a la legalización de sus radios en 1931”, Isla de Arriarán: Revista Cultural y Científica, no. 17 (2001): 177–186. 56 Luis Gómez Llorente, Aproximación a la Historia del socialismo español…, 519. 57 Ibid., 480. 58 Antoni Jutglar, Ideologías y clases en la España Contemporánea (1874-1931), vol. II (Madrid: Editorial Cuadernos para el Dialogo, 1973), 204–205. 59 Antonio González Quintana, Aurelio Martín Nájera and Gutmaro Gómez Bravo, Juventudes Socialistas. 100 años. Protagonistas del cambio (Madrid: Fundación Tomás Meabe, 2006), 144. 60 Joan Estruch, Historia oculta del PCE (Madrid: Temas de Hoy, 2000), 33–34. 61 Fernando de los Ríos, Mi viaje a la Rusia sovitista (Madrid: Alianza, 1921), 97–99. 62 Antonio Graziadei (1872–1953). Of noble origin, he was count, a university professor and one of the founders of the Italian CP, and a senator from 1910 to 1926. In 1928 he went into exile in France to escape fascism. He was sent by the CI to Spain to bring peace between the two Spanish communist parties. 63 He was general secretary of the Joventuts Socialistas in 1919, chosen in April 1920 as leader of the PCOE, and expelled from the PSOE in 1920. He attended the 3rd Congress of the CI in Moscow in 1921 the PCE, where he met Lenin. When the Communist Party of Spain was formed in November 1921 by the union of the PCOE and the PCE, he was elected general secretary. Shortly after he left the PCE and became a member of the Unió Patriòtica, of the Sindicato Libre de Mestros and later of the Sindicatos Verticals Franquistas. See ­Antonio González Quintana, Aurelio Martín Nájera and Gutmaro Gómez Bravo, J­ uventudes Socialistas. 100 años…, 144.

3 The impact of the Russian Revolution across the Muslim world From the winds of freedom to geopolitical changes Jaume Camps Girona A spectre haunts the world The Manifesto of the Communist Party by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels was published on 21 February 1848. On the first page, the two authors left a few words for posterity: “a spectre is haunting Europe: the spectre of communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre”. Sixty-nine years later, another threat to subvert the established order again shook Western chancelleries: the Bolshevik Revolution. Although the Soviet model was not exactly replicated anywhere else in the world, the Bolshevik revolutionary experience left a legacy of ideas and hopes that would be embraced for many years by those who longed for a more egalitarian and social-political order. As stated by Josep Fontana: “feeding the hopes of those at the bottom and becoming, at least in their fears, the greatest threat to those at the top”.1 The Russian Revolution became a universal symbol for those who fought for a new world, especially those who personally suffered injustices. This was the opinion of the Mexican anarchist intellectual Ricardo ­Flores Magón who, on 16 March 1918, wrote in issue 262 of Regeneración (the newspaper of the Mexican Liberal Party) an article entitled “The Russian Revolution” and declared that “the revolution in Russia is not a national revolution, but a world revolution”.2 Tariq Ali also points out that “the October Revolution of 1917 transformed world politics and, in the p ­ rocess, turned the 20th century upside down with a frontal attack on capitalism and its empires, which accelerated decolonization”. The great war and the fall of the old empires On 28 June 1914, Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb, murdered Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in

DOI: 10.4324/9781003399209-4

46  Jaume Camps Girona the middle of the street in Sarajevo. Had it been in another context, this act, perpetrated by Serbian nationalists, would have led to protests and strong condemnation by the international community. However, in a climate of tension between powers, it marked the beginning of a war that lasted four and a half years and involved contingents from all over the world in trench warfare.3 Since this conflict involved colonial empires, the Muslim world, largely colonised by the West, underwent major changes, starting with the disintegration of the former Ottoman Empire. In July 1914, there was a perception among the Western chancelleries that Turkey was a giant built on shifting sands and could be a great market for colonial expansion. As Baron Hans von Wangenheim, the German ambassador in Istanbul put it: “there is not the slightest doubt that Turkey is still today a worthless ally. It will only be a burden to its partners and will be unable to offer them the slightest advantage”.4 It was true that the Ottoman Empire was not prepared for a major conflict like the one that broke out in 1914, neither militarily nor in terms of infrastructure. The railway system, designed and built by foreign companies, had yielded big payoffs for Western companies, but it had no strategic capacity: it was not suitable for the effective mobilisation of troops, or for their transportation.5 Despite these problems, in November 1914, the Ottoman Empire aligned itself with the central empires on the side of Germany, and on 11th the ­Sultan issued an appeal to Muslims around the world urging them to unite in a jihad against Britain, Russia, and France. The appeal had limited effect among the Umma, who were more concerned with their daily lives.6 Only a popular uprising against the British occurred in Egypt in February 1915, coinciding with the Ottoman attack on the Suez Canal, and the activity of the Sanūsiyyah brotherhood, in Libya, thanks to German and Turkish propaganda.7 The entry of the Ottomans into the war turned the European conflict into an international dispute, as the Eastern front was, in Eugene Rogan’s words, “a veritable tower of Babel”. Some influential British politicians, such as Winston Churchill, thought that by opening more fronts they could win more easily, erroneously pressured to take the contention to Turkish territory for a quick victory over the central powers, causing an unprecedented conflict between international armies.8 Nevertheless, the Ottoman Empire’s involvement in First World War accelerated the final implosion of that sultanate, and opened the door for the founding of a Turkish Republic, emphasising the concept of secular nationhood.9 The nationalist movements that were growing in the Ottoman provinces played an important role in this political transformation and change in mindsets. To maintain order in their territories, the authorities in Istanbul

The impact of the Russian Revolution across the Muslim world  47 took ruthless measures against anyone who took part in s­ eparatist a­ ctivities. In 1915, a military tribunal was established in Lebanon, which during that year sentenced dozens of people to death by hanging and ­sentenced hundreds of others to long prison terms, forcing thousands into exile. In Syria, Cemal Pasha was appointed Governor. He was one of the leaders of the Young Turks who, at the age of 42, was a minister of the Navy and had entered the Fertile Crescent with the idea of restoring peace and international order. In May 1915, the new Turkish authorities began to persecute the Arab nationalist movement. Those cruel punishments led Cemal Pasha to be called the al-Saffah (“the blood-shedder”). The brutal repression was compounded by the hardships of war: the mass conscription of thousands of young men, the loss of crops and livestock due to official seizures, and starvation due to insufficient rainfall and locust infestations.10 In addition to this repression in the Arab provinces, genocide occurred against the Armenian people, resulting in between 300,000 and a million deaths.11 Meanwhile, Britain and France were working towards the final breakup of the entire Turkish-Iranian-Arab Middle East, seeking satellites for the newly emerging small entities. During the Great War, the two powers made arrangements for the spoils through agreements and treaties between the two countries, trying to please Italy and Russia.12 One such treaty was the Sykes-Picot Agreement, whereby France would control the region of present-­day Syria, Lebanon, and northern Iraq, and Britain would dominate the rest of the region. Moreover, the British government promised Hussein ibn Ali, Emir of Mecca, that he could rule an Arab kingdom in the Fertile Crescent region if the Arabs helped them rise up against the Turks. London also sought the support of Zionism, to mobilise the Jewish community in the United States to pressure the US government to enter the war. In addition, the British bourgeoisie, fearful of the strength of the Bolsheviks in Russia and the European Left, mobilised the Jews for revolution, proposing the colonisation of Palestine as an alternative. Thus, on 2 November 1917, the British Foreign Secretary, Lord Balfour, declared that his government supported the creation of a Jewish national home in Palestine. This was incomprehensible, for a government was ceding territory that was not their own to a population that was not their own either, without taking into consideration that those lands had their own population. The main justification for this terrible arbitrariness was to seek an ally to defend the interests of the British crown in an Arab world that was beginning to claim self-determination.13 Ultimately, the outcome of the negotiations on the future of Palestine can be traced to three documents: the Hussein-McMahon correspondence, the Sykes-Picot Agreement, and the Balfour Declaration. Each of these documents made a different promise to the local population. The first linked the

48  Jaume Camps Girona future of Palestine to a Hashemite Arab kingdom within the Arab world; the second proposed to place Palestine under Anglo-French colonial rule; and the third saw the territory as a future Jewish state. The only group represented in this game of high politics was the foreign community in Palestine, which consisted of three distinct groups: the most important one, the Zionist settlers; the second one, the Christian clergy in charge of the holy places; and the third one, the European consuls and their social environment, which included long-term visitors from the countries they represented.14 The declaration caught the other countries by surprise, as the British had not informed their allies. The other major imperial power, France, was dismayed by this situation and did not agree to those demands. Faced with this decision, the Zionist lobby began a campaign to pressure the French into supporting the British. The British General Allenby entered Jerusalem through the Jaffa Gate and declared before the local dignitaries that he had come to restore the former glory of Richard the Lionheart. Similarly, French General Gouraud, after the takeover of Damascus in 1920, stated before Saladin’s tomb: “We are again in the East, Mr. Sultan”.15 After negotiations, the British were able to get the French to renounce their rights over Palestine at the San Remo Conference on 26 April 1920.16 Parallel to these actions to divide the world, another event transformed the world stage: Tsar Nicholas II abdicated. The Bolsheviks and the war In 1917, Russia was engaged in a war against Germany with England, France, and Japan as allies. Two and a half years after the conflict, unease persisted among the poorly commanded and ill-equipped troops, who were trying to escape the nightmare that had only led to defeat and loss of life. On 12 March of that year, the Tsar’s government was overthrown by a revolution in St. Petersburg, and a provisional government was established. However, dissatisfaction persisted and on 25 October (7 November, 7 in the Gregorian calendar) the Bolsheviks seised the Winter Palace, the seat of Kerensky’s ministry.17 Lenin’s first decrees demonstrated the new government’s strong commitment to solving the country’s most serious problems.18 Besides domestic issues, the new revolutionary government had to deal with those related to the Great War. Since the February Revolution, the Bolsheviks had advocated the slogan “peace, bread and land” in order to increase the number of mobilised civilians. Therefore, one of the first steps of the Bolshevik government was to seek peace with Germany. The armistice negotiations began in February 1918 at ­Brest-Litovsk. ­Trotsky, head of the Soviet delegation, demonstrated that the Bolsheviks had

The impact of the Russian Revolution across the Muslim world  49 abandoned the old diplomatic practices by leading an anti-war c­ ampaign among the German troops, appealing to the German delegation to accept “a peace without annexations or indemnities”,19 “for which the overwhelming majority of the working class and other working people of all the belligerent countries are craving”.20 In addition, the Bolsheviks had defended the right to self-determination of peoples, publishing on 14 November the “Declaration of the Rights of the Peoples of Russia”, which expressed the will declared in the first congresses of the Soviets on the freedom of the peoples that made up the Russian Empire, which embodied the following four points: 1 Equality and sovereignty of the peoples of Russia. 2 The right of the peoples of Russia to self-determination, including the right to secede completely and become an independent state. 3 The abolition of all national or religious privileges and restrictions. 4 The free development of the national minorities and ethnic groups that populate the territory of Russia.21 Furthermore, secret diplomacy was abolished, which meant the “immediate publication of the secret treaties ratified or concluded by the government of the landlords and capitalists from February to 25 October 1917”, and breaking with the policy of loyalty to “war aims” advocated by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Provisional Government.22 This premise aimed to identify the foreign policy of the overthrown government with that of the Tsar’s Empire, since both had adopted the imperialist objectives of continuing to fight in the war.23 Against this backdrop, Lenin, on 7 January 1918, was confident that after a period in which bourgeois resistance would be overcome, the triumph of the socialist revolution would be achieved in a matter of months.24 In the negotiations, the main issue revolved around whether or not the Central Powers would annex most of the territories occupied by their troops. The Russian delegation argued that the populations of these territories should decide their future through a plebiscite, in which everyone could vote freely, and consequently the occupying troops would be withdrawn. For their part, the Germans and Austro-Hungarians refused to evacuate in advance, as this would take away their means to exert pressure on the voters.25 This new Bolshevik strategy of holding a major international conference with the international powers to achieve a joint exit from the war was followed by Trotsky’s publication of the treaties signed by the Tsarist government with its Entente allies: the Treaty of Rome (1915) and the Sykes-Picot Agreement (1916). The discovery of secret diplomacy to divide the Ottoman Empire, based on pacts between the French, British, and Russians that betrayed Arab aspirations, triggered diverse reactions, as it coincided with the aid

50  Jaume Camps Girona campaign for Palestine and the taking of Jerusalem by the British forces (11 December 1917). Moreover, on 20 November, Russia published a manifesto addressed to the Muslim peoples of Russia and the East. The manifesto addressed “to all the Muslim working masses of Russia and the East” renounced Russia’s historic claim to Constantinople,26 invalidated the sharing of Persia, and appealed to the Persian, Turkish, Arab, and Hindu peoples: “you should not fear enslavement from Russia and its revolutionary government, but rather from the European imperialist thieves, those who have devastated your homeland and turned it into their colonies”.27 The Muslim issue The former Russian empire concentrated in its vast territories the third largest Muslim community in the world, behind the British and O ­ ttoman empires. After the Orthodox Church, the Muslims were the largest religious group in Russia, with a population of between 15 and 18 million.28 This population represented roughly 10 per cent of the whole population of the country, and after Tsarism was overthrown, they radicalised and demanded religious freedom and their national rights denied by the Romanovs. Thus, in May 1917, the Great All-Russian Congress of ­Muslims, with representation from all Islamic communities, agreed to initiate dialogue between the leading Muslim representatives and the new authorities, without renouncing to pan-Islamism or to pan-Turkism.29 On the part of the revolutionaries, the right to national self-­determination had been proclaimed in the first manifesto of the Russian Social Democratic Workers’ Party, at its Founding Congress in 1898, and in 1903, it recognised “the right to self-determination of all nations who were part of the composition of the state”.30 Lenin was involved in the Zimmerwald (September 1915) and Kienthal Conferences (April 1916) between 1915 and 1916, which dealt with the collapse of the Second International and the transformation of the “imperialist war into revolutionary civil war”. Lenin wrote Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism precisely in this period, where he not only criticised the leftists who thought that the national problems would fade away with the Great World War but also opposed the bourgeois pacifism that hovered on the horizon, which, according to Lenin, would be a continuation of the imperialist war by other means.31 Moreover, he considered that the war was consistent with a new state that had been achieved by capitalism and imperialism and was, therefore, a prelude to a socialist revolution.32 Faced with the need to spread the revolution and consolidate the new government throughout the territory, the Bolshevik leaders sought the support of Muslim leaders. Its speeches, therefore, were addressed to

The impact of the Russian Revolution across the Muslim world  51 those “oppressed” by Tsarism, and Muslims were the most important ­community. Thus, the Soviets established themselves as protectors of this population, and in December 1917, they published a statement signed by Lenin and Stalin, to the Muslims of Russia: violated by the Tsars and oppressors of Russia! Henceforward your beliefs and customs, and your national and cultural institutions, are declared free and inviolable. Build your national life freely and without hindrance. It is your right. Know that your rights, like those of all the peoples of Russia, are under the mighty protection of the revolution, by the councils of workers, soldiers, peasants, and deputies!33 Atheism was never a condition of party membership for Muslims. In fact, the Bolsheviks encouraged left-wing Muslims to join the Communist Party. Trotsky noted in 1923 that in some territories of the former Russian Empire, as many as 15 per cent of Communist Party members were practising Muslims. He called them the “raw revolutionary recruits who come knocking on our door”.34 Sacred Islamic books and objects looted by the Tsars were returned to the mosques by the Bolsheviks. Friday was declared the legal day of rest throughout Central Asia, where, as of 1921, Islamic courts administered justice in accordance with Sharia law. A Sharia Commission was established in the Soviet Commissariat of Justice to oversee the system. However, some of those Muslim courts flouted Soviet law, for example, refusing to award divorces upon the petition of the women. Thus, in 1922, a decree introduced new changes to the Soviet courts, allowing divorce to be granted if requested by one of the parties. Still, 30 to 50 per cent of court cases were resolved by Sharia courts, and in Chechnya, the figure was as high as 80 per cent. A parallel official education system was also established in 1922. To this end, the Bolsheviks returned several waqf (religious properties) to Muslim communities so that they could set up religious schools therein, the madrasas. While in 1921 there were 1,000 schools with 85,000 students in the Dagestan state, by 1925 in the same Caucasus area this figure rose to 15,000 madrasas with 45,000 students enrolled.35 Most Muslims in Russia, especially the intellectuals, believed the Bolsheviks’ promises of national and religious freedom and began to support the Soviet regime. During the Civil War, a large number of Tatars and Bashkir served as volunteers and joined the Red Army. They also played an important part in suppressing the Kronstadt uprising in 1921.36 The Bolsheviks also concluded alliances with the Kazakh pan-Islamic group Ush-Zhuz, which joined the Communist Party in 1920, the ­Persian Muslim partisans in the Jengelis, and the Vaisites, a mystic Sufi brotherhood.

52  Jaume Camps Girona In Dagestan, Soviet power was established largely thanks to the partisans of the Muslim leader Ali-Hadji Akushinskii. In Chechnya, support came from the leader of a powerful Sufí order, Ali Mataev, who headed the Chechen Revolutionary Committee. In the Red Army, the Sharia Squadrons of the mullah Katkakhanov numbered tens of thousands. This policy contrasted with that of the Bolsheviks towards the Orthodox Church, as the revolutionary leaders wanted to make amends for the crimes of tsarism in the former imperial territories.37 Faced with the new Russian diplomacy, President Wilson reacted and, together with his advisor Colonel House, drafted “The Fourteen Points”, in which he took up certain Soviet proposals such as peace without victory, the right of self-determination of peoples, the evacuation of conquered peoples, and public diplomacy. The Russians welcomed this proposal and were quick to use it as a tool in the negotiations. Wilson’s Fourteen Points, published on 8 January 1918, were interpreted in the Muslim world as confirmation of their right to self-determination. Thus, many Muslim delegates to the Versailles and Paris peace conferences asked for their independence but were not heard.38 Wilson did not heed the demands of the Arabs either. The President sent a commission of inquiry, which was informed that the Palestinians wanted to be part of great Syria and vehemently opposed the Balfour Declaration, demanding that if they had to be under foreign tutelage, they would prefer it to be American. Those conclusions, however, were not taken into account, as Wilson was losing ground in domestic politics and the United States was again retreating into isolation.39 The 1917 “Declaration of the Rights of the Peoples of Russia” resulted in the proposal for a “Federation of Soviet Republics”, hegemonised by the Bolsheviks, who became the only possible spokesperson for the national demands of the different peoples. A people’s republic was proclaimed in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, which announced its desire to be integrated on an equal footing in the Russian Federation. The Kremlin responded with an invasion and established another Moscow-friendly government. A similar process took place in Belarus, where the proclamation of autonomy was followed by the dissolution of the National Congress and the establishment of another pro-Russian government.40 The Germans responded with a quick offensive known as Operation Faustschlag (“Operation Fist Punch”), capturing the following territories in fourteen days: Belarus, Ukraine and Crimea, Estonia, and Livonia. In the meantime, the Russian army struggled with the lack of troops. In the face of this situation, Lenin took the decision to accept the German conditions for peace. Thus, the Germans kept the territories occupied in Operation Faustschlag, and the Russian government secured a preferential economic agreement with Germany. On 3 March 1918, Georgy Chicherin, the highest representative of the Soviet delegation, replacing Trotsky, signed the

The impact of the Russian Revolution across the Muslim world  53 Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. This agreement left Russia greatly weakened, as it lost several territories that represented 34 per cent of its population, 32 per cent of its agricultural land, 54 per cent of its industrial enterprises, and 89 per cent of its coal mines.41 The Congress of Baku and Sultan-Galiev Following the Declaration of December 1917, the Commissariat of Nationalities, headed by Stalin, established the Central Commissariat for Muslim Affairs, with the aim of consolidating the Soviet regime and propagating the Communist ideology among Muslim people. This Commissariat was headed by Mullah Nur Vakhitov, who had been a member of the Kazakh Muslim Communist Committee (established in April 1917). One of his first measures was to create Communist parties in the cities of the Ural region.42 With the start of the civil war between the Reds and Whites (1917–1923), the Bolsheviks sought the support of local populations. During these battles, many of the inhabitants fled to other areas, many others were killed in action, and many of the Islamised elites, the Ulema, were killed. After the war, the Bolshevik leaders showed some tolerance in religious and national matters to compensate for the war effort, so new republics were then established. The Bashkir Autonomous Soviet Republic, established in 1920, was the first of its kind and was followed by others in Muslim-majority areas. They all formed part of the Soviet Russian Republic and had the same constitution and organisation.43 After the civil war, Lenin, seeking international allies and knowing the revolutionary potential of the colonised peoples, convinced the Bolshevik leaders to hold a congress to address the colonial and national questions.44 As Lenin stated, “it will unite the communists and display the banner of Bolshevism in all the civilised countries and in all the backward countries of the East”.45 Thus, the Congress of the Peoples of the East, organised by the Bolsheviks, was held in Baku, a centre for spreading socialist ideas among the workers in the textile and petroleum industries before 1917 and, therefore, with a long revolutionary tradition.46 This congress focused mainly on the issues of the Near and Middle East, that is, the territories neighbouring Russia, against the British Empire and its imperialist policy.47 According to the Russian historian Sorkin, the British tried to prevent delegates from Turkey and Persia from going to Baku. The British fleet in the Black Sea boycotted the Turkish delegate’s trip, and the diplomat was only able to travel when the British ships returned to port because of a storm. In the Caspian Sea, British aircraft, based in Persia, bombed the ship in which Persian delegates were crossing to Baku, killing two travellers in the attack.48

54  Jaume Camps Girona During the conference, different communist leaders spoke, for e­ xample, John Reed, representing the “revolutionary workers of one of the great imperialist powers, the United States of America, which exploits and oppresses the peoples of the colonies”. Reed, in his speech on 4 September, had explained the US policy, refuting the idea that “free America” will govern better, and concluding that “there is only one road to freedom. Unite with the Russian workers and peasants who have overthrown their capitalists and whose Red Army has beaten the foreign imperialists. Follow the red star of the Communist International”.49 Enver Pasha, leader of the Young Turk Revolution, who was in exile in Russia, also participated. Offering his services to the Bolsheviks, he made a speech against his former German allies, and against the British.50 In his final declaration, he noted: “the call to holy war for the freedom of the peoples of the East”51: You have often heard the call to holy war, from your governments; you have marched under the green banner of the Prophet, but all those holy wars were fraudulent, serving only the interests of your self-seeking leaders… and you, the peasants, and workers, remained in slavery and want after these wars. Now we summon you to the real holy war… for the liberation of all mankind from the yoke of capitalist and imperialist slavery, for the ending of all forms of oppression of one people by another and of all forms of exploitation of man by man.52 Although the organisers of the Baku Congress agreed that there would be more annual meetings, the plan was not fulfilled.53 The main reason for this decision was the Anglo-Soviet agreement of March 1921. The British, impressed by the success of the Baku Congress, pursued a rapprochement with the Bolsheviks so that they would end their anti-British campaign.54 Parallel to the trajectory of the Congress of the Peoples of the East in Baku, one needs to recall the figure of the Tatar intellectual, Sultan-Galiev, in order to understand the relationship between the Bolsheviks and the Muslim question immediately after the October Revolution of 1917. Mirsaid Sultan-Galiev joined the Bolshevik Socialist Party in November 1917 and, because of his rhetoric and organisational skills, became a member of the Central Muslim Commissariat, a newly created organisation attached to the Narkomnats (the Commissariat of Nationalities) headed by Josef Stalin. A year later, Galiev was appointed Stalin’s advisor.55 For Galiev, the only way to spread the ideas of the revolution was to work mainly in the East, which was still under development, giving priority to the colonised countries of Asia.56 The Islamic socialism that he advocated was based on nationalism because for him all colonial peoples were proletarians since they were exploited by the colonisers.57

The impact of the Russian Revolution across the Muslim world  55 The Tatar, together with some comrades, created a Muslim ­Communist Party and, despite opposition from some Russian leaders, the Central Committee promised the establishment of a largely Muslim state, the ­ Tatar-Bashkir Republic. This republic would extend from the Middle Volga region and the Southern Urals, with more than 5 million inhabitants. It thus played an important part in reconverting the Westerner tendency of the Komintern to the view that the Socialist revolution would begin in the East.58 But after realising that his expectations had not been met, Sultan-Galiev criticised the short-sightedness of the Komintern, which “was mainly interested in the West” and underestimated the potential of nationalist ­movements in the East, “for whom the world revolution should begin in the East, with the liberation of the colonial peoples”.59 The theory that the revolution would happen with the proletariat, and more specifically, the Western proletariat, had triumphed.60 These ideas began to trouble the Bolshevik leaders. At the 10th Party Congress (1921), a resolution was published against “nationalist deviations”. The Tatar intellectual, together with an opposition group, tried to create a common front to oppose what he saw as the return of the Tsar’s colonialist policy: “the pan-Russians of the USSR, who want to reestablish Russia, one and indivisible”.61 Sultan-Galiev fell into disgrace as a result thereof. At the 12th Communist Party Congress, held in Moscow from 9 to 12 June 1923, he was accused of nationalist deviation.62 He was arrested in 1923 and sent to work in the state publishing houses until 1928 when he was again arrested and sent to a labour camp in Solovki. Charged with treason against the Soviet State, he was executed in 1940.63 Islamic resistances Not all Muslims enthusiastically joined the revolution. The Great War and the Russian Civil War fragmented the vast territory of the former Tsar’s empire into different military fiefdoms of warlords such as the Emirate of Bukhara or the Khanate of Khiva.64 In February 1918, an Islamic uprising broke out led by religious leaders, the Basmachis. Tribal leaders in Turkestan and Tajikistan protested against the abuses of the Russian population in a jihad to defend the enforcement of the Sharia law, and the changes brought about by the new Bolshevik policies that had affected the traditional power structures.65 A Western traveller in Tashkent in 1918 witnessed the process and commented that “the Bolsheviks’ program included the right to self-­ determination, and 95 per cent of the population of Muslim origin believed that this concerned them. They soon discovered that self-determination, from the Bolshevik’s perspective, did not apply to Turkestan”.66 Faced with the loss of support, the Bolsheviks launched a campaign to increase their

56  Jaume Camps Girona popularity in the region. To carry it out, Lenin chose Enver Pasha, who had the support of the Russian leadership in his power struggle with the Turkish government. Pasha, leader of the Young Turks, had been Minister of War from 1914 to 1918, but the Ottoman defeat in the First World War (he was largely responsible for the Turkish downfall at the Battle of Sankemish in 1914) forced him to flee from Berlin to Moscow, looking elsewhere to pursue a political career. Pasha was an ambitious man who was only interested in Bolshevik support for his personal interests, which is why upon arriving in Bukhara he betrayed Lenin and sought a pact with the local Basmachi leaders. After his first meeting with Basmachi Commander Ibrahim Bek, he was arrested, but the Emir of Bukhara, Sayyid Akim Khan, who had taken refuge in Afghanistan, ordered his release and appointed him commander of the forces against the Russian invasion. He even declared himself to be the commander of the “Sultan’s Army”, leading a jihad against Moscow.67 By 1922, Enver Pasha had an army of 7,000 fighters and the support of some Turkish delegates who trained the troops, sometimes defeating the Russian forces. In view of the various defeats, the Bolshevik decided to send a delegation to negotiate peace, which Pasha rejected, as he was “engaged in an unconditional struggle for the liberation of Turkestan”. This invited the wrath of Lenin, who, angered by the Turkish leader’s treatment and insolence, sent the Red Army to defeat Pasha’s forces, killing him near the Afghan border on 4 August 1922.68 These sporadic fights continued until 1929, when the guerrilla leaders split over clan issues, and were unable to unite again in the fight against the Soviets.69 The Soviet authorities, after meeting with local resistance, were forced to change their economic and social policies in the region.70 On another note, brutal repression against Muslim communities began under Stalin’s rule. The severe economic crisis in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) led to Islamic courts losing all funding and to Muslims being ostracised. Moreover, mosques were closed and many of the religious leaders were sentenced to labour camps or killed, forcing many to go underground.71 Thus, after Stalin, the practice of the Islamic religion became a private matter, like that of other religions.72 The new Komintern policy The Bolshevik victory in the Russian Civil War had major consequences in Central Asia. In 1919, the Afghans defeated the British and signed the Treaty of Rawalpindi (Anglo-Afghan Treaty), on 8 August 1919, thus ending the British Protectorate and gaining their independence. Afghanistan thus became the first country in the world to establish diplomatic relations with the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.73

The impact of the Russian Revolution across the Muslim world  57 From 1919 on, there was a tenuous rapprochement between the Kemalist government and Soviet Russia. The Nationalists, with Atatürk in charge, helped the Bolsheviks in their fight against the White Russians of Denikin in the Caucasus region. The Turks also helped the Bolsheviks in Azerbaijan through a propaganda campaign in support of the new Moscow authorities, as the area was of vital importance to Russian industry because of its mineral reserves.74 At the time, the Bolsheviks were looking for allies to help them cope with a hostile context, compounded by the civil war raging in the country. The Izvestia newspaper, for example, even referred to the Turkish national movements as “the first Soviet revolution in Asia”, in a Bolshevik attempt to garner the sympathy of the Muslim peoples and turn Turkey into a satellite state. Due to this new friendship, the Turkish government tolerated the T ­ urkish Communist Party.75 On the other hand, the new Turkish state needed arms and money, as well as help in destroying the Eastern front against the Armenians. The Treaty of Moscow was thus signed on 16 March 1921 between both states.76 This change in policy was accompanied by the direction that the world was taking. From 1920 on, the international context was not as threatening to Russia. Economic relations with Germany and Sweden were first normalised, then the Baltic Republics recognised the new state, and in 1921, its neighbouring countries Poland, Turkey, and Afghanistan granted their diplomatic recognition. The USSR was born on 31 December 1922 and was gradually recognised by the powers: Germany legally recognised it in 1922, followed by France, the United Kingdom, Italy, Austria, and China in 1924, and Japan in 1925.77 However, to prevent the “Sovietization” of the country, the Istanbul government created the Turkish Communist Party to control left-wing militants. Soon after, in October 1922, the Kemalist government banned the Turkish Communist Party and arrested hundreds of militants on charges of treason and espionage. This drew strong criticism at the 4th Congress of the Komintern.78 Another agreement was also reached with Reza Khan’s Iran, which, like Turkey, brutally suppressed the Communist Party.79 A shift occurred in the Komintern’s Eastern policy80 at its 3rd Congress (June–July 1921), where the question of the East was almost ignored81 and the hopes of the Eastern revolution, especially in the Far East, lingered only in Bujamin’s mind.82 In 1923, Lenin published his last article “Better Fewer, but Better”, in which he explained that in the new revolutionary context, Russia had to be the bridge between East and West and indicated that the East had finally entered the revolutionary movement. Thus ended the Eastern path of the Komintern, which materialised in the 13th Congress of the Russian

58  Jaume Camps Girona Communist Party, where it was agreed that the struggle should be fought against religion without using force but with propaganda.83 The USSR stopped its policy of spreading revolution throughout the ­colonised world, which had seen its hopes for freedom diminish after the birth of the League of Nations (LoN). This international body came into being under US President Woodrow Wilson and defined the new status of these colonies in its founding charter. Article 22 thereof, regarding territories formerly dependent on the defeated powers, refers to such territories as being “inhabited by peoples not yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modern world”. Therefore, it was decided that they could not govern themselves, and a tutelage system was established to be exercised by “advanced nations”.84 Ultimately, only the great victorious empires of the First World War – the United Kingdom and France – b ­ enefitted from the charter, while much of the world remained under colonial rule. The years of Stalinism and the Great Patriotic War During Stalinism, the relations between Moscow and Muslim peoples underwent several changes depending on the political context. As we have seen earlier, Stalin at first tried to put an end to the policy of Islamisation of education and justice, which was rejected by the majority of the Muslim population. However, upon the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, the Kremlin had to respond. On the one hand, he called for mobilisation to defend the Great Russian Homeland (and not the defence of MarxismLeninism), for which the Orthodox Patriarch of Moscow also gave a helping hand. On the other hand, Stalin also invited the Muslim peoples to collaborate in the Great Patriotic War. In 1942, he established the Soviet Muslim Councils or Spiritual Boards, new mosques were built, and religious congresses were held in order to rally troops against the Germans. Through the Central Committee for Muslim Spirituality, located in Ufa and headed by the “Red Mufti”, Abderrahman Rasulaev, messages were sent to combat the Axis powers that wanted to destroy the Muslim faith, calling for jihad against Germany.85 However, in the territories occupied by the Wehrmacht, the attitude of part of the population was very ambiguous, with some even collaborating with the Nazi authorities. This led to brutal repression from 1943. As the Soviet army advanced, the regions that had been controlled by the Third Reich – the Crimean Tatars, the Balkars, and the Karachays, as well as the Ingush and Chechens (whose territory had not been occupied by the Germans), were accused of treason by Stalin, triggering brutal repression thereof, with assassinations and thousands of deportations.86 Stalin was squaring accounts with the peoples who were reluctant to accept the

The impact of the Russian Revolution across the Muslim world  59 Soviet authority from the beginning. These territories were eventually ­repopulated, sparking a deep ethnic conflict in the Northern ­Caucasus from 1980 to 1990, because for the Chechens this exile helped shape an anti-Soviet, anti-Russian mindset that would mark future relations between Moscow and the region.87 Conclusions The Russian Revolution raised great hopes and was the seed of great change. The fall of the old Tsar’s empire changed the situation of many of the Muslim peoples who were part thereof. At first, Lenin and the Bolsheviks, aware of the strength of Islam and its supranational character, sought the support of these societies to consolidate the new government in the vast Russian territory. For this reason, one of the first decrees passed by the new government that emerged from the October Revolution was that of peoples’ right to self-determination. Moreover, the Bolsheviks supported the establishment of Islamic courts and a network of Koranic schools. This policy won the sympathy of a large part of the Muslim world that lived in the former Romanov Empire. Other traditional leaders, however, saw their influence dwindle and rebelled against the new authorities, e.g. the Basmachi uprising, whom they considered a new pan-Russian imperialism. The uprising was finally defeated by the Red Army in 1929. Another milestone in Russia’s eastern politics was the Baku Congress of 1920, where militants from all over the colonised world gathered to discuss strategies against British and French imperialism. Thus, the USSR became a symbol of the struggle for the right to self-determination of the peoples of the world. The Eastern policy of the Soviet government changed after Stalin. The Anglo-Soviet agreement of 1921 led the Bolsheviks to soften their antiimperialist discourse, and a campaign was launched against Islam at a domestic level. The country’s severe economic crisis was used as a pretext to close Koranic schools, funding for Islamic courts was cut, and a propaganda campaign against Islam was launched. In Second World War, the Kremlin tried to win the support of the Muslim regions in the Great Patriotic War, by making concessions and calling for jihad. The advance of the Soviet troops marked the beginning of brutal repression in the regions that had once been occupied by the Third Reich, killing and deporting thousands of people, the seed of the 1980s and 1990s ethnic conflicts. While at the international level, the advocacy of self-determination became a powerful propaganda tool that drew many national liberation movements into the Soviet orbit. Especially after the Soviet victory in Second World War, the USSR was seen as a model of development to be

60  Jaume Camps Girona e­ mulated, and later, during the Cold War, as a guarantor of people’s rights against the imperialist west. In conclusion, the relations between the Bolshevik government and the Muslim world were very complex. On the one hand, some of the problems stemmed from the troubled legacy of the relationship between the ­Orthodox and Islamic communities. On the other hand, they were marked by a global context that had been unfavourable to the Bolsheviks since October 1917. For this reason, the Bolsheviks shaped their policy to win allies internationally, initially turning to the East, and later to the W ­ estern powers, while at the domestic level the policies dictated by Moscow, worlds apart from the reality of that vast territory, caused upheaval in the local societies, but not the liberation from the Russian stranglehold.88 Notes 1 Josep Fontana, El siglo de la revolución. Una historia del mundo desde 1914 (Barcelona: Editorial Crítica, 2017), 59. 2 Ricardo Flores Magnón, “La Revolución Rusa”, Regeneración, no. 262, 16 March 1918. Accessed 27 December 2022. https://www.laizquierdadiario.mx/ Ricardo-Flores-Magon-acerca-de-la-Revolucion-Rusa 3 For more information see Marc Ferro, La Gran Guerra (1914–1918) (­Barcelona: Altaya, 1997). 4 Eugene Rogan, La caída de los otomanos. La Gran Guerra en el Oriente Próximo (Barcelona: Editorial Crítica, 2015), 87. 5 Francisco Veiga, El turco. Diez siglos a las puertas de Europa (Barcelona: ­Editorial Debate, 2019), 402. 6 Eugene Rogan, Los árabes. Del Imperio Otomano a la actualidad (Barcelona: Editorial Crítica, 2012), 234. 7 Anne-Laure Dupont, “La Première Guerre mondiale et l’avènement du MoyenOrient post-ottoman (1914–1924)”, in Histoire du Moyen-Orient: Du XIXe siècle à nos jours, ed. Anne-Laure Dupont, Catherine Mayeur-Jaouen and Chantal Verdeil (Paris: Armand Colin, 2016), 156–157. 8 Eugene Rogan, La caída de los otomanos…, 19. 9 It was with the Treaty of Lausanne that a new actor, the Republic of Turkey, came into play and the “first Eastern question” (1856–1923) was brought to an end. Víctor Morales Lezcano, La segunda cuestión de Oriente. Egipto, Turquía e Irán en la encrucijada (Madrid: Cátedra, 2016), 14–15. 10 M. Talha Çiçek, War and State Formation in Syria. Cemal Pasha´s Governorate during World War I, 1914–1917 (London: Routledge, 2014), 1–77. 11 Henry Laurens and Vincent Cloarec, Le Moyen-Orient au 20e siècle (Paris: Armand Collin, 2003), 30. 12 Georges Corm, Historia de Oriente Medio. De la Antigüedad a nuestros días (Barcelona: Ediciones Península, 2009), 97. 13 Ferran Izquierdo, Breve introducción al conflicto palestino-israelí (Madrid: Los Libros de la Catarata, 2011), 24–27. 14 Ilan Pappé, Historia de la Palestina moderna (Madrid: Akal, 2007), 108. 15 Ibid., 53.

The impact of the Russian Revolution across the Muslim world  61 16 Bichara Khader, Los hijos de Agenor. Europa y Palestina desde las cruzadas hasta el siglo XXI (Barcelona: Ediciones Bellaterra, 1999), 142–143. 17 Víctor Serge, El año I de la revolución rusa (Madrid: Siglo XXI Editores, 1999), 59–67. 18 Francisco Veiga, Pablo Martín and Juan Sánchez Monroe, Entre dos octubres. Revoluciones y contrarrevoluciones en Rusia (1905-1917) y guerra civil en Eurasia (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 2017), 424–425. 19 Edward Hallett Carr, The Russian Revolution. From Lenin to Stalin (New York: The Free Press, 1979), 10. 20 Francisco Veiga, Pablo Martín and Juan Sánchez Monroe, Entre dos octubres…, 425. 21 John Reed, Diez días que estremecieron el mundo (Madrid: Diario Público, 2009), 357–358. 22 Pierre Renouvin, Historia de las relaciones internacionales. Siglos XIX y XX (Madrid: Akal, 1990), 716. 23 Francisco Veiga, Pablo Martín and Juan Sánchez Monroe, Entre dos octubres…, 426. 24 Josep Fontana Lázaro, “A cien años de 1917. La Revolución y nosotros”, in 1917. La Revolución rusa cien años después, ed. Juan Andrade Blanco and Fernando Hernández Sánchez (Madrid: Akal, 2017), 46. 25 Pierre Renouvin, Historia de las relaciones internacionales…, 719. 26 El Imperio ruso se consideraba el sucesor de Bizancio y cabeza espiritual de la Iglesia Ortodoxa. William Hale, Turkish Foreign Policy, 1774-2000 (London: Frank Cass, 2002), 45. 27 Francisco Veiga, Pablo Martín and Juan Sánchez Monroe, Entre dos octubres…, 428–429. 28 Akdes Nimet Kurat, “Islam in the Soviet Union”, in The Cambridge History of Islam, vol. 1B, The Central Islamic Lands since 1918, ed. Peter Malcolm Holt, Ann Katharine Swynford Lambton and Bernard Lewis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 627. 29 Alexandre A. Bennigsen and S. Enders Wimbush, Muslim National Communism in the Soviet Union. A Revolutionary Strategy for the Colonial World (Chicago: The Chicago University Press, 1980), 20. 30 Edward Hallett Carr, The Russian Revolution…, 439. 31 Etienne Balibar, “El momento filosófico en la política determinada por la guerra: Lenin 1914-1916”, in Lenin reactivado. Hacia una política de la verdad, ed. Slavoj Zizek, Sebastian Budgen, Stathis Kouvelakis, Iria Álvarez Moreno and José María Amoroto Salido (Madrid: Akal, 2010), 199–203. 32 Georges Labica, “Del imperialismo a la globalización”, in Lenin reactivado. Hacia una política de la verdad, ed. Slavoj Zizek, Sebastian Budgen, Stathis Kouvelakis, Iria Álvarez Moreno and José María Amoroto Salido (Madrid: Akal, 2010), 213. 33 Akdes Nimet Kurat, “Islam in the Soviet Union”, in The Cambridge History of Islam…, 627–629. 34 Dave Crouch, “Bolsheviks and Islam: Religious Rights”, Socialist Review, no. 280, 7 December 2003. Accessed 26 December 2022. https://socialistworker. co.uk/socialist-review-archive/bolsheviks-and-islam-religious-rights/ 35 Ibid. 36 Akdes Nimet Kurat, “Islam in the Soviet Union”, in The Cambridge History of Islam…, 629.

62  Jaume Camps Girona 37 Dave Crouch, “El Islam en la Revolución Rusa”, in Combatir la islamofobia. Una guía antirracista ed. David Karbala (Barcelona: Icaria Editorial, 2016), 89–92. 38 Reinhard Schulze, A Modern History of the Islamic World (London: IB Tauris & Co Ltd, 2000), 43. 39 Ilan Pappé, Historia de la Palestina…, 108. 40 Carlos Taibo, Historia de la Unión Soviética. De la revolución bolchevique a Gorbachov (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 2017), 116–117. 41 Francisco Veiga, Pablo Martín and Juan Sánchez Monroe, Entre dos octubres…, 438–440. 42 Akdes Nimet Kurat, “Islam in the Soviet Union”, in The Cambridge History of Islam…, 631. 43 Ibid., 632–633. 44 Alvin Z. Rubinstein, Moscow’s Third World Strategy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 16. 45 Glenn L. Roberts, Commissar and Mullah: Soviet-Muslim Policy from 1917 to 1924 (Florida: Dissertation.Com, 2007), 133. 46 Alexandre Bennigsen, “Communism in the Central Islamic Lands”, in The Cambridge History of Islam, vol. 1B, The Central Islamic Lands since 1918, ed. Peter Malcolm Holt, Ann Katharine Swynford Lambton and Bernard Lewis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 647. 47 Edward Hallett Carr, El Socialismo en un Solo País (1924-1926), vol. 3, segunda parte, Historia de la Rusia Soviética (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1985), 603. 48 Brian Pearce, trans., Congress of the Peoples of the East. Baku, September 1920. Stenographic Report (London: New Park Publications Ltd., 1977), IX–X. 49 John Reed, “Speech at the Congress of the Peoples of the East: Baku, ­Azerbaijan – 4 September 1920”, in Congress of the Peoples of the East: Baku, September 1920: Stenographic Report, trans. Brian Pearce (London: New Park Publications, 1977). 50 Francisco Veiga, Pablo Martín and Juan Sánchez Monroe, Entre dos octubres…, 566. 51 Brian Pearce, trans., Congress of the Peoples of the East…, 172. 52 Francisco Veiga, Pablo Martín and Juan Sánchez Monroe, Entre dos octubres…, 429–433. 53 Bülent Gökay, Soviet Eastern Policy and Turkey, 1920-1991. Soviet Foreign Policy, Turkey, and Communism (London: Routledge, 2006), 23. 54 Stephen White, “Communism and the East: The Baku Congress, 1920”, Slavic Review, vol. 33, no. 3, (September 1974): 493. 55 Maxime Rodinson, Marxisme et monde musulman (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1972), 379–380. 56 Jorge Verstrynge, Frente al Imperio (guerra asimétrica y guerra total) (Madrid: Foca, 2007), 145. 57 Baskin Oran (ed.), Turkish Foreign Policy, 1919-2006. Facts and Analyses with Documents (Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press, 2010), 89. 58 Maxime Rodinson, Marxisme et monde musulman…, 379. 59 Emilio Mikunda Franco, Derechos humanos y mundo islámico (Sevilla: ­Universidad de Sevilla, 2001), 77. 60 Maxime Rodinson, Marxisme et monde musulman…, 380–381. 61 Mustafa Tchokay, “La question d’un Etat Touranien”, Prométhée, no. 38, January 1930, 11.

The impact of the Russian Revolution across the Muslim world  63 62 Yaacov Ro’I, “The task of creating the new Soviet Man: ‘Atheistic Propaganda’ in the Soviet Muslim Areas”, Soviet Studies, vol. 36, no. 1 (June 1984): 27. 63 Maxime Rodinson, Marxisme et monde musulman…, 381–382. 64 Francisco Veiga and Pablo Martín, 1914-1923. Las guerras de la Gran Guerra (Madrid: Los Libros de la Catarata, 2014), 282. 65 Martha B. Olcott, “The Basmachi or Freemen’s Revolt in Turkestan 19181924”, Soviet Studies, vol. 33, no. 3 (July 1981): 352–369. 66 Ahmed Rashid, Jihad. El naixement de la militància islàmica a l´Àsia Central (Barcelona: Empúries, 2002), 61–62. 67 Paul Bergne, The Birth of Tajikistan: National Identity and the Origins of the Republic (London: IB Tauris & Co Ltd, 2007), 30. 68 Alexandre Bennigsen, Paul Henze, George K. Tanham and S. Enders Wimbush, Soviet Strategy & Islam, (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1989), 11–12. 69 Ahmed Rashid, Jihad…, 61–65. 70 Martha B. Olcott, “The Basmachi or Freemen´s Revolt…”, 352–369. 71 Dave Crouch, “El Islam en la Revolución Rusa”, in Combatir la islamofobia…, 92–94. 72 Alexandre Bennigsen and S. Enders Wimbush, Mystics and Commissars. Sufism in the Soviet Union (London: C. Hurst & Company, 1985), 15. 73 Francisco Veiga and Pablo Martín, 1914-1923. Las guerras de la Gran Guerra…, 282. 74 Bülent Gökay, A Clash of Empires. Turkey between Russian Bolshevism and British Imperialism, 1918-1923 (London: Taurus Academic Studies, 1997), 75–83. 75 The organization was created at the 1920 Baku Congress. Mustafa Suphi and fourteen other founders were assassinated by the Ataturk regime. 76 Francisco Veiga, El turco…, 452–454. 77 Carlos Taibo, Historia de la Unión Soviética…, 36–137. 78 Maxime Rodinson, Marxisme et monde musulman…, 402–405. 79 Ibid., 351. 80 The Komintern was born in a world shaken by the First World War, with high hopes for a global revolution. For more information, see Serge Wolikow, L´internationale Communiste (1919–1943). Le Komintern ou le rève déchu du parti mondiale de la Révolution (Paris: Les Éditions de l´Atelier, 2010). 81 Edward Hallett Carr, El Socialismo en un Solo País…, 603. 82 For more information see Stephen F. Cohen, Bujarin y la revolución bolchevique. Biografía política 1888–1938 (Madrid: Siglo XXI Editores, 2017). 83 Akdes Nimet Kurat, “Islam in the Soviet Union”, in The Cambridge History of Islam…, 633. 84 Josep Fontana, El siglo de la revolución…, 153. 85 David Motadel, “The Muslim World in the Second World War” in The ­Cambridge History of the Second World War, vol. II, Politics and Ideology, ed. Richard Bosworth and Joe Maiolo (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 625–627. 86 Alexandre Bennigsen and Marie Bennigsen-Broxup, The Islamic Threat to the Soviet State (New York: Routdledge, 1983), 51–52. 87 J. Smith, “Non-Russian in the Soviet Union and after”, in The Cambridge ­History of Russia, vol. III, The Twentieth Century, ed. Ronald Grigor Suny (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 502–503. 88 Tariq Ali, Los dilemas de Lenin. Terrorismo, guerra, imperio, amor, revolución (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 2017), 13.

4 The most important of the arts The October Revolution and film production Sérgio Dias Branco

Introduction This chapter begins by limiting itself to the Russian Revolution of October 1917 and film production. Given the possible implications of the topic, there are advantages to doing so. The study will be taken a little beyond the year of the October Revolution. It is worth emphasising in this introduction that following the actual revolutionary period (until 1929) when the foundations of a socialist society that broke away from a semi-­feudal, not yet capitalist economy were being creatively constructed, we find repressive political limitations and even breaches of the law in force that had decisive consequences for artistic production. In the subsequent Soviet Union, economic development pursued ­excessive centralisation and nationalisation, suppressing other forms of property and management other than those of the State, disregarding the complementary functions of the market in relation to economic planning. It also saw the crystallisation and dogmatisation of Marxism-Leninism, which served as the basis of a state ideology. Such a process of ideology was inseparable from the “fusion and confusion of the party’s and state’s functions and the administrative imposition of decisions on both the party and the state”.1 All these aspects are linked to what is commonly called Stalinism, a system that cannot be described and explained by referring to it as simply the figure of Stalin and the cult of his personality since it involved a number of autocratic power relations that were established at various levels and fields of the social and political structure.2 It is true that these general aspects, which were intensified and attenuated over time, do not give us a detailed view of the history of Soviet filmmaking – varied and rich, even after the aesthetic model of socialist realism had become widespread, as in other artistic forms.3 The emergence of distinguishing filmmakers, such as the Russian Andrei Tarkovski and the Ukrainian L ­ arysa Shepitko in the early 1960s, who were shaped in a period in which such model prevailed, is proof of this variety and richness. However, these general features allow DOI: 10.4324/9781003399209-5

The most important of the arts  65 us to keep in mind what came afterwards when we analyse the steps taken immediately after the October Revolution that profoundly transformed film production. This brief study involves and analyses all the main elements of the profound process of transformation in film production in the aftermath of the October Revolution: the decree signed in 1919 on the nationalisation of the film industry in Soviet Russia, the Soviet State structures created after 1922 and the productions thereof, and the economic policy context in which the film industry resources were developed. The 1919 decree The decree of 27 August 1919 nationalising the film industry in Soviet Russia, signed by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and Vladimir Bonch-Bruyevich as President and Executive Director of the Council of People’s Commissars, is a key element in this transformation process.4 When the Bolshevik government began the organisation of State bodies in early 1918, it carried out an inventory of the existing resources in the film sector, already acknowledging the relevance of this form of art as a mass medium for leisure, integral education, and political persuasion, which involved giving the work class visibility in terms of performance that it had not had in the early years of Russian cinema. The Commissariat for Education was given authority for all matters regarding culture, for which Anatóli Lunatcharski was responsible, who retained this office from 1917 to 1929. Lunatcharski quickly realised that the underdeveloped Russian film industry was in recession. Many studios and cinemas closed in 1918, the last year of the First World War. The first tumultuous years of the revolution had led to a civil war fuelled by the counter-revolutionary forces who wanted to keep ­Imperial Russia, and by the foreign powers that supported them, in particular the British Empire, the United States, and the Empire of Japan. The cinematograph appeared in Russia in 1896, one year after the famous public screening of the Lumière brother’s films in Paris. The major production companies operating in Russia were initially foreign, inter alia the French giant film companies Pathé and Gaumont, which opened film studios in the country from 1908 onwards. The film studios headed by Aleksandr Khanzhonkov and Joseph Ermolieff were the most important national ones. In 1914, the Russian film industry was small-scale, dynamic, and much centralised. However, because of the war, the best film professionals fled the country, taking with them valuable material. Resources dwindled away until the early 1920s and the Soviets faced difficulties in restocking materials for film production due to the trade embargo imposed by foreign powers, except for the Weimar Republic and Sweden, as the war

66  Sérgio Dias Branco was waged in both the economic and military fields. In other words, the decree that Lenin signed in 1919 had great political significance, but little practical results, because there were few resources to nationalise. In fact, the decree was not aimed at defining or restricting Soviet film production, nor was part of a strict plan to achieve a pre-established model for socialist Russia, as will be clear when we address film production in the context of economic policy of the early 1920s. Vance Kepley concludes that “the measure included no long-range agenda on how to develop cinema, only a pragmatic urge to halt the depletion of resources. (…) It carried out at local rather not national level; hence it did not really consolidate control of the medium”.5 After the signing of the decree, the transformation of filmmaking was neither linear nor rapid, given the industrial underdevelopment of R ­ ussian cinema. An important milestone in this transformation was the laying of the roots in 1920 of what was to become Mosfilm, through the merger of the Khanzhonkov and Ermolieff studios, which had since been nationalised. Khanzhonkov had fled to Constantinople and Vienna after the October revolution but returned to the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic in 1923, and in the same year was appointed director of a new film structure, Proletkino, linked to the workers’ guild.6 The process became even more complex with the creation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) on 30 December 1922, because the importance attached to preserving and developing the culture of each of the republics encouraged the emergence of entities such as the Vseukrainske Foto Kino Upravlinnia (VUFKU, All-Ukrainian Photo Cinema Administration) in Soviet Ukraine and the Goskinprom Gruzii (Georgian State Cinema Production) in Soviet Georgia. Structures and productions The Ukrainian VUFKU operated between 1922 and 1935, with small structures in Kharkiv and Yalta and large structures in Odesa. The largest film production structure was in Kyiv. Three VUFKU films directed by Aleksandr Dovjenko on Ukraine are of note: Zvenigora (The Enchanted Place, 1928), Apcehaa (Arsenal, 1928), e Zemlia (Earth, 1930). ­Zvenigora, the first volume of this informal trilogy, is less known than Zemlia, but much richer. It tells the story of an old man who confides in his grandson that a treasure is buried in his land. Zvenigora was the third feature film directed by Dovjenko, who decided to shoot mainly outside the studio, hiring the cast from among the locals. Zvenigora was conceived as a poem. It narrates the industrial progress and the struggle of rural workers, while also celebrating local folklore, combining historical facts with Ukrainian traditions and tales. The film recreates some of these traditional wondrous

The most important of the arts  67

Figure 4.1 Zvenigora. Aleksandr Dovjenko, 1928 Public domain.

stories as the grandfather tells them, bringing fantasy into reality and showing how they interconnect and contaminate each other. As Dovjenko wrote in 1939: Zvenigora remained the most interesting film for me. I made it in one breath – a hundred days. Unusually complicated in structure, and ­eclectic in form, the film gave me, a self-taught production worker, the fortuitous opportunity of trying myself out in every genre; it was a catalogue of all my creative abilities.7 The most famous film produced by the VUFKU, and a masterpiece of Soviet cinema, is certainly Liudyna z Kinoaparatom (Man with a Movie Camera, 1929), shot by Mikhail Kaufman in Donbas, Kyiv, Yalta, Odesa, and Moscow, edited by Yelizaveta Svilova, and directed by Dziga Vertov.8 Vertov perfected in this work a film that rejected any connection to the performing arts, the composition of characters, and narrative logic. The “kino-eye”, formed by images that the camera, a mechanical eye different from the human eye, freely captured.9 The mechanisms of montage created a composition that explored dynamism in geometric space, manipulating speed, superimposition, sequencing, duration, and causality. Liudyna z Kinoaparatom celebrates, with great formal inventiveness, not only a new urban culture but also the dazzling achievements of cinema, technology, and industry. While Dovjenko’s film gave a new form to popular culture,

68  Sérgio Dias Branco

Figure 4.2  Liudyna z Kinoaparatom. Dziga Vertov, 1929 Public domain.

Vertov’s film captures an emerging reality through a markedly m ­ odernist artistic style, both forms showing the diversity and vitality of VUFKU filmmaking. The Goskinprom Gruzii was based in Tbilisi and produced films between 1923 and 1938. Among the works produced by this studio was Chemi bebia (My Grandmother, 1929), directed by Kote Mikaberidze. The seminal Georgian film director Mikhail Kalatozov directed two landmark films for this company: Jim Shvante (marili svanets) (Salt for Svanetia, 1930) and Lursmani cheqmashi (Nail in the Boot, 1931). The former remains a treasure of ethnographic films, documenting the harsh living conditions in the isolated mountain of Ushkul of great visual impact. This film is often compared to Luis Buñuel’s short Las Hurdes (Land without Bread, 1933). There were other examples of State production bodies in the USSR. The Armenfilm studio was founded in 1923 in Soviet Armenia, where Namus (1926), directed by Amo Bek-Nazaryan, was produced. Belarusfilm was founded in 1924 in Soviet Belarus, with Poruchik Kizhe, directed by Aleksandr Faintsimmer, being its best-known film. These bodies were replaced by others, albeit partially. The Dovjenko Film Studio, in full operation

The most important of the arts  69

Figure 4.3  Jim Shvante. Mikhail Kalatozov, 1930 Public domain.

today, for example, was created in Kyiv in 1928 as the largest studio of the VUFKU.10 Its name was changed to its current designation in 1957, following the death of the director in the previous year. The context of NEP In February 1922, that is, before the signing of the Treaty on the Creation of the USSR, in a conversation with Lunatcharski, Lenin commented: As you find your feet, what with proper handling of the business, and receive certain loans to carry on, depending on the general improvement in the country’s position, you will have to expand production, and particularly make headway with useful films among the masses in the cities, and still more in the countryside (…).You must remember always that of all the arts the most important for us is the cinema.11 This is an excerpt of a conversation between Lenin and Lunatcharski reported in 1933 in the first issues of the journal Sovietskoye Kino, as per the notes of the “Directives on the Film Business” which Lenin dictated on 17 January 1922. These directives were sent to the Commissariat for Education to serve as a basis for drawing up a programme of action. They tried

70  Sérgio Dias Branco to balance “entertainment films, especially for advertisement or income”, adding that these should be without obscenity and counter-revolution, and “pictures with special propaganda message”, works presented under the heading “From the life of peoples of all countries”, on the basis of which it as intended to present the reality of oppressed peoples – Lenin gives the example of the Indian people under Britain’s colonial policy.12 Strictly speaking, these were not films intended to spread the propaganda of a State ideology, but to raise awareness of the living conditions of other peoples, undoubtedly suggesting a reading of the social and political transformations underway in Soviet Russia. An interesting point in the document is the reference to private cinemas and the duties of the entrepreneurs who run them: “The privately owned cinemas should be made to yield a sufficient return to the state in the form of rent”, suggesting that the number of films offered be increased in order that filmmakers should have “an incentive for producing new pictures”.13 To understand this point, it is necessary to situate it in the first ­political steps following the October Revolution. This and other measures already mentioned were part of the so-called Novaya Ekonomiceskaya Politika (NEP, New Economic Policy), which was established in 1921 and lasted until 1928. This policy involved the use of economic stimulus and the maintenance of monetary-market relations. The State managed all the large industry, which was central to the union’s economy, but at the same time allowed the creation of private companies and internal trade, seeking to attract investment from abroad. Capitalism would be used for the necessary progress of the productive forces, considering the economic underdevelopment of the country and the destructive consequences of the war, and this use was limited, monitored, and supervised by the State. In the cinema sector, State bodies leased property to private firms, some of them foreign. The leases and concessions generated funds used to promote the development of film production. The adjustment of the rates applied was complex because changes in the film exhibition fabric created imbalances, which were not resolved until 1924.14 These economic policy measures were criticised by sections of the Communist Party and, amid these controversies, “in the drafts for an article he would not write, Lenin asked the following question: trade = capitalism?”15 In fact, Lunatcharski directed the reconstruction of the film industry mainly in the early 1920s when the role of the market and its exchange system was revived in the Soviet economy. These measures made the urban economy thrive and expanded the Russian middle-income strata. The Commissar considered that city dwellers, who had been the basis of the pre-revolutionary cinema audience, would return to the film theatres if new films, foreign and domestic, were distributed. Lenin and Lunatcharski promoted the massive resumption of foreign film imports from 1922, the year

The most important of the arts  71 in which the embargo was lifted, through the Commissariat for Foreign Trade and according to “an ingenious trading scheme which significantly advanced the industry’s growth”.16 German, French, Scandinavian, and especially American motion pictures again reached commercial cinemas that needed films to show in Soviet Russia and other union republics, thus attracting viewers. The resulting revenue was invested in the purchase of film equipment and material and the refurbishment and modernisation of film studios. Soviet productivity in the field of cinema gradually increased in the 1920s, even when foreign films were on the charts for a long time. As Oksana Bulgakova recalls, in 1917 Russia had produced 337 films, and the following year, it produced only six.17 As she stated, “[m]ost of the films made during the first seven years of Soviet rule have not survived due to the lack of film on which to make copies”.18 In 1923, the USSR released only thirty-eight self-produced films. Five years later, in 1928, this number had risen to 109.19 Conclusion: revolution in production This chapter concludes by returning to a point whose distinctive nature must be underlined when analysing these past developments. The film market across the union was reorganised to encourage the Soviet socialist republics in developing their own film studios and distribution networks. Russia remained dominant from the outset, securing 70 per cent of the filmmaking market of the USSR20 and was home to the major film studios. One example of this is the Mezhrabpomfilm, founded in Moscow and Berlin by a Russian communist and a German communist, an innovative undertaking in the field of co-production that ended in 1936 in Germany due to the open conflict with the Nazi power and later in the USSR, during the Moscow Trials (1936–1938) part of the wave of repression of the so-called Great Purge that started in 1934. In any case, the other republics developed an important autonomous cinematographic activity, mainly during the 1920s, particularly in Soviet Georgia and Ukraine. The development of these production, distribution, and exhibition structures in large parts of the USSR and in a context of profound shortages created the adequate conditions for the emergence of the landmark works of Soviet silent film, such as the Bronenosets Potyomkin (Battleship Potemkine, 1925), directed by Sergei Eisenstein. The movement designated as Soviet montage cinema, which ended in the early 1930s, is unique in the context of the late silent film vanguards, such as French Impressionism and German Expressionism. This uniqueness has precisely to do with the indelible connection between its outbreak and the historical event of the socialist revolution, even though this avantgarde in cinema was preceded by Russian constructivism and suprematist

72  Sérgio Dias Branco painting from 1913 onwards. Artists such as the painter Kazimir Malevich (1879–1935) developed a theoretical and practical reflection that looked at film in its relationship with other arts, assuming the task to “grasp the dynamics of our reconstructive era”.21 In other words, it is about thinking of art as a participant reflection or as a reflexive participation in the creative energy of a revolutionary process. A concern with this dynamism, this dialectic, which seeks to serve as mediation for a new world, is manifest in Oktyabr’: Desyat’ dney kotorye potryasli mir (October: Ten Days That Shook the World, 1928), directed by Grigori Aleksandrov and ­Sergei Eisenstein, a key art piece in the relationship between the October ­Revolution and film. Malevich associated Eisenstein with the Peredvizhniki (­Wanderers), a group of politicised realist painters who broke away from the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg in the 19th century and went on tour across the country to show their pictorial art to the Russian people. In the eyes of the new avant-garde artists, the works of the Wanderers were not sophisticated and innovative from a formal point of view. Soviet montage films such as Aleksandr Dovjenko, Dziga Vertov, and Mikhail Kalatozov often exposed the contradictions and progresses of the revolutionary p ­ rocess, which, because it was social, it was also artistic, refusing to deal with and work on aesthetic matters at the margins of history. Notes 1 Álvaro Cunhal, “O Comunismo Hoje e Amanhã”, in Conversas com Endereço, Ponte da Barca, 21 May 1993. Accessed 29 December 2022. https://www. marxists.org/portugues/cunhal/1993/05/21.htm. The previous considerations are also based on the detailed reflections in this text. 2 See José Paulo Netto, O que é stalinismo (São Paulo: Editora Brasiliense, 1986). 3 See, e.g., Matthew Cullerne Bown and Matteo Lanfranconi, ed., Socialist Realisms: Great Soviet Painting 1920–1970 (Milan: Skira, 2012). 4 Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, “Lenin Decree (USSR, 1919)”, trans. Jay Leyda, in Film Manifestos and Global Cinema Cultures: A Critical Anthology, ed. Scott ­MacKenzie (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2014), 19. 5 Vance Kepley, “Soviet Cinema and State Control: Lenin’s Nationalization Decree Reconsidered”, Journal of Film and Video, vol. 42, no. 2 (Summer 1990): 12. 6 See Richard Taylor, The Politics of the Soviet Cinema 1917–1929 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 93. 7 Alexander Dovzhenko, The Poet as Filmmaker: Selected Writings, ed. and trans. Marco Carynnyk (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1973), 14. 8 Graham Roberts, The Man with the Movie Camera: The Film Companion (London: I.B. Tauris, 2000), 10. 9 See Dziga Vertov, Kino-Eye: The Writings of Dziga Vertov, ed. Annette Michelson, trans. Kevin O’Brien. (Berkeley e Los Angeles: University of ­ ­California Press, 1984), 17–18.

The most important of the arts  73 10 The Dovzhenko Film Studio, named after the Soviet film producer Oleksandr Dovzhenko, became the property of the Ukrainian government upon the fall of the Soviet Union. See more about the Dovzenko Film Studio in http:// dovzhenkofilm.com.ua. Accessed 29 December 2022. 11 Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, “Directives on the Film Business”, in Lenin Collected Works, vol. 42 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1971), 388–389. Accessed 29 December 2022. https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/jan/17.htm 12 Ibid., a) directive. 13 Ibid., b) directive. 14 See Kristin Thompson, “Government Policies and Practical Necessities in the Soviet Cinema of the 1920s”, in The Red Screen: Politics, Society, Art in Soviet Cinema, ed. Anna Lawton (London: Routledge, 1992), 25. Although this study focuses on film production, the importance of distribution and exhibition, even in its relationship with production, warrants a more detailed reference. In the 1920s, a campaign was put in motion to take the cinema to rural areas by expanding the distribution and exhibition network so that it could reach the entire Soviet population. In 1928, spectators in the cities could watch films in 2,730 commercial movie theatres, almost twice the number in 1913. The movie theatre network was complemented by workers’ guilds, a novelty that aimed to provide industrial workers and their families with access to film culture during their leisure time. Some 4,680 workers’ guilds regularly showed films at discount prices for proletariat audiences. Cinema reached, for the first time, the vast peasant population. Fixed and portable projectors were used to serve villages in the late 1920s. In 1928, 1,820 villages had permanent facilities and another 3,770 portable units were circulating in rural areas. Dovjenko and the peasant public. These data are described in Jr. Vance Kepley, “Russia and Soviet Union”, in Schirmer Encyclopedia of Film, vol. 4, ed. Barry Keith Grant (Detroit, Michigan: Schirmer Reference | Thomson Gale, 2006), 10. 15 Fernando Sequeira, Gorjão Duarte and Sérgio Ribeiro, Pequeno Curso de ­Economia (Lisboa: Editorial “Avante!”, 2010), 166 (trans. of the author). 16 Vance Kepley, “The Origins of Soviet Cinema: A Study in Industry Development”, in Inside the Film Factory: New Approaches to Russian and Soviet Cinema, ed. Richard Taylor and Ian Christie (London: Routledge, 1991), 71. 17 See Oksana Bulgakova, “The Russian Cinematic Culture”, in Russian ­Culture, ed. Dmitri N. Shalin (Nevada, Las Vegas: University Libraries, 2012), 13. Accessed 29 December 2022. https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/cgi/ viewcontent.cgi?article=1021&context=russian_culture 18 Ibid. 19 See Vance Kepley, “Russia and Soviet Union”, in Schirmer Encyclopedia of Film…, 10. 20 Ibid., 11. 21 Kazimir Malevich, “Panterly Laws in the Problems of Cinema”, in Malevich and Film, ed. Margarita Tupitsyn (New Haven and London: Yale University Press in association with the Fundação Centro Cultural de Belém, 2002), 156.

5 1918, a decisive year – five core processes for the advancement of the October Revolution Rui Bebiano Alongside the French Revolution and the two World Wars, the Russian Revolution of 1917, particularly its outbreak in October, was the global event that produced the most literature and the broadest controversy in historiography. This diversity of literature is an example of how history is never a univocal and closed knowledge, always lending itself to additions, deletions, rewritings, and reinterpretations that enrich it and make it more complete. During 2017, the evocation of 100 years since its emergence as a critical and uplifting moment of the 20th century exposed this diversity. Among the dozens of seminal works published or re-edited at the time, three works are examples of this renewed momentum, as will be highlighted below. The first one, October. The Story of the Russian Revolution, by China Miéville,1 gives an account of the Revolution that emphasises practices seen as democratic within mass organisations, the government, and the Bolshevik party. Such practices are considered by the author as undervalued or ignored in many studies submerged in the approach of initiatives of an authoritarian nature or developed only with the political theatre at the forefront. In contrast to other narratives of the Revolution, that of Miéville seeks to show that this was one of the dimensions that contributed to mobilise social support, without which the Bolshevik takeover of power and its subsequent backing would have otherwise been impossible. This is, in fact, one of the legacies Miéville considers most relevant to define its characterisation as a key emancipatory event in the contemporary world. Moreover, he considers that this dimension of the Revolution was intensely reversed during the “Thermidorian” phase, which coincided with the concentration of power in Stalin’s hands. The term was used in some historiography of the Russian Revolution by analogy with the events of 27 July 1794, the 9 Thermidor according to the French revolution calendar, when Robespierre and his followers were ousted, thus bringing the most intense, unforeseen, and ephemeral revolutionary phase to an end. ­Regarding Russia, it refers to 1928 when the “revolution made DOI: 10.4324/9781003399209-6

Five core processes for the advancement of the October Revolution  75 from above”, which determined the centralisation of power and the ­consolidation of the idea of “socialism in one country” planned by Stalin and associated with the industrialisation effort of the first Five Year Plan and to the aggressive and profound collectivisation of the land, imposed a turning point, thus ending the previous experimental cycle, more open to the initiative of the intermediate and grassroots bodies, which had begun with the October Revolution.2 The second of the works highlighted is October Song, by Paul Le Blanc.3 In addition to also giving a central role, in the revolutionary process begun in February 1917, to mass organisations, in particular to Soviet workers and soldiers, whose origins go back to the 1905 insurrection – largely dictating the October events –, the author also observes how other social, urban, and rural sectors were quickly and extensively involved and mobilised by some of the Bolshevik propositions, contrary to what was widely believed in the past, accepting to a large extent to share them. Like Miéville, Le Blanc also discusses the process accelerated from 1928 onwards, by which he calls the “triumph” of the Bolshevik Revolution followed what he calls the “tragedy”, effectively bringing the revolutionary period to an end. The third work is A People’s History of the Russian Revolution, by Neil Faulkner,4 which rejects the usual anti-communist caricatures of Lenin and the Bolsheviks, depicted as furious conspirators of authoritarian tendencies who would have established the conditions for the future claim of the Stalinist tyranny, highlighting instead what it considers to have been the short life of the October Revolution as a decade of bursting creativity and de facto democracy, destroyed by the counter-revolutionary movement that would later impose a monstrous kind of state capitalism. Faulkner even seeks to defend the democratic essence of the October Revolution against those who deny it on the grounds of its anti-parliamentarianism, offering an optimistic outlook that puts back that moment as a universal and timeless factor of hope and emancipation, which in its launching phase did not yet integrate the perversion factors that emerged much later. The shared meaning of these three works provides an outline of the context underpinning the construction of this intervention and allows us to identify its central object. It starts by looking at the events experienced by Russia in 1918 in the aftermath of October when what could have been a mere episode of the struggle for power turned into the start of a new kind of State power. At the same time, it identifies some of the processes that allow us to understand why that political operation was reasonably ­successful for a decade, even if it then collapsed and gave way to another way of understanding the construction of socialism. For the Russian Revolution, 1918 is the momentum that, borrowing the description given by Italian historian Enzo Traverso to the tumultuous year of 1989, “closes an epoch and opens a new one”. The analysis

76  Rui Bebiano of the revolutionary process began in February 1917 and greatly amplified in October shows that 1918 is the year of the launching of the symbolic dimension of everything that, in a simultaneously authoritarian and democratic way, will integrate the projected image of the Revolution. According to Traverso, 1918 would thus be the “critical year that was not inscribed in a historical teleology, but which allowed the drawing of a constellation”.5 This was the year in which, retaking the metaphor proposed on 5 January in the Portuguese newspaper A Luta (The fight), organ of Brito Camacho’s União Republicana (Republican Union), Russia “having started a revolution in the French style, ended up making a complete mayhem”.6 In other words, a set of choices and measures as unpredictable as they were innovative began to be designed, imposing an unprecedented revolutionary way of conserving and expanding power. Taking 1918 as an absolutely decisive year for the triumph of the October Revolution launched within and beyond the borders of the old Tsarist Russia, we identify herein five of the processes that enabled the big leap. The first of these processes, the most often mentioned and best studied, was the rapid and sharp concentration of political power in the hands of the Bolsheviks, without which revolution would quickly recede. Lenin’s reading of the political situation, in his short but incisive manifesto The Tasks of the Proletariat in our Revolution, better known as the April Theses, pointed out the goals which called for such a concentration of power. The attainment of peace within the “imperialist war” and its transformation into an internal “revolutionary war”; the interference of the Party to spearhead revolutionary transformation; the change in the nature of the Soviets so that they lose their anarchic dimension; the formal and absolute rejection of “bourgeois parliamentarianism”; the run-up to an agrarian reform that would enable the wide redistribution of land, all demanded the projection of a momentum which its leader did his utmost to speed up, despite the indecisions among several Bolshevik leaders. These goals are even clearer in The State and Revolution, written in S­ eptember 1917, where, against other Marxist theoreticians – such as Kautsky, ­Plekhanov, and Bernstein, from whom he rejects proposals that he considers reformist and backward – and equally against anarchists, he clearly defends the necessary imposition of a “dictatorship of the proletariat”. However, no plan was laid out and the whole process was largely improvised. Mário Machaqueiro bears note in Percursos de uma Revolução (Journeys of a Revolution), a recent study with the revealing subtitle “Essay on the rereading of the Soviet Union”, the fact that Lenin’s intervention acted more as a catalyst and instigator of decision-making than as the author of a plan that did not really exist, or that was only designed a posteriori when, in Stalin’s time, the so-called “Leninism” was, in fact, invented.7 His charismatic role, his sense of organisation, and his tremendous work

Five core processes for the advancement of the October Revolution  77 capacity were, therefore, essential to give cohesion and meaning to what was effectively dispersed and seemed destined to zigzag around. This is the backdrop of the events which took place in 1918 and were essential for confirming the victory of the October Revolution and the course it took from then on. Without being exhaustive, I will highlight some of them, undoubtedly those with the greatest impact: On 5 January, the Bolsheviks dissolved the Constituent Assembly elected in November 1917, at its first sitting, despite having only 175 deputies out of a total of 703, including 370 of the Socialist Revolutionary Party. On 3 March, the Brest-Litovsk peace treaty was signed, allowing change in the focus of the Bolshevik’s domestic and foreign policy. On 9 March, the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party, during its 7th Congress, was transformed into the Communist Party, redefining an identity that would soon propagate into splits of European Workers’ parties. On 11 March, the capital of the new regime was transferred from Petrograd to Moscow, where, in contrast to what had occurred to Russia as a whole, the SocialistRevolutionaries had obtained around 58 per cent of the votes, and the Bolsheviks only 24 per cent, the latter having achieved 48 per cent of votes compared to 8 per cent for the former. On 28 June, the Sovnarkom (the Council of People’s Commissariat) enacted the law of nationalisation of major industries and commercial establishments, which converted the main sectors and enterprises of the Russian economy into state property. On 10 July, the constitution of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic was adopted, which was to remain the fundamental law of the state until the Constitution of the Soviet Union was adopted in 1923, which declared the supremacy of the Communist Party over the entire government. It also defined the identification of power as emanating from the workers and peasants as their main allies and ordered that only workers, peasants, and soldiers could vote for the Soviets, with the rich classes, Tsarists, nationalists, and priests being excluded from political activity. The following events were particularly symbolic and dramatic: on 16 July, the execution of Tsar Nicholas II and the entire Romanov family ­ ekaterinburg; the launch, after the attempted assassination of Lenin, in Y of the Red Terror campaign of mass arrests and executions without a judicial order or trial, which continued until the end of the Civil War in 1922. This campaign was backed by the Tcheka (secret police), created on 20  ­December 1917 under Félix Dzerjinski, which increased its members from 600 in March 1918 to 40,000 by the end of the year. The year 1918 saw the e­ stablishment of the first concentration and labour camps, designed to exclude from society any opposition to the newly installed power. These authoritarian and centralising measures would, in fact, determine the materialisation of the process Lenin had suggested, defining the

78  Rui Bebiano foundations of a new kind of state, supported by a new legitimacy that imposed a radical and definitive break with the established order, and doing so in an absolutely affirmative way, without concessions. The second process which allowed the confirmation of the Revolution was the organisation of the Red Army and its transformation, in the course of the Civil War between 1917 and 1922, into a key instrument for the establishment of the new political order. After the first battles, on 28 January, the Council of the Peoples’ Commissars ordered the formation of the Red Army of Workers and ­ Peasants, under the command of Léon Trotsky, war commissar until ­ 1924. The first mass recruitment took place in Petrograd and Moscow the following month, consisting mainly of volunteers, and on the same day, the last major battle against the German imperial army was fought, as the ­Brest-Litovsk peace treaty was signed on 3 March between the ­Central Powers (­Germany, the Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman Empires, and ­Bulgaria). Despite the humiliating terms and conditions for Russia, the treaty enabled a quick exit of the Great War combatants and a focus on the organisation of the fight against the internal enemies of the Bolsheviks and their foreign allies, organised around the White Army. The political phase of “War Communism”, between 1918 and 1921, implied a strict control of the economy and the daily management of the State’s affairs that brought military leadership to the fore, in close rapport with the ubiquitous activity of Bolshevik political commissars. However, at the beginning, the initiative still contained many constraints. In A Tragédia de um Povo (A People’s Tragedy), Orlando Figes notes how, practically up to September, given the constraints of conscription, there were no fixed battlefronts in the Civil War, nor large mass movements of soldiers, the war initiatives being often limited to short combats, physical attacks, or temporary occupations of towns and regions.8 One of the hallmarks of the process of military organisation that began in 1918 was thus the creation of a “new army”, and not only the launching of a new kind of war – a civil war that was expected to be costly and lengthy – together with a new kind of society, somewhat militarised, which would result therefrom. The idea of demobilising the regular army and forming militia units, which was supported by some Bolshevik ­leaders – such as Nikolai Podvoisky, who had preceded Trotsky in the military leadership of the revolutionary forces – would prove to be impractical. The choice fell on a corps that in many respects maintained the hierarchical strictness of the Tsarist forces. There was, however, in the first months of the civil war, a very informal democratisation, linked to the way in which the Red Army was organised, how appointments and promotions were affected, and how decisions were taken in the field, largely inherited from the decisions of the workers’ and

Five core processes for the advancement of the October Revolution  79 peasants’ councils of Petrograd taken in March 1917, imposing the e­ lection of commanders and informal relations among the military. Trotsky, however, was against these measures. As he later wrote, he believed that such a decision was “inadmissible, monstrous and suicidal”,9 threatening the discipline that was essential to the success of the war. However, given the way in which the idea of democracy in the army was quite widespread among the soldiers, the controversy surrounding the degree of hierarchical strictness lasted throughout the civil war and was only completed after the end of the war and the subsequent stabilisation of State power.10 The “new army”, forged with the men involved in the old one, eventually returned to a standard of hierarchy and discipline common to all regular armies, but in 1918, the outcome was unpredictable, and forms of operation remained very flexible. This situation to a large extent contributed to the sympathy of many workers and peasants, some of them thrown into the field as combatant soldiers, for the advances and activity of the Red Army. The third core process included the definition of a new type of legislation on labour and workers, supported by the initiatives and organisations that emerged from the revolutionary terrain itself. In November 1917, the eight-hour workday was established, as well as weekly rest days and the right to paid holidays, as well as the enforcement of the principle of equal work, equal pay for women, and also the ban on work for children under the age of 14. The principle of workers’ control in factories was also established. In addition to meeting some of the workers’ demands, these measures helped to increase the support of a large number of workers for the new Bolshevik government. In 1918, however, the relationship between the latter and the workers’ and peasants’ organisations was often tempestuous. Mário Machaqueiro documented the development of what he called the “utopias and dystopias in citizenship” from February 1917 onwards, spreading after October and throughout part of the following decade. In practice, the main problem was the simmering conflict between, on the one hand, centralisation, and authoritarianism, largely imposed by the Bolshevik leadership and, on the other, citizens’ organisations, whether at the level of the operation of the Soviets, or that of the organisation of workers, in the specific area of production management and in the exercise of individual rights. The Soviets – the councils of workers and soldiers, including members of the intelligentsia, that had grown during the 1905 and 1917 ­revolutions –, were, in practice, very informal organisations associated with forms of direct democracy, converted into the periodic election of members ­according to widely varying rules.11 They reflected very diverse political tendencies, some of which organised, such as the Socialist-Revolutionaries, the Mensheviks, the Anarchists, and, of course, the Bolsheviks, which led

80  Rui Bebiano to the construction of spaces that were simultaneously democratic and highly confrontational. The bureaucratisation of the Soviets, studied long ago by Marc Ferro,12 is understood in this context, resulted in control processes that tended to adopt a partisan discourse, and bodies designed to express the direct will of the workers. Although this process began even before 1917, in the wake of the revolution it tended to intensify through the rapid and quite intense intervention organised by the Bolsheviks, leading to constant conflicts. This tendency would, albeit in different forms, also be replicated in ­proletarian experiments such as workers’ control and self-management, as well as at the level of conflict in the field, with successive sources of tension which in 1918 were not entirely controlled by the State power, although this tendency would be defined in the course of the year. The “duality of powers” between the Bolshevik government and the workers’ organisations was ever-present. Lenin himself hesitated to define a clear position thereon.13 The first All-Russia Trade Union Congress, which met in January 1918, clearly reflected the deep gulf between centralists and defenders of workers’ autonomy, which took a long time to be resolved, often with strong ­concessions on the part of the Moscow government. This situation would only be changed when the New Economic Policy (NEP), which lasted from 1921 to 1928, stepped back, when free enterprise and small private property were re-established, and then under Stalin’s centralist iron rule. The fourth process of the five core processes highlighted herein was the launch of a policy regarding the place of women in society, aiming at quickly reclassifying their social place, while at the same time giving them a more active role in the process of political, legal, and experiential ­transformation that was underway. The “women’s issue” was inscribed in the Bolshevik revolutionary project from the very beginning, largely associated with the awareness that abolishing the patriarchal family would lead to the end of one of the main factors responsible for the oppression of women and was, therefore, a concern of Bolshevik militancy. The important parade on 8 March 1918 – on what was to become the International Women’s Day, by evoking the march of 100,000 women workers in Petrograd that a year earlier had strongly helped launch the February Revolution – was a sign of the value attached to this field of social struggle. One of the first laws passed by the new government, on 20 December 1917, was a decree on marriage: in the new Family Code, men and women were now equal before the law, both could file for divorce, and the concept of “illegitimate child” was abolished. The Russian Constitution approved on 10 July guaranteed women political rights equal to those of men, in particular, the right to vote and to be elected without any restrictions. It also ensured them the right to work and the principle of equal work, and equal

Five core processes for the advancement of the October Revolution  81 pay, defined important protection measures for pregnancy and maternity, and support for special health care. At the end of 1918, the Code of Law on marriage, Family and Guardianship also defined, besides a more detailed arrangement of these measures, the loss of the legal value of religious marriage, as well as the husband’s power, including in the ownership of joint property, also defining the new stance in this field.14 The role of the Bolshevik leader Alexandra Kollontai was central to this legal and political expansion of women’s rights, having been one of the drafters of the 1918 Code. The creation of the women’s section of the ­Bolshevik Party, the Zhenotdel (Department of Working and Peasant Women of the Bolshevik Party of Soviet Russia), in 1919, preceded by the organisation of its first major public meeting, which Lenin attended in November 1918, marked the beginning of a path of struggle which was not easy, nor free of setbacks, in the following years, but which also contributed to underline the symbolic value of the year which we distinguish as the key moment in the Russian Revolution when measures were taken that are still today part of many women’s movements claims. Finally, the fifth process that helped to project October that year was the launching of an organised and very dynamic policy for arts and culture, designed as vital fields for the production of a new model of life and society, and also territory for the affirmation of a cultural democracy. The definition of a cultural policy was key to the ongoing process of revolutionary transformation.15 The intellectual and cultural life of Soviet Russia in the first years after the Revolution proved to be extremely ­ dynamic, due, on the one hand, to the ambiguous position of much of the intelligentsia regarding the Revolution and, on the other hand, thanks to the open and even welcoming stance of the new authorities towards the various artistic and literary movements and groups. In October 1918, for example, the People’s Commissar for Instruction, Anatóli Lunatcharski, supported and prefaced a “revolutionary anthology of Futurism”, in which the poet Maiakovski defined the group as “consisting of young poets of Russia who found a spiritual mission in the Revolution by erecting the barricades of art”.16 Lunatcharski, who remained at the helm of Bolshevik Education and Culture until 1929, would be responsible for centralist measures in the areas under his supervision, but also for a climate of great openness and even political and material support to the avant-garde sectors. Sheila Fitzpatrick recalls that artists like Vladimir Maiakovski and Vsevolod Meierhold, inter alia, “saw revolutionary art and politics as part of the same movement of protest against the old bourgeois world”.17 They were among the first intellectuals – others would follow in the first post1917 years – to accept the October Revolution and to put themselves at the service of the Bolshevik government, making cubist and futurist-inspired

82  Rui Bebiano propaganda posters, painting revolutionary slogans on the walls of old palaces, staging re-enactments of revolutionary victories in the streets, designing revolutionary monuments, and taking to the squares and factories to carry the revolutionary message in the form of art. The early days of the Revolution were, in fact, marked by the intense activity in the cultural field of the most radical leftist groups, members of the Proletkult and the Futurists, whose aesthetic programmes were uniformly negative towards the “cultural heritage” from the former regime, since both aimed at imposing a completely new culture. The Proletkult, which had emerged on the eve of the Revolution, and where figures like the theorist Alexander Bogdanov and the poet Mikhail Gerasimov stood out, was committed to producing a pure “proletarian culture”, created by the proletarians themselves, without any ties to the “culture of the exploiting classes”. Futurists, like Boris Pasternak, Nikolai Asseev, and Vladimir Maiakovski, on the other hand, rejected “art for art’s sake”, seeing it as a “fetish of bourgeois beauty”, demanding that it should be functional and useful.18 Later, in the 1920s, the two movements clashed due to the differences regarding artistic form and sensibility, in a climate of intense public debate and great public notoriety on the part of artists, writers, and intellectuals, which the political developments that occurred at the end of this decade, to which we have already referred, came to reject. The rigid canon of socialist realism emerged in this context in the early 1930s, already strictly ­regulated and policed by the State and increasingly more distant from the creative energy of the previous phase. In conclusion, in 1918, the October Revolution, about which historiography and political theory have written so much in the following 100 years, was still essentially quite diffuse and part of the future. However, there were already two contradictory tendencies that were to guide many subsequent readings: one expressing a perspective of social emancipation, reflected in the creative phase of the “revolutionary feast”, present despite the horrors of the civil war and the international siege, and the other, c­ entralist in nature, mobilising “revolutionary engineering” from the top, which will end up enveloping and diluting the former, depriving it of its vitality. For decades, what remained of that initial phase were essentially the ­slogans and revolutionary chants, but not that effervescent and creative impetus which, when we look back at those initial years of the Russian Revolution, can still be felt as signs of vitality and intense creative potential. Those who projected, in many social and political sectors, a dimension of hope which in 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of most of the experiences of “really existing socialism” perhaps buried too soon. However, in 1918, everything was just beginning. In a study accompanying an anthology of texts by Lenin that he published around the time

Five core processes for the advancement of the October Revolution  83 of the centenary, Slavoj Žižek referred to the early days of the Revolution as “days when the extraordinary became part of everyday life”.19 It was this extraordinary factor that so disturbed the watching world but left ballast that, after more than a century, is still capable of mobilising many ­consciences, hopes, and wills. Notes 1 China Miéville, October. The Story of the Russian Revolution (London: Verso, 2017). 2 Sheila Fitzpatrick, A Revolução Russa (Lisboa: Tinta-da-China, 2017), 12. 3 Paul Le Blanc, October Song (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2017). 4 Neil Faulkner, A People’s History of the Russian Revolution (New York: Pluto, 2017). 5 Enzo Traverso, L’Histoire comme champ de bataille. Interpréter les violences du XXe siècle (Paris: La Découverte, 2011), 5. 6 César Oliveira, “A Revolução Russa na imprensa portuguesa da época”, Análise Social, vol. 10, no. 40 (1973): 806. 7 Mário Machaqueiro, Percursos de uma Revolução. Ensaio de releitura da Revolução Soviética (Lisboa: Vega, 2017). 8 Orlando Figes, A Tragédia de um Povo. A Revolução Russa. 1891-1924 (­Lisboa: Dom Quixote, 2017). 9 Léon Trotsky, Escritos Militares, vol. 1 (Paris: Éditions Ruedo Ibérico, 1976), 8. 10 Roger R. Reese, Red Commanders: A Social History of the Soviet Army Officer Corps, 1918-1991 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2005). 11 Mário Machaqueiro, Percursos de uma Revolução…, 141. 12 Marc Ferro, Des Soviets au Communisme Bureaucratique (Paris: Gallimard, 1980). See also Richard Stites, Revolutionary Dreams. Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989). 13 Mário Machaqueiro, Percursos de uma Revolução…, 229. 14 Fabiana Cristina Severi, “Legislação familiar soviética e utopias feministas”, ­Revista Direito & Práxis, vol. 8 (2017): 2,299. 15 See Evgeny Dobrenko, “A cultura soviética entre a revolução e o stalinismo”, Estudos Avançados, vol. 31, no. 91 (2017): 25–39. 16 Michel Aucouturier, Le Réalisme Socialiste (Paris: PUF, 1998), 9. 17 Sheila Fitzpatrick, A Revolução Russa (Lisboa: Tinta-da-China, 2017), 154. 18 Lynn Mally, Culture of the Future. The Proletkult Movement in Revolutionary Russia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990); and Vladimir F. Markov, Russian Futurism: A History (New York: New Academia ­Publishing, 2006). 19 Slavoj  Žižek, Lenin 2017: Remembering, Repeating and Working Through (London: Verso, 2017).

6 The historical legacy of the Great War Gerhard Hirschfeld

The First World War gave rise to an epoch of worldwide historical change and revolution. What began as a European conflict ended as a global catastrophe: it led to the eclipse of four great empires – the Austro-Hungarian, the German, the Russian and the Ottoman – and cleared the way for the United States to become a world power. It unleashed the Russian revolution and made possible a Communist breakthrough worldwide. Neither the rise of Italian Fascism nor German Nazism would have occurred had it not been for the First World War. This all is by now basic historical knowledge, but it does not explain the causal and path-breaking qualities and features of the First World War, to which already the contemporaries referred to as the “Great War” (La Grande Guerre, der Grosse Krieg, ­Velikaya Voyna, De Groote Oorlog). What made this war “great” in the eyes of those who experienced it was the fact that it developed, within a very short time, into an industrialised mass-war in which casualties ran into millions. The so-called “border battles” (Grenzkämpfe) in the region of Alsace-Lorraine during the first two months of the war accounted for higher casualties than the entire ­Franco-German war of 1870–1871. Soldiers became blood offerings to the god Moloch as mechanisation churned the battlefields into Menschenschlachthaus (human abattoirs). The phrase Menschenschlachthaus (lit. “slaughterhouse”) was the title of a book by Wilhelm Lamszus, a Hamburg schoolteacher and writer, who vividly described the horrors and brutalities of a coming war already in 1912 (!) – two years before the “Great War” broke out. Lamszus was not the only one who warned of a coming war in Europe with global consequences and terrible costs on the battlefields. Mortar and shrapnel, the most common carriers of death in battle, treated them all alike: the heroes and the cowards, the prudent and the reckless. Of the approximately 60 million soldiers who had served in the Great War, about 10 million were killed: that is 6,000 soldiers every day of the war. Fifteen million were injured and mutilated – many of them remained so all their life. In addition, 7 million civilians lost their lives between 1914 DOI: 10.4324/9781003399209-7

The historical legacy of the Great War  85 and 1918 (not counting those who fell victim to the s­ o-called Spanish Flu, the influenza pandemic of 1918 that had been first reported by Spanish newspapers, hence Spanish Flu, with estimated about 35–50 million deaths worldwide). In their headquarters “far from the guns”, generals like Falkenhayn, Ludendorff, Foch, Haig and Nivelle planned and carried through their operations cold-bloodedly “sacrificing” hundreds of thousands of soldiers for territorial gains of a few square kilometres or miles. Convinced of the superiority of the operational concept of the offensive, and committed to new weapons technologies, they set aside all ethical considerations in their use of massed armies for attack purposes. The English philosopher and pacifist Bertrand Russell described this as “maximum slaughter at the minimum expense”, thereby summarising the attitude of the military planners towards the “losses” in dead and wounded as a mere cost accounting exercise. It was precisely this indiscriminate mass slaughter that generated the increasing indifference to human life, which was to have such terrifying consequences for post-war European societies. The totalitarian systems of the 1920s and 1930s, with their contempt for the individual, their technocratic visions and phantasmagorical schemes for the transformation of societies and civilisations, even linked to programmes of genocide, were the direct outcome of this new and almost total kind of military planning and warfare. Causal and path-breaking for sure was the deployment of new and terrible weaponry. The machine gun, firing bullets in rapid succession, undertook considerable changes since it first went into general practice during some colonial armed conflicts in the late 19th century, the Boer war and the Russian-Japanese War of 1904–1905. While artillery, thanks to the increasingly accuracy of the fire remained the dominant and ­decisive weapon on the battlefield, thus becoming “the true artisan of (allied) ­victory” (as the British military historian Hew Strachan has depicted it), other military hardware began their triumphant advance. The “Great War” was the first war where tanks were used that turned into a very important weapon towards the end of the war. On 8 August 1918, more than 450 British (Mark 4 and 5) and 90 French (Renault) tanks crushed the German lines near Amiens creating havoc among German soldiers; this led to 48,000 German casualties and the surrender of about 30,000 soldiers – an unprecedentedly high amount. In his apologetically drafted memoirs of 1919, Erich Ludendorff dubbed 8 August “the black day of the German army”. Aerial combat became an equally important means of warfare. At the beginning of the war, planes were used entirely for ­reconnaissance, by the middle fighters were contesting control of the air above b ­ attlefields – as it happened at Verdun, the Somme and in Flanders; by the end

86  Gerhard Hirschfeld bombers were targeting enemy positions on the ground and interdicting lines of communication. In the last year of the war, both the tank and the aeroplane embodied in one platform “the ability to manoeuvre and to deliver accurate fire on a target”.1 The development and employment of the U-boat presented the Germans with some surprising successes, notably during the initial phase of the war, but it was unable to change the general course of the war at sea. Furthermore, German U-Boats were not capable to break the British sea blockade, helping the deeply frustrated population to survive food shortages and from the Winter of 1916 on extreme hunger and starvation that often enough led to endemic diseases. The use of poison gas and other chemicals also changed the scenery of war: their employment was by no means decisive about the outcome of the war, but it had a lasting and traumatic impact on soldiers and – it gave war a new psychological and ideological meaning. Some military writers after 1918 were convinced that the next war fought inside Europe would be a Gaskrieg (chemical war). The German writer Ernst Jünger, the interpreter of the war experience In Stahlgewittern (Storm of Steel) and advocate of a particular kind of (soldierly) nationalism during the 1920s, suggested in 1930 that a coming war would (unlike the previous one had done) first and foremost aim at the big cities. Though this was neither new nor original, it did reflect a widespread belief that a subsequent war would be fought about the urban and industrial centres and that the use of gas would turn these places into ghost towns. However, hardly anyone did foresee what really was going to happen: the Second World War took possession of the cities of which many were destroyed but not through gas but by bombs, shells and grenades, as it happened from Warsaw to Rotterdam, from Coventry to Belgrade, from Hamburg to Leningrad and from Dresden to Hiroshima. Besides new and powerful technology and weapons, the Great War saw an increase in military means and methods of warfare that neither military nor political leaders had predicted or anticipated. This increase was accompanied by a general expansion, or perhaps one should say transgression (i.e., knowing no limits or boundaries), of the war into all areas of human life. One striking feature was the systematic destruction of a country’s infrastructure and landscape following a Verbrannte Erde (scorched earth) policy, as it happened with the withdrawal of two Russian armies in early 1915 (after their defeat at the Mansurian lakes) or the German retreat from the Somme (“Operation Alberich”) behind the “Siegfried” fortifications in Northern France in February/March 1917. Furthermore, special mention should be made of the often-appalling treatment of ­millions of prisoners of war, especially on the Eastern and Southern ­European fronts. The mortality rate of German and Austrian POWs in Russian captivity amounted to nearly 20 per cent; the same or even higher

The historical legacy of the Great War  87 figures applied to Italian and Romanian prisoners in Austro-Hungarian captivity. ­Transgression certainly reached its apogee during the First World War with the deportation and mass killings of the Armenian population by the regime of the Young Turks in 1915. Some historians view this particular genocide as a precursor to the Holocaust, the mass murder of European Jews during the Second World War. Causal and path-breaking too was the way that the war became ­mediatised as no war before and how propaganda on all sides was used. While the allied tried to portray the German soldiers as “Huns” and “barbars” who had trampled over a small defenceless country like Belgium and had resorted to deeds of unbelievable cruelty, German propaganda, usually acting on the defensive, accused the enemy of committing acts of terrorism and collective violence against the German civilian population: for instance, by setting up a naval blockade that led to hunger and starvation inside the Reich. This was a foretaste of things to come, of a future “barbarization of warfare”. But propaganda was not only used against the respective enemy, it also became an accepted and widespread instrument to control and strengthen one’s own nation. Right from the beginning, the First World War was a Krieg der Worte (war of words). German newspapers, for instance, were filled with patriotic declarations and lyrical outpourings. The German theatre critic Julius Bab estimated that newspapers received up to 50,000 war poems per day. Another active driving force of self-mobilisation was the preaching of the churches. In Germany, it was not only the Prussian state religion, Lutheranism, which gave the war its theological legitimacy as “God’s will”. Catholic associations and organisations placed themselves entirely at the service of the national cause as well. After decades of alienation from the Prussian-German state, most notably during Bismarck’s political campaign against Catholicism during the 1880s, Catholics now saw the support of the war as an opportunity to prove their loyalty to the state. In numerous sermons, clergy of both major confessions portrayed the death of the soldier for the nation and the sacrificial death of Christ as having a remarkable similarity. Similar interpretations can be found in most war-faring countries. Regarding the nature or character of the First World War, let us attempt a preliminary, though admittedly rather sketchy, conclusion: The pathbreaking, undeniably modern element was determined by the fact that this was an industrialised war of masses and machines without any historical precedent that developed its own logics and laws. It contained elements of expansion or transgression into all areas of life with only little or no precedent. No military expert or thinker did or could have imagined what was going to happen. Count Alfred von Schlieffen, the renowned German pre-war strategist (he died in 1913), calculated that 2 million mobilised

88  Gerhard Hirschfeld soldiers would be more than enough to carry out the two quick offensives he had planned to offset the alleged military encirclement of Germany by France and Russia. If one had told him that three successive German High Commands (OHL) would altogether mobilise more than 13 million soldiers, Schlieffen most certainly would have dismissed this figure as totally unrealistic and perhaps naive. Only the great military theorist Carl von Clausewitz in his principal investigation of the nature of war in his famous study Vom Kriege (On War), written more than 80 years before the outbreak of the First World War, had envisaged such developments and potentials when he had pointed to the essential unpredictability of war. Every war – thus wrote Clausewitz – carries the tendency to become “absolute”, in other words: total. Therefore, he suggested that war should be fenced in by politics or better still, by political considerations. The First World War, however, did away with such a dictum of old statesmanship. Instead, politics or rather politicians on all sides approved and even cheered the fatal trend that the war was to become increasingly “total”. When the hostilities finally ended in the Autumn of 1918, it soon turned out that the Great War had not been “the war to end all wars”, as the British writer, social critic and pioneer of science fiction H. G. Wells had predicted in 1914. Neither did the war assist to make “the world safe for democracy” as American President Woodrow Wilson had hoped for when his government decided in April 1917 to enter the war on the Allied side. On the contrary: revolutions and counterrevolutions, civil wars and wars of independence, ethnic conflicts and anticolonial uprisings occurred around the globe. To list and discuss just the most important developments in Eastern or South-Eastern Europe, say on the Balkan, between 1918 and 1923 would need another paper, or better: a series of papers. The same applies to the so-called Paris Peace Treaties of 1919–1920 that neither brought lasting peace nor stability to Europe and the Near East. Violence, however, remained an integral part of some of the ensuing processes of territorial claims, divisions and reconstructions. Those participating in these wars and military conflicts after 1918 were often army veterans, but increasingly also young men who had missed the Great War because of their age and who now felt they had a duty to continue where their fathers and brothers had failed. This particularly holds true for Germany, and I, therefore, suggest now turning to this country in order to illustrate the legacies of the First World War there in greater detail. When in the Autumn of 1918 Germany had to acknowledge defeat for military exhaustion and depletion of demographical as well as economic resources, the political and ideological components of the war, however, remained predominantly intact: hostility, resentment, hatred and revenge. These were not just semantic manifestations of past times but surviving and continuous elements of a certain political culture in post-war Germany

The historical legacy of the Great War  89 as well as in other defeated nations. These elements could be detected, for example, within the German Freikorps and in some veterans’ associations like Stahlhelm. Bund der Frontsoldaten (Steel Helmet. League of ­Frontline Soldiers) with their approximately 300,000 members (by the mid-1920s) of which only about 50 per cent had actually served during the war. The Stahlhelm, which had been founded in December 1918, reflected the extreme views of frustrated front soldiers as well as of a young generation that had not seen fighting but was politically educated by the experiences of ­Germany’s defeat and the November revolution and its aftermath. The ­German historian Ulrich Herbert has called these teenagers of the war years the Kriegsjugendgeneration (war-youth-generation). Some of them later became very prominent and similarly powerful in Nazi Germany. The veterans of the so-called national Right were extremely clever in engaging in symbolic politics: through meetings of former front soldiers, street marches and mass demonstrations, public commemorations of the Fallen and the inauguration of local war memorials. By presenting themselves as the legitimate heirs of the generation of front soldiers, they denounced the democratic achievements of the Weimar Republic, agitated against the Versailles Peace Treaty and propagated re-armament and a future war of revenge. A similar development took place in Italy where a suggested vittoria mutilata (a mutilated victory) – Gabriele D’Annunzio: and the perceived brutal defeat had resulted in a dangerous radicalisation of politics and society. One of the radical upshots was the so-called squadrismo with its emphatic presentation of all things military and the blatant contempt for civilian life. Squadrismo had been generated and shaped, among others, by the former arditi (the Alpine stormtroopers). The clear beneficiaries, however, of these developments were Benito Mussolini and his Blackshirt movement with the ensuing Fascist takeover of Italy. The Great War with more than 10 million dead and almost double this number of wounded soldiers, and with a further 7 million dead civilians, with numerous cut-off biographies or life plans, demanded a permanent Sinngebung (an interpretation or a meaning). This artificial, made-up word Sinngebung became a central term in Germany during the 1920s. For what did our soldiers die? Had they fallen in vain? Unlike the victorious nations, neither Germany (as a truly defeated nation) nor Italy (with her “suspected defeat”) managed to offer such a meaning to their respective societies. Consequently, the war remained burned into the collective memories of these nations as a continuous “Krieg in den Köpfen” (war in their heads). One of the consequences was widespread hatred, which the German-Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt pointedly described in her book The Origins of Totalitarianism I suspect there has never been a shortage of hate in the world; but…[by now] it had grown to become a deciding political factor in all public

90  Gerhard Hirschfeld affairs (…). This hate could not be targeted at any one person or thing. No one could be made responsible – neither the government, nor the bourgeoisie, nor the foreign powers of the time. And so it seeped into the pores of everyday life and spread out in all directions, taking on the most fantastical, unimaginable forms.2 One of the most prominent hate preachers after 1918 certainly was Adolf Hitler. “The First World War made Hitler possible”,3 writes his biographer Ian Kershaw and there is no reason to doubt Kershaw’s c­ onclusion. According to Hitler’s own propagandistic reading in his book Mein Kampf (My Struggle), the years between 1914 and 1918 were the größte und unvergesslichste Zeit meines irdischen Lebens (the greatest and most unforgettable time of my earthly existence). The war had given the “Nobody of Vienna” (as the historian Fritz Stern has phrased young ­Hitler) a cause, a purpose and a sense of belonging. His Bavarian regiment had been his home and his “career” – the only one he had been able to achieve so far. So, he had good practical reasons to stay in the army as long as possible and that was, in fact, what he did before he decided to become a politician. For Hitler, the Great War always remained a cornerstone of his private as well as his political referential system. On the other hand, it is not clear how and to what extent the war has actually determined and shaped his ideology and his political mission, apart from what he propagandistically construed in Mein Kampf. The “unknown Front Soldier” – as Hitler liked to call himself – has revealed surprisingly very little about his personal conduct during the war. Hence, the many stories and anecdotes – true or invented – those were and still are, conveyed about Hitler’s wartime career and conduct, his “secret life” during the war. Though his political speeches and public utterances are larded with rather general comments about the World War, particularly about the shared Fronterlebnis (experience of the front) of his generation, it is clearly the end of the war and Germany’s “undeserved” defeat in 1918 that H ­ itler remained concerned with – particularly during his earlier career as “­drummer and rallier” (Hitler) of the Nazi party: “War guilt”, “­November t­reason”, “stab in the back” (with strong anti-Semitic references) and the “shame treaty of Versailles” (Schandfrieden) were his most frequently uttered and favoured catchphrases during the 1920s. After his appointment as Chancellor and Führer (leader) of the German Reich ­Hitler’s political language through underwent certain changes. His still frequent references to the Great War became less aggressive, at times even ­moderate, but his declarations (and, indeed, his actions) left no doubt about his intention that he was going to revise or even undo the “dictated Versailles peace agreement”. This restraint changed, of course, again after

The historical legacy of the Great War  91 September 1939 when Hitler triggered another World War with even more terrible consequences. After 1933 in Germany the Great War was instrumentalised for political purposes and intentions as never before. Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels solemnly declared that the National Socialists were the true heirs to the “ideas of 1914” and that the “German revolution” of 1933 was even going to supersede the effects of the French Revolution of 1789. The assumed euphoria of national unity at the beginning of the First World War became a firm ingredient of the idea of the so-called Volksgemeinschaft (national folk community). According to Reich Minister of Labour Robert Ley, the Nazi “revolution” of 1933 had its very beginning: In those August days of 1914. There in the western and the eastern trenches, these people found themselves again; the grenades and the mines asked not whether a man was high-born or low-born, whether rich or poor, to which denomination and which estate he belonged, but rather here was the great, resounding test of the meaning and spirit of community.4 The Nazis’ ideological concept of Wehrhaftmachung (militarisation) of German society led to an almost mystical conjuring-up of battlefields like Tannenberg, Langemarck and Verdun. The battle of the Somme, however, the most atrocious and devastating battle of the entire war with more than 1.1 million dead and wounded soldiers on all sides, remained rather in the background. While Tannenberg and Verdun, though for different reasons, evoked heroism and emotions, the Somme remained a mere symbol, a kind of writing on the wall, for the destructive and uncontrollable forces set free in a modern and increasingly total war. Instead, Langemarck (originally Langemark), a small village in Flanders, where in November 1914 young and shortly trained units, “student-regiments” (“schoolboy corps”) according to official propaganda, had put up a heroic fight against superior British forces, took the stage for all kinds of public remembrances and celebrations: the Hitler Youth organised an annual “Langemarck-Day” with public marches of uniformed girls and boys and a display of flags and banners throughout the entire Reich while the Langemarck-myth gave birth to numerous theatrical plays and recitations. From September 1938 onwards, Langemarck provided the name for a special student scholarship scheme, which was directed at successful students from underprivileged families of workers, peasants and craftsmen. The earlier romantic notion of the young dying young for the Fatherland had finally been replaced by an educational concept with clear-cut ideological-racist ideas. From 1934 onwards, the by now officially (i.e., by law) recognised Heldengedenktag (Heroes’ Memorial Day) replaced the annual

92  Gerhard Hirschfeld Volkstrauertag (People’s Day of Bereavement) to commemorate the fallen Soldiers of the Great War. It is remarkable that Hitler often determined this particular day (or the days leading up to it) to announce some of his far-reaching political and military decisions: the re-introduction of military conscription (in 1935), the re-occupation of the demilitarised zones of the Rhineland (in 1936) and the Austrian Anschluss (the reunification with Austria in 1938) – all these decisions were in blatant violation of the Versailles Peace Treaty, which in 1919 had formally ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers. The official memorial speeches at “Heroes’ Memorial Day” were no any longer given by functionaries of the German War Graves Commission but by prominent military and political leaders of the new Germany. A recurrent central theme in these public addresses was the successful reconstruction of the German Volksgemeinschaft (folk community) out of the spirit of the “national war society” between 1914 and 1918. All speakers, therefore, paid regular and special tribute to the Frontsoldaten, the front soldiers of the Great War, whose sacrifice – an often-repeated phrase – had spearheaded the Third Reich. The military victories over Belgium and France in the summer of 1940 were celebrated by the Nazi regime as the “true end of the First World War”. The armistice with France was signed in Hitler’s presence on 22 June at Compiègne forest in the same railway carriage where the German delegation signed the armistice agreement on 11 November 1918. Two weeks before France officially conceded defeat, the Nazi newspaper Völkischer Beobachter carried on its front page an illustration of a Wehrmacht soldier ramming the German war flag, sporting a swastika, into French soil. The caption above read the places of three famous battles familiar to all contemporaries: “Somme – Marne – Verdun”; below stood a sentence with which the soldier of the new Wehrmacht addressed three old imaginary German front soldiers of the First World War: “Und ihr habt doch gesiegt” (You did win this war after all). The Nazi regime and Hitler personally could be assured that most ­Germans would agree with this message. Never before and never again was the “Führer” more popular than after the French capitulation of 1940. Even liberal and conservative opponents of the regime took personal pride and satisfaction in the victory over the French “archenemy”. For the generation of former front soldiers, it was mere justice brought back by history after the apparent injustice committed in November 1918 by the military capitulation and the country’s defeat and, again, in the summer of 1919 by the shameful peace treaty of Versailles. During the course of the Second World War, the war of 1914–1918 ­continued to be instrumentalised for political and military goals, which seemed to be linked directly to the German collective memory of the First

The historical legacy of the Great War  93 World War. There are five central areas where Hitler and his regime felt that they had to act decisively not to repeat the mistakes of the previous war: – Military strategy: In order to avoid the stalemate of trench warfare, Hitler and his generals insisted on combined mechanised and motorised operations (Poland 1939, Western Europe 1940, Russia 1941). However, after the first throwbacks of 1942–1943 on the Eastern front, and in particular after the loss of a whole army at Stalingrad, Hitler ordered German troops to return to the defensive doctrine of 1916: to defend every meter of occupied ground at any costs – thereby rebuffing some of his highest generals. – War aims: Some political and military goals that Nazi Germany tried to achieve were certainly influenced by events and results of the previous war (notably the overthrow of France), while others clearly stemmed from pure ideological ideas and motivations. While Hitler clearly wished to revise the political result and outcome of the First World War, his far-reaching war aims, particularly his radical intentions for ruling and exploiting Eastern Europe, were as much dictated by megalomaniac, imperialistic designs as by primitive and brutal racism. – War economy: The Allied naval blockade put a particular strain on the hard-hit German home front during the First World War though the situation was made worse by the government’s inefficient handling of the economic system. One of the most incisive collective memories had been the “hunger Winter” of 1916/1917 when consumption was reduced to about 50 per cent of its normal level. Illness and death caused by hunger and food shortages remained a regular feature of everyday life, p ­ articularly in bigger German cities, right until the end of the war. ­Hitler’s c­ onstant fear of a repeat of 1918 and the alleged collapse of the home front led him to secure sufficient supplies for the civilian population. The  system was by and large successfully maintained until 1945 due to the systematic economic exploitation of occupied Europe, which included the forceful recruitment and putting to work of more than 10  million foreign slave labourers. – Propaganda: Already in his book Mein Kampf and later in numerous speeches Hitler had criticised the failing of German propaganda during the Great War, attributing almost demonic powers to Allied, especially British, war propaganda “in mobilizing the entire world against the innocent and naïve Germans”.5 The enormous propaganda machine built up after 1933 by Goebbels’ Berlin ministry as well as by other government and party institutions was the direct outcome of this widely believed deficit. – Anti-partisan warfare: There are strong indications that the image of the Freischärler or franctireur, as the real or imagined irregular civilian

94  Gerhard Hirschfeld fighters against German troops in Belgium and Northern France in 1914 were called, also strongly influenced the policies and methods of ­German security forces (Police and SS), but also the Wehrmacht during the initial phase of the Eastern campaign. During the three weeks of fighting in September, approximately 12,000 Polish civilians were executed for allegedly acting as franctireurs or simply for being at the wrong place at the wrong time. These were twice as many victims as in 1914, and this clearly represented a new element in German warfare: a racist radicalisation of policies that was to turn into the most ruthless occupation imaginable and end with genocide. Besides, many German soldiers harboured other powerful images and ­perceptions of the First World War, in particular, the invasion of ­Cossacks into East Prussia in August 1914 with an ensuing widespread fear of ­Russian soldiers. Similarly, negative images of the Bolsheviks that had been produced during and after the Russian Revolution of 1917 were revoked after the German attack on Russia in 1941. A number of ­German generals and troop commanders have used these images to confront and relate their new experiences during the Second World War with those from the previous war and other military conflicts fought in the East like the fights of the Free Corps in the Baltic after 1919. Once the military campaign against Russia was underway, however, previously contrasting views seemed to have merged into one overriding image: Eastern Europe as a mere object of German desires and the Eastern peoples as racially inferior and culturally deprived, their economic and human resources at the disposal of the G ­ erman Reich. The Wehrmacht’s expansionist war against Poland, the Soviet Union, and adjacent countries was fought first and foremost along racial lines, whereby political and economic goals provided the rationale for Hitler’s “war of annihilation” in the East. But long-standing cultural prejudices inherited feelings of superiority and previously acquired negative historical images among ordinary soldiers as well as amongst their officers facilitated their participation in a war of complete and utter destruction that many of them had neither anticipated nor desired. Already during, but more so after the Second World War with its ­hecatombs of lives, cut-off biographies and enormous scale of destruction, the First World War lost its central memorial position in German society. The Great War became overshadowed by events and consequences of the Second World War – as it did in Russia and other East European countries but also, for instance, in the Netherlands, Scandinavia, and even in the United States. In these and other countries, the Second World War, sometimes re-named and commemorated as the “Great Patriotic War” or the “War of Liberation from Nazi Oppression”, has shaped and ultimately dominated the collective memory of their citizens. Reasons vary from country to country, but the result, nevertheless, looks the same: while for

The historical legacy of the Great War  95 the French, the Belgians, the British and the Australians – to name just four of the former nations who fought on the side of the Entente – the First World War still remains the Great War others began to look to the Second World War as the most decisive historical event and watershed in the history of the 20th century. To what extent the experience of the Shoah has contributed to this now widely held perception is still a matter of debate. But there are strong indications that the persecution and murder of almost 6 million European Jews not only represents an unparalleled Zivilisationsbruch, a “break-up of civilization”, but has also given the Second World War its ultimate place in history. With the generational change of our historical and cultural memory in the years to come, Germans, as well as other European countries, will have to face a further historicisation of the 20th century that will inevitably draw both world wars stronger together than ever before. The ensuing process of historicisation will also affect – in fact, it has already begun – the work of historians as well as the work of all those concerned with the heritage and memory of both World Wars. It is an appropriate moment to stop here and leave time for reflection. The memorisation of wars follows basically the same pattern that applies to other, less violent periods of history. According to the by-now well-known theoretical distinction, suggested by Jan and Aleida Assmann (drawing upon Maurice Halbwachs’ theory of collective memory), between a cultural memory, as a long-term storage of knowledge and tradition, and a communicative memory, shared by three consecutive generations (Jan Assmann speaks of up to eighty years), the First World War clearly belongs by-now to the first category. The contemporaries have long passed away and even the war children are no longer with us. What is left are the relics and the artefacts of the war: the documents and texts, the pictures and photos, the landscapes and topographies of war and the cemeteries and monuments that constitute our cultural memory. How and to what extent these objects and their representation have formed and determined our respective memories are a matter of scholarly and intellectual debate. Notes 1 Hew Strachan, The First World War (London: Simon & Schuster, 2003). 2 Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1951). 3 Ian Kershaw, Hitler 1889–1936 (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt DVA, 1998), 73. 4 Ronald Smelser, Robert Ley. Hitler’s Labour Front Leader (Oxford and New York: Berg, 1988). 5 Alan Kramer, “World War and German Memory”, in Untold War. New Perspectives in First World War Studies, ed. Heather Jones, Jennifer O’Brien and Christoph Schmidt-Supprian (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2008), 387.

7 The First World War in Mozambique Cultural encounters between civilians and militaries Ana Paula Pires The Republic, Africa, and the Great War East Africa’s strategic importance gradually grew from the late 19th ­century onwards. The British Ultimatum of 1890 was an example of the global reach of European imperialism during the late 1800s, which would end up forcing Portugal into having to fight to preserve its place in the political geography of both Europe and Africa. When analysing the mobilisation of the Portuguese Republic for the war in Africa, it should be kept in mind that the republican generation in power when the conflict broke out in  Europe, in the Summer of 1914, had already lived through the ­ultimatum – demanding the withdrawal of the military forces led by Major Serpa Pinto from the territories between Mozambique and Angola – and had publicly criticised the policy of acquiescence to British interests undertaken by King D. Carlos, considering it nothing short of national humiliation. ­According to republican propaganda, this idea of the absolute need to maintain a single and indivisible empire that must be defended at all costs rested, from the start, on a much broader and more complex issue: ensuring a change in political regime capable of revitalising the empire. We recall, for example, the position of António José de Almeida, who was to head the “sacred union” government formed following the declaration of war, who had written, precisely on this occasion, a text wherein he harshly ­criticised the King’s option, a position for which he was eventually imprisoned for three months in Coimbra,1 or Norton de Matos, who in the Summer of 1914 held the post of Governor-General of Angola and for whom the British ultimatum represented, along with the 1870 agreement negotiated between Andrade Corvo and Morier on Lourenço Marques and the 1884–1885 Berlin Conference, the “sad certainty of our incapacity to tackle the crucial problems of national greatness”.2 East Africa’s strategic importance for the British Empire resided in the fact that it assured the security of the Suez Canal and, therefore, the s­ hortest route to India and the Far East. Sending military expeditions to Africa, in DOI: 10.4324/9781003399209-8

The First World War in Mozambique  97 particular to Mozambique, is thus of particular importance, all the more because the South African Union represented a danger and an increasing threat to regional stability and to Portuguese interests.3 Portugal’s minister in London, ­Teixeira Gomes, stated that sending troops to Africa was the only guarantee that ­Portugal would have “to make ourselves be respected by our neighbours”.4 In the case of the Transvaal, Lourenço Marques had long been seen as a desirable outlet to the sea. In the first months of 1914, the Minister of Colonies, Lisboa de Lima, in a conference given at the Geographical Society of Lisbon, concluded that the economic and financial life of Mozambique absolutely depended on the life of the Transvaal. The tracks to the north and east of this immense South African railway, which runs from the ports of Natal and the Cape, are spreading like an octopus’s tentacles over the Transvaal, at the expense of minimizing the Lourenço Marques port area.5 At the end of the previous year, the Deutsche Ost Africa Linie, of H ­ amburg, which operated waterway links between Germany and Mozambique, had announced a seafaring line that called at the ports of Lobito and ­Moçamedes, operational as from 1 June 1914.6 On 21 August 1914, the Portuguese Prime Minister, Bernardino Machado, ordered the arrangement and deployment of two mixed contingents (mountain artillery, cavalry, infantry, and machine guns) to Angola and Mozambique.7 In the preamble of the decree, the government recognised the need to “in the current circumstances, properly garrison some of the outposts on the southern border of Angola and on the northern border of Mozambique”.8 The Minister of Colonies informed the Minister of Foreign Affairs, by letter, that seven centimetre mountain ammunition had been deployed to three artillery units stationed in Mozambique, as well as eight native infantry companies in a total of about 1,680 men.9 A total of 1,525 men were deployed to Angola and 1,477 to Mozambique. At the time, the Portuguese army had a little over 31,000 men. The first news about the war in Europe was published in Lourenço Marques on 12 August,10 but the impact of the conflict on the mainland was only reported a month later Whatever the fate of the weapons, the European war will be devastating, either by influencing the conditions for final peace, or by the local warfare, the landmarks of some of the borders that today define the colonies of different nations (…) Some mistakenly believe that only a direct attack will make Africa feel the effects of the war raging from afar. That is outright deception.11

98  Ana Paula Pires The fact is that newspapers like O Africano, a daily paper published in Lourenço Marques and founded by a Mozambique national, João dos S­ antos Albasini, raised doubts as to the need for sending troops to the colony: Since we have not yet understood the undoubtedly powerful reasons that led the government to send military expeditions both to this province and to Angola, somebody thought of sending us a news clipping from a Lisbon paper. (…) Who requested Portuguese help? What is the British government, which has far superior forces than we do, or was it the Lisbon government which offered it so as to directly influence the dispute and, thus, prepare the ground for future advantages in compensation when the war is over? (…) God forbid that we should shirk our duty. We would never dream of doing such a thing, much less advise it as journalists or as private citizens. Duty is sacred and one does not shirk one’s duty. But one thing is the duty, and another is the haste cloaked under its name. The government will strictly have to make a careless analysis of the new measure, which, although lacks official approval, is considered to have been promulgated. This “seems that” put in writing in more or less detail is nothing more than a subterfuge or a political game to prepare the public opinion for the sacrifices imposed thereon in the interests of the fatherland. (…) If we were asked to, all well and good; if not, then we should think of the government of Portugal as an agent and defender of the Republican Party.12 These doubts and uncertainties are still featured in the press: Six or eight thousand armed and equipped men came to the colonies, and to what end? To defend our colonial sovereignty, isn’t that what we are told? Well, where exactly is that defence? The troops that came to this province months ago are still to be found, according to our information, in Porto Amélia! What are they waiting for? (…) Portugal will always be, until its most critical moment in history, the nation that remained faithful to its ally, hoping that it would ask for its help, to then declare war on Germany. The fact that Portuguese territories are invaded is no reason for a formal declaration of war on the invading nation!13 Albasini was a reputed intellectual and journalist from Mozambique, leader of the Grémio Africano group and the only black member of the commission appointed in 1914 to study the enforcement of law in ­Mozambique.14 Throughout the years of the war, he signed articles in the newspaper O Africano, under his own name and under the nom de plume João das Regras and Chico das Pegas. On 17 October, a party in honour of the Portuguese troops was held at Teatro Varietá (Varietá Theatre), with part of the proceeds going to the war

The First World War in Mozambique  99 victims and to the Red Cross Delegation in Lourenço Marques.15 A group of women led by Margarida Stella de Bulhão Pato, Gualdina Ribeiro, and Isaura Nunes de Sousa founded the Women’s Committee to Aid ­Portuguese Soldiers, whose aim was “to provide as much help as p ­ ossible, and a little comfort to the Portuguese soldiers campaigning in East Africa”.16 The first incident between Portugal and Germany in Africa occurred on 24 August 1914 in northern Mozambique, in Maziúa, Rovuma, when the commander of a border post was shot dead upon leaving his room, caught in a night-time raid by German forces operating from neighbouring East Africa. The Portuguese Government Commissioner to the Niassa Company in a letter sent to the Minister of Colonies reported the scene of destruction he found upon arriving in Maziúa: “the outbuildings of the post and the huts of the garrison squares were all burned; only some of the walls remained standing because they were made of bricks”.17 The Lisbon press closest to the Portuguese Republican Party hastily justified the need to dispatch Portuguese troops to Africa: It is natural that our alliance should, especially after an exchange of views between the governments of the two countries, serve to guarantee the integrity of the Portuguese possessions. But hoping to secure such guarantee with our arms folded, without effectively demonstrating that we are capable, for our part, to make every possible effort to defend what is ours, is to place the country in a humiliating and depressing position before the great English nation, a position for which there is but one word: protectorate.18 It is, therefore, curious to note the doubts that the deployment of expeditions to Africa raised doubts in the African press: “we certainly do not understand the powerful reasons that led the government to send military expeditions to this province and to Angola”.19 On 9 March 1916, Germany declared war on Portugal. A few days later, the Chief of Staff of the Province of Mozambique called to the colours all reservists living in the district of Lourenço Marques, who had to present themselves to the Provincial Headquarters on 22 March.20 The Government Council also ordered the suspension of all constitutional guarantees across Mozambique, the press was censored, and all newspaper supplements in the Landim language were banned. In a telegram sent to the ­Minister of the Colonies, the Governor-General stated that the declaration of war had been received “with calm and serenity”,21 but the press showed distrust towards the German community recalling what had happened during the battle of Naulila: To protect a German, to help him, to aid his freedom of action within our territory, is a crime against the fatherland, and, if we are to be permitted a small criticism of the law, we would say that the conditional

100  Ana Paula Pires freedom of the enemy nations’ subjects should be granted solely and exclusively by the Governor-General. (…) Let there be no weakness or excessive pity on our part because it has been shown time and time again that the Germans have no consideration or respect for us, no greater proof being required than the repugnant and brutal way in which they treated our prisoners after Naulila. (…) War cannot be waged gently, and we must absolutely and immediately take to heart that the Germans are our enemies.22 It was in this spirit that the Foreign Office pressured the Portuguese ­Government to arrest all German residents of military age in Portugal and its colonies, recommending as well that all others be kept under strict and relentless vigilance.23 Nevertheless, one should not overlook the opportunist drive behind this initiative, which foretold the ambition of the British authorities and their desire to strangle all German economic activity, commercial or otherwise. Afonso Costa assured the British minister in Lisbon, Lancelot Carnegie, that the British authorities could count on the support of Portugal, even if, to that end, “the interests of Portuguese citizens were temporarily affected”.24 On 14 March, the Society for Preparatory Military training met at the headquarters of the Lourenço Marques Association of Trade and Industry Employees. During the meeting “its support for our government’s attitude to Germany, the Allies’ cause and above all the defence of our fatherland was loudly proclaimed”.25 A proposal was also made for a demonstration of support for the Governor-General and the consuls of the Allied nations. The directors of the Goa Institute also held a general assembly, whose main purpose was to demonstrate that “all of the children of India living here and fit for military service” were at the disposal “of the Government for all tasks that might contribute to the defence of the Portuguese Fatherland”.26 In Lourenço Marques, rumours began to spread about the alleged pro-German sentiments of the Indian colony and the circulation of ­German propaganda aimed at its Muslim population: We were told that in the mosques of the Indianized natives one can hear songs in praise of the Turkish Army and its allies while condemning the opposing cause. We do not believe that the brains of natives, generally uneducated, could conceive an idea like this and, therefore, we warned the authorities to avoid the Muslim pressure that cannot be exerted on the Portuguese natives, because, in religious terms, it can cause series inconvenience to the sentiment of the country. (…) We remind you that it is advisable to keep an eye on the Muslims living in Lourenço Marques. They are a mainstay for German propaganda, indoctrinating the blacks at their discretion.27

The First World War in Mozambique  101 It should be remembered that in North Africa, the European flare-up among the Muslim populations stimulated the development of nationalism, encouraging the emergence of jihadist “religious wars” against Europe. Six days later, the Minister of the interior, António Pereira Reis, placed all German citizens “under the discrete surveillance of the police” and instructed the Civil Governors to make them appear before the relevant administrative authorities in order to state their names, age, place of birth, profession, and civil status.28 Sometime later, the passport service was regulated and all the subjects of Germany and its allies were banned from entering Portugal.29 There is, therefore, a continuum between this strategic orientation and the order for the expulsion promulgated days later.30 At the end of the year, on 27, 28, and 29 December, the Indian National Congress was held in Bombay, attended by Mohandas Gandhi, where the admission of Indians to military service was discussed.31 The distrust and critical tone originally reserved for the deployment of Portuguese troops to the colonies since 1914 then led to the support for the option taken by the Republic’s leaders: While war remains a calamity, it is nevertheless a necessity. It should be clear to all Portuguese that we could no longer continue to doubt and have the intolerable attitude which we have had since the war was declared between England and Germany.32 On 24 May 1916, the Minister of War, Norton de Matos, published a decree ordering the military registration of all citizens aged between 20 and 45, without exception. The country later saw the creation of the Corpo Expedicionário Português (CEP, Portuguese Expeditionary Corps) and the Corpo de Artilharia Pesada Independente (CAPI, Independent Heavy Artillery Corps). Portugal dropped the ambiguous situation it had found itself in since 1914, definitely taking its place alongside the Allies and putting an end to the Iberian Peninsula’s “neutrality”.33 The departure of troops from Lisbon to Africa was witnessed by a resigned population: One afternoon in early June, the Campolide battalion marched to Cais da Areia. The troops marched in a resigned and fatalistic mood towards the unknown. Neither enthusiasm nor despair. The public, on the other hand, showed complete indifference while the troops crossed the city as if it were a regiment engaged in manoeuvres on the outskirts of the city. No interest, not even curiosity; a sense of emptiness more painful than mere hostility.34 Following the declaration of war, a preparatory school for temporary officers was also set up in Mozambique.35 The diplomas laid down the period

102  Ana Paula Pires of instruction at nine weeks, and as the Portuguese troops sent to Africa found it difficult to adapt to the climate, suffering countless casualties as a result thereof, ten native companies were hastily assembled during the third expedition. Their training period was markedly short – only four months – when it was already known that the minimum time needed to train a good native soldier was around four years. The Portuguese residents in South Africa also showed up at the Army Headquarters, in Lourenço Marques, enlisting as volunteers to defend the colony.36 It should be noted that since the start of the war the whole of East Africa was coveted not only by Germany but also by the government of India, which had ambitions to establish a colony there. Comings and goings/matches and mismatches East Africa had been crisscrossed by Portuguese sailors and merchants for over 400 years. In 1913, 16.3 per cent of Portuguese domestic production was earmarked for African markets. At the time, Africa ranked third, behind Europe (59.8 per cent) and South America (18.7 per cent), among the main Portuguese export destinations.37 It should be noted that until 1884 German trade on the East coast of Africa, where both Portugal and Great Britain were predominant, consisted only of a few Hamburg trading posts established under private conventions negotiated with the Sultan of Zanzibar.38 Aristides de Sousa Mendes, Portugal’s Consul General in the S­ ultanate in the early 1910s, in a note sent to the Portuguese Consul in D ­ ar-es-Salaam, Casimiro Fernandes, reporting on the commercial development in East Africa, particularly the transactions with Germany and British India, underlining the role that Portugal could play: Portugal might well find here a market for its olive oil, butter, cheeses, olive oils, wines and, above all, preserved foods. So far, only a few sardine cans and few wines come from Portugal; other industries are still unknown, more for lack of knowledge thereof and of Portuguese companies in mainland Portugal.39 Sousa Mendes also informed the Minister of Foreign Affairs that several Portuguese merchants living in Zanzibar intended to establish a P ­ ortuguese Chamber of Commerce – the port of Zanzibar was then one of the main ports of Africa, a hub of trade between Arabia and India and an important node in the submarine cable network between Great Britain and the Empire.40 The European population living in the British East African protectorate was estimated at approximately 3,000, of which around 2,000 were from the State of India. They lived in the capital city, Nairobi, and were

The First World War in Mozambique  103 ­economically prosperous.41 A Portuguese Literary Guild was set up in the port city of Tanga, near the border with Kenya, on the initiative of the Goan community living there.42 The 300 Portuguese living in Dar es Salaam in 1912 were all from Goa, of different social classes and worked as clerks and merchants. Being very dynamic, their presence was also visible in Mombasa and Nairobi.43 The number of Africans from the north of Ibo who worked on the German plantations located south of Dar es Salaam was also considerable. When Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian imperial throne, was assassinated in Sarajevo, little more than 10,500 ­Portuguese whites lived in Mozambique. The overall population of the colony hovered around the 2.8 million mark.44 The district of Mozambique was home to 296 whites, 312 Asians and 4,634 blacks.45 The greatest concentration of the white population was to be found in the city of Lourenço Marques, with its wealthiest members residing in the Ponta Vermelha and Polana neighbourhoods, close to the shore. According to a census published two years earlier, a little over a thousand European foreigners living in Lourenço Marques were accounted for.46 The first German consulate had been opened in 1889, and throughout the 1890s, diplomatic representations were established on the Island of Mozambique and in Beira, Chinde, and Quelimane. In 1907, a cultural centre was inaugurated in Lourenço Marques, aimed at “fostering social relations between German residents in Lourenço Marques and promoting the use of the German language and the preservation of the national spirit”.47 The presence of British and South African citizens was also significant, notably on the ports of Beira and Lourenço Marques. The impact of the outbreak of war on the European population living in Africa was significant; men eligible for conscription were incorporated into military units stationed in mainland Portugal or sent off to fight on the Western European front. This situation resulted in a significant exodus of Europeans and, therefore, to a very significant drop in the number of civil servants and clerks in commercial houses. Table 7.1 Mozambique. White Foreign Population, 1912

British Germans Chinese Italians Greeks

Lourenço Marques

Beira

668 106 300 80 149

268 45 – 47 123

Chinde 31 24 – – –

Source: A Manual of Portuguese East Africa (London: H. M. Stationery Office, 1920), 88.

104  Ana Paula Pires Under the cloak of undeclared neutrality, Mozambique soon became a buffer zone between British and German territory, a crossing point for essential goods (contraband) and foodstuffs, and a privileged platform for the acquisition of intelligence (espionage) vital for both British and Germans throughout the war. The British Vice-Consul in Porto Amélia reported the Egyptian citizen born in Greece, Christo Christophides, as a German spy to the State Secretary for Foreign Affairs. Christophides, who had come from Uganda to Porto Amélia and had acquired properties there,48 had allegedly been sent to Porto Amélia by the German Consul in Mombasa to “work in unison with the Governor”.49 He was detained by the military authorities in the Niassa region and sent to the fort of Mozambique. The British authorities later included his name on the “Blacklist”.50 The British government also identified as German spies operating on Mozambican territory, a post-holder, Tavares, presented as an agent of a German missionary named Schenck, and the Goan Max de Sousa, who would have gone to Ibo on the pretext of buying spices and condiments.51 The British Vice-Consul also pointed out other possible spies, such as ­officials in charge of the construction of telegraph lines in the Niassa Company territories, and the Customs Chief of Porto Amélia.52 According to the British, the ships of the Empresa Nacional de Navegação (National Shipping Company) were also carrying correspondence between agents in Lisbon and the German East-African territories. The British ­Vice-Consul in Beira went as far as pointing out the presence of a considerable number of Portuguese citizens working for Companhia de Moçambique (­Mozambique Company) who sympathised with Germany.53 In July 1916, the press reported that four German East Africans had crossed the Portuguese border into Mozambique To negotiate a revolt among several régulos (chiefs) to distract our forces in Niassa. It seems that some régulos acquiesced and prepared for war with the promise of ammunitions and weapons which would be timely brought from the German to the Portuguese territory.54 The previous year, the General Secretary for the Province of M ­ ozambique informed the governor that two régulos – Samate and Chiteje – had arrested and taken to Likoma one of our natives, who had been arrested in our territory, because they knew he was carrying 120 cartridges of dynamite, a piece of fuse, a green flag with the Red Crescent, and a bunch of letters to several natives, all Muslims55 Great Britain wanted Portugal to remain neutral, without announcing its intention. Behind the British government’s stance lay an understanding of

The First World War in Mozambique  105 the strategic importance of Portugal’s Atlantic and African ports, which could be used by the Royal Navy, as well as the possibility of requesting the passage of British troops through Portuguese colonial territories. Through their legation in Lisbon, the British had already ordered the ­garrisoning, with native forces, of the territories of the former Niassa Company. C ­ arnegie had alerted the British Foreign Minister, Edward Grey, of the transport by the National Shipping Company of “correspondence for enemy subjects residing both in Portuguese East Africa and in the neighbouring German colony”. Carnegie also expressed the wish to the Portuguese Foreign minister, Augusto Soares, that “mails from and to Portuguese East Africa carried by the Company’s ships would be able to reach their destination without passing through the hands of the Censorship Authorities at Cape Town”.56 Between 1914 and 1918, some two and a half million Africans were mobilised as soldiers, workers, or porters, corresponding roughly to 1 per cent of the continent’s population. In northern Mozambique, where roads were scarce and the railway network non-existent, a large number of porters had to be recruited. The effects of the mass recruitment of porters were soon felt in agricultural production; although women continued to sow and harvest, without men to till the land yields fell and soon proved insufficient to meet the nutritional needs of the population. The price of scarce crops increased quickly, and famine was soon widespread across the whole continent, only partly alleviated by the import of foodstuffs from India and South Africa. On the last day of May 1917, the workers of the port and railway of Lourenço Marques went on strike. As a result, on 6 June, the Governor General decided on the military occupation of the stations and railway lines, as well as the quay installations, on the grounds that they were indispensable for the regular operation of the province’s economy, as well as for the safeguard of its military interests.57 The day before, a state of siege was declared in the province, and the city government was handed over to the Commander of the Guarda Nacional Republicana (National Republican Guard), Lieutenant-Colonel José de Almeida Vasconcelos.58 The main claims of the strikers were as follows: 1 General salary increase for all permanent staff and salaried workers, irrespective of race. 2 Eight-hour workday. 3 Maintenance of the three-day payment. 4 Recognition, for retirement purposes, of the length of service to the Lourenço Marques Railways. 5 Full payment of days on strike. 6 Medicines manufactured or to be manufactured supplied to all railway workers by the State pharmacies, for 50 per cent off.

106  Ana Paula Pires The governor eventually gave in, granting the railwaymen the three days of payment they had demanded, showing himself “willing, once everyone had returned to work, to have the remaining requests assessed by a commission delegated by the Association of the Lourenço Marques Port and Railways Employees”.59 Mozambique suffered from a lack of labour, “in factories and farm estates, with recruitment even forcing mass flight among the population. Private companies protested, one of them complaining that the prazo Luabo is being depopulated due to the recruitment carried out at gunpoint”.60 It should be noted that at this stage of the war the number of porters still volunteers but available to integrate and meet the needs of the armies on the move, quickly began to decline. During the war years, some 100,000 porters died in East Africa alone. Álvaro Rosas compared them to slaves and left an account, in his memoirs, of the conditions in which they joined the war From the eyes of those porters walking in macabre rows, with depressed bellies and bones piercing their skin, black walking spectres, a wire collar around their neck, and guarded like animals by ferocious soldiers, one could see the desire to escape in search of freedom. This hideous image will forever be etched in the memory of every sensitive man.61 The Portuguese colonial authorities also authorised the recruitment of porters in Mozambique to serve the British forces: “General Hoskins’s request for the recruitment of 12,000 porters until the end of August, and 6,000 every month thereafter was approved by the Governor”.62 The press lamented the military disorganisation of the Portuguese troops and questioned the role of the native troops: If the native troops are necessary – as we believe them to be –, then nothing is more important than their organisation. If this is not taken care of and the present farce is maintained merely to justify the mummifying of overseas territories, which is reminiscent of a legendary past, then it would be better to abolish them.63 Portugal used about 60,000 porters during the war and supplied roughly 30,000 porters to the British forces.64 Colonial authorities had a very pragmatic understanding of the black population: “the Portuguese, throughout the centuries of their occupation of East Africa, have never viewed him in any but a proper and practical light: for them, he is first and last the mão de obra (labouring hand)”.65 According to a note drawn up in November 1918 by the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Vasconcelos e Sá, Portugal supplied some 30,000 porters

The First World War in Mozambique  107 to Great Britain,66 in a process that was beset with difficulty, given the growing need for labour felt by the Portuguese forces to deal with the revolt that had, in the meantime, broken out in the Barué District – as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs made clear to British Minister in Portugal, Lancelot Carnegie: The province is burdened with the recruitment of porters and soldiers for the Portuguese forces in the north and in the Barué district, and of workers indispensable to prevent agriculture and industry from being brought to a standstill. Labour, however, is already lacking in the factories and farm estates, and recruitment is even causing the population to flee. ­Private companies are protesting, one of them complaining that the prazo Luabo is depopulated due to the recruitment carried out at gunpoint.67 Simões Alberto, in his memoirs of the Mozambican campaign, praised the bravery of the African soldiers and described the difficult conditions in which they were made to operate: He fought the whole campaign barefoot, his legs exposed; he never complained of fatigue, even though at times his eyes were bloodshot as if wanting to burst from such a violent effort; and when, his bones bent over on the hard earth, he rested his weary, sweaty, and smelly body, he still looked fondly at his commander, not hesitating to sacrifice his own life so that the life of his “senhoro”, his “mesugo”, might be spared.68 Close to the coast, they were paid fifteen cents a day, whereas in the ­interior regions, they received only five cents per day.69 Conclusions The armistice marked the end of the German colonial experience and led to the redrawing of the map of the African continent. Although the African continent was part of the imaginary and Portugal defined itself as a colonial power, from January 1917, the Portuguese military intervention on the African battlefield always played second fiddle to the sending of troops to Flanders. This reality was described by some combatants, like António de Cértima, who voiced his discontent in a brief work published in 1925: Look at what’s going on outside! It’s the ‘9 April’, the apotheosis of your brother who died in Flanders, richer and nobler than you, covered with honours, medals, and glorious citations, serving, no doubt, a ­better Fatherland than you… Soldier of Africa! How many medals were pinned to your chest?70

108  Ana Paula Pires In truth, only the ruling political elite agreed on sending troops to Africa, raising doubts among the colonial and mainland population as to its necessity, uncertainties which fuelled many debates in the press. This attitude changed in March 1916 when Germany declared war on Portugal and arrangements were made to send an Expeditionary Corps to France. Portugal’s entry into the conflict brought about a change by politicians and industrialists as to the hows and whys of the defence and the need for a closer relationship between mainland Portugal and the colonial space, taking advantage of the possibilities and resources that were proving decisive in the attempt to feed a growing war conflict. Or, in the words of engineer Lisboa de Lima, the Portuguese could only rise to the challenge of the war by “combining the efforts of each and every one, whether in mainland ­Portugal or in the colonies, all pulling in the same direction and not ­seeking to safeguard either colonial or metropolitan interests because they are all Portuguese”.71 Notes 1 See António José de Almeida, “Bragança, o último”. O Ultimatum, 23 March 1890, 1; and Ana Paula Pires, António José de Almeida. O Tribuno da República (Lisboa: Divisão de Edições da Assembleia da República, 2011). 2 José Mendes Ribeiro Norton de Matos, Memórias e trabalhos da minha vida. Factos, acontecimentos e episódios que a minha memória guardou. Conferências, discursos e artigos e suas raízes no passado, vol. I (Lisboa: Editoria Marítimo-Colonial, 1944), 79. 3 Marco Fortunato Arrifes, A Primeira Grande Guerra na África Portuguesa. Angola e Moçambique (1914–1918) (Lisboa: Edições Cosmos | Instituto de Defesa Nacional, 2004). 4 Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal (BNP, National Library of Portugal). Arquivo de Cultura Portuguesa Contemporânea (ACPC, Archive of Contemporary ­Portuguese Culture). Private collection of Manuel Teixeira Gomes. Official correspondence sent by Manuel Teixeira Gomes to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, esp. 46, box 14, 4 September 1916, 3. 5 “Na Sociedade de Geografia. Conferência do Sr. Lisboa de Lima sobre a situação económica e financeira de Moçambique”, Gazeta de Moçambique, 1 March 1914, 75–78. 6 José Morais Sarmento, A expansão alemã causa determinante da guerra de 1914–1918. Suas tentativas e perigos na África Portuguesa (Lisboa: ­Guimarães & C.ª Editores, 1919), 285. 7 Ordem do Exército, no. 19, 1st series, 21 August 1914. 8 Ibid. 9 Arquivo Diplomático e Biblioteca do Ministério dos Negócios Estrangeiros (AHDMNE, Diplomatic Archives and Library of the Foreign Affairs Office). First World War. Mozambique, 1915–1916. Official correspondence sent by the Ministry of Colonies to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, floor 3, directory 7, pack 13, 27 August 1914. 10 “A guerra na Europa”, O Africano, 12 August 1914, 2.

The First World War in Mozambique  109 1 “A guerra e nós”, O Africano, 16 September 1914, 1. 1 12 Cf. “Para a guerra. As expedições portuguesas”, O Africano, 4 November 1914, 2. 13 “Sempre neutros! Portugal e a Alemanha”, O Africano, 30 Decemeber 1914, 2. 14 Jeanne Marie Penvenne, “João dos Santos Albasini (1876–1922): The ­Contradictions of Politics and Identity in Colonial Mozambique”, The Journal of African History, no. 37 (1996): 419–464. 15 “No ‘varietá’ ”, O Africano, 17 October 1914, 1. 16 “Obra Patriótica. Comissão feminina de auxílio ao soldado português”, O Africano, 27 May 1916, 1. 17 “Palavras Claras. Razões da intervenção militar de Portugal na guerra ­europeia”, Diário do Governo, no. 9, 1st series, 17 January 1917, 19. See also AHDMNE. First World War. Mozambique, 1915–1916. Official correspondence sent by Portuguese Government Commissioner attached to the Niassa Company to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, floor 3, directory 7, pack 13, 7 September 1914. 18 “A partida das expedições militares”, A Capital, 17 August 1914, 1. 19 “Para a guerra. As expedições portuguesas”, O Africano, 4 November 1914, 2. 20 “Quartel-General da Província de Moçambique. Mobilização do exército chamada das reservas”, A Cidade, 18 March 1916, 3. 21 “Um telegrama para Lisboa”, O Africano, 15 March 1916, 1. 22 Cf. “Portugal na Guerra. A situação – notas e comentários – notícias diversas”, O Africano, 15 March, 1. 23 National Archives of the United Kingdom (NAUK). Foreign Office (FO). 371/2761. Official correspondence sent by Lancelot Carnegie to Edward Grey, 20 March 1916, 1. In October, the Portuguese Legation in Spain reported on the German Government’s intention to reach an agreement with Portugal on this issue. AHDMNE. Requisition of German Ships. Official correspondence sent by the Spanish ambassador in Lisbon to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, floor 3, directory 7, pack 24, 24 October 1916. 24 Ibid., 2. 25 “A manifestação de ontem à noite. Uma sessão histórica”, O Africano, 15 March 1916, 2. 26 “A colónia indiana desta cidade oferece os seus serviços ao Governo”, O ­Africano, 18 March 1916, 2. 27 “A quem competir”, A Cidade, 28 March 1916, 1. 28 See the register of German subjects residing in Portugal. Arquivo Nacional Torre do Tombo (ANTT, National Archive of Torre do Tombo). Ministry of the Interior. Directorate-General of Political and Civil Administration, 1st Division | 1st Section (Public Security). Official correspondence sent by the Director General of Political and Civil Administration to the Civil Governors, pack 66, 20 March 1916. 29 Decree no. 2,313, Diário do Governo, 1st series, no. 64, 4 April 1916. 30 Males between the ages of sixteen and forty-five subject to mobilisation by the Portuguese Government were not covered by this diploma. Decree no. 2,350, Suplemento ao Diário do Governo, no. 77, 20 April 1916. 31 AHDMNE. Consulate of Portugal in Mumbai and Kolkata, box 676. 32 “Portugal na Guerra. A situação – notas e comentários – notícias diversas”, O Africano, 15 March 1916, 1. 33 Ana Paula Pires, “Between War and Peace: the Portuguese Experience in the Great War”, in Shaping Neutrality throughout the First World War, ed. José

110  Ana Paula Pires Leonardo Ruiz Sanchez, Inmaculada Cordero Olivero and Carolina García Sanz (Sevilla: Editorial Universidad de Sevilla, 2015), 207–220. 34 Américo Pires de Lima, Na costa d’África. Memórias de um expedicionário (Gaia: Edições Pátria, 1933), 7. 35 Cf. Decree no. 3,120, Boletim Oficial de Moçambique, 4 August 1917 and Decree no. 3,165, Boletim Oficial de Moçambique, 4 August 1917. 36 See “Umas perguntas”, A Cidade, 28 March 1916, 2 and “Pela defesa da pátria! Oferecimentos patrióticos. Voluntários que pedem para se alistar”, O Africano, 18 March 1915, 2. 37 Pedro Lains, “Causas do colonialismo português em África: 1822–1975”, Análise Social, no. 146–147 (1998): 477. 38 José Morais Sarmento, A expansão alemã causa determinante da guerra…, 285. 39 AHDMNE. Consulate of Portugal in Zanzibar. Official correspondence sent by the Consul of Portugal in Dar-es-Salaam, Casimiro Fernandes, to the Consul General of Portugal in Zanzibar, Aristides de Sousa Mendes, box 718. 40 AHDMNE. Consulate of Portugal in Zanzibar. Official correspondence sent by Aristides de Sousa Mendes to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, box 718, 1 ­February 1913. 41 AHDMNE. Consulate of Portugal in Zanzibar. Report by Aristides de Sousa Mendes on the English East African Protectorate for the year 1911 to 1912, box 718, 16 November 1913. 42 AHDMNE. Consulate of Portugal in Zanzibar. Official correspondence sent by Aristides de Sousa Mendes to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, box 718, 28 August 1913. 43 Portuguese Possessions in India (London: H. M. Stationery Office, 1920), 32–33. 44 A Manual of Portuguese East Africa (London: H. M. Stationery Office, 1920), 86. 45 NAUK. War Office (WO). 106/587. Notes on Mozambique District, ­Portuguese East Africa, 10–11. 46 Mário Costa, “Os censos da população indígena”, Boletim da Sociedade de Estudo de Moçambique, year IV, no. 13 (1934): 32. 47 Manuel Carvalho, A Guerra que Portugal quis esquecer (Porto: Porto Editora, 2015), 39. 48 NAUK. FO. 371/2598. Report by E. C. Baker, acting consul general in Lourenço Marques, 16 December 1915. 49 NAUK. FO. 371/2598. Confidential letter from the British Consulate in Lourenço Marques to the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, 25 January 1916. 50 NAUK. FO. 371/2598. Letter from Maurice de Bunsen to Lancelot Carnegie, 30 May 1916. 51 NAUK. FO. 371/2598. Confidential letter from the British Consulate in Lourenço Marques to the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, 25 January 1916. 52 Ibid. 53 NAUK. FO. 371/2598, Letter from Percy Hirst, British Vice-Consul in Beira to Errol MacDonell, Consul General in Lourenço Marques, 27 February 1916. 54 “Um caso grave. Espionagem em Moçambique”, O Africano, 22 July 1916, 1. 55 AHDMNE. Official correspondence from the Secretary General of the Province of Mozambique to the Governor, floor 3, directory 6, pack 18, file no. 2, 17 July 1915.

The First World War in Mozambique  111 56 NAUK. FO. 371/2598. Official correspondence sent by Lancelot Carnegie to Edward Grey, 7 February 1915. 57 “A ocupação militar”, O Africano, 6 June 1917, 1. 58 “A Situação. É proclamado o estado de sítio com suspensão de garantias”, O Africano, 6 June 1917, 2. Cf. “Edital”, O Africano, 6 June 1917, 2. 59 “Terminou a greve dos ferroviários”, O Africano, 23 June 1917, 1. 60 AHDMNE. Official correspondence sent by Ernesto Vilhena, D ­ irectorate General for Political and Diplomatic Affairs, to the British Ambassador ­ ­ortugal, ­ Lancelot Carnegie, floor 3, directory 6, pack 18, file no. 2, in P 5 ­December 1917. 61 Álvaro Rosas, Terras Negras (impressões de uma campanha) (Porto: Empresa Industrial do Porto, 1935. 62 AHDMNE. Official correspondence from the General Directorate for Political and Diplomatic Affairs to Lancelot Carnegie, the British Ambassador in ­Portugal, floor 3, directory 6, pack 18, file no. 2, 5 December 1917. 63 “Recrutamento militar”, O Africano, 23 February 1916, 1. 64 Malyn Newitt, História de Moçambique (Mem-Martins: Publicações EuropaAmérica, 1995). 65 A Manual of Portuguese East Africa…, 129. 66 AHMNE. Official note of November 1918, prepared by the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Alexandre José Botelho de Vasconcelos e Sá, floor 3, directory 6, pack 18, file no. 2. 67 AHMNE. Official correspondence sent by Ernesto Vilhena, Directorate-­General ­ ortugal, for Political and Diplomatic Affairs, to the British Ambassador in P Lancelot Carnegie, floor 3, directory 6, pack 18, file no. 2, 5 December 1917. 68 Alberto M. Simões, Condenados. A Grande Guerra vivida às portas do degredo (Aveiro: Tipografia Lusitânia, 1933), 143. 69 NAUK. WO. 106/587. Notes on Mozambique District, Portuguese East Africa. 70 António de Cértima, Legenda Dolorosa do Soldado Desconhecido de África (Lisboa: Tip. Luiz Beleza, 1925), XI. 71 “Conferência na Sociedade de Geografia de Lisboa em 8 de Maio de 1916 feita por Lisboa de Lima”, Revista Colonial, year 4, no. 41, 25 May 1916, 120–121.

8 The (re)discussion of the Portuguese colonial heritage after the end of the First World War José Luís Lima Garcia Portugal’s engagement in war during the First Republic (1910–1926) was one of the most discussed, pondered over and postponed decisions of this regime. The political parties were very hesitant about the decision to be taken. The greatest divide was between monarchists and republicans. The former was against intervention, so they rejected any initiative that would highlight the regime against which they were fighting. The reason for nonengagement, however, which brought them closer to the Unionist Republicans, was that the country was not prepared for a venture of this scope. For their part, the republican parties, which formed an alliance, União Sagrada (Sacred Union), composed of the democrats (led by Afonso Costa), and the evolutionists (led by António José de Almeida), saw great advantages in this participation, even despite the financial drawbacks thereof. Other motivations underpinned the relevant assumptions for this interventionism: prestige and international assertiveness, strengthening of national sovereignty against Spain’s former hegemonic claims for the control of the Iberian Peninsula, renewal of the alliance with the British (distancing itself from the new regime after 1910), and the widespread idiosyncrasy that the war would decide the fate of the overseas territories. The interventionists’ position was strengthened by the attack led by the Germans in the border areas of Angola and Mozambique. According to public opinion, the looming danger did not come from Europe, but rather from Africa, where Germany’s expansionist trends threatened the Portuguese territorial integrity, especially in the south of Angola, a region that bordered Damaraland. Germany’s interests in the north of Mozambique, a territory close to its Tanganyika colony, were also not insignificant. But the understanding that there was only T ­ eutonic hegemony was not unanimous among colonial officials, because knowing the forces deployed on the ground, they considered that the danger would come from other areas, such as the South African Republic. In fact, this former British possession had become independent since 1910, ­constituting a new regional power that sought to recreate a sort of DOI: 10.4324/9781003399209-9

The (re)discussion of the Portuguese colonial heritage  113 Portuguese “Rose-Coloured Map”, reuniting vast territories between West and East Africa.1 The Lisbon government was surprised to find that, five months after the outbreak of war in Europe, their African borders were the target of occasional skirmishes involving not only the troops deployed there but also the local tribes, who were instigated to rebel against Portuguese sovereignty. Given the gravity of these events, and because decisions were urgently needed, Portugal sent the first contingents in the first year of the war (1914), while it waited for its ally, Great Britain, to ask Portugal to join the conflict. But Great Britain begged off, unwilling to take on the burden of having to provide defensive aid to a territory that was a little far from its strategic area of operation. It was only in February 1916, when the substantial losses at sea dangerously decreased the number of its supply ships, that it requested Portugal to seize seventy-two German ships anchored in local ports so that 65 per cent of these ships could immediately revert to its navy. This attitude was seen by Germany as an unfriendly gesture that deserved a declaration of war, which was issued on 9 March.2 With this declaration of war, the military had to be prepared for the front in Europe, given that in Africa the war had already been going on for almost a year and a half. Norton de Matos, Minister of War, was responsible for recruiting and preparing the troops to be sent to Flanders, which totalled 20,000 men,3 supervising the “Instruction Division” based in Tancos.4 Entering this conflict meant additional expenditure for the public purse, already severely depleted by the financial crisis. It would be necessary to take out a loan to cover the training, equipment, and deployment expenses of the Portuguese Expeditionary Corps to the battlefront. Although other loans had been taken out before, Afonso Costa requested a new loan in the Summer of 1914 for 1,400 contos (2 million pounds sterling).5 The Empire was, therefore, defended on two continents: in Africa, right from the very outset of the war, in 1914, on the Angolan and Mozambican fronts; and in Europe, in Flanders, from 1917. For the republicans of the “Sacred Union”, these two battle fronts were aimed at defending colonial possessions. Danger lurked on the side of the most important powers, ­Germany, and Great Britain, which since the end of the 19th century had been looking for a pretext to question the Portuguese imperial rule, which was Portugal’s financial, logistics, and demographic inability to administer its tropical regions. In the 20th century, when war broke out, London delegated its ambitions in Southern Africa to a new regional power that had been formed since 1910, the South African Union, enabling it to redraw a territorial circle around the Commonwealth interests that stretched from Angola through to South Africa, the Rhodesia, and Nyasaland and to Mozambique. As for Germany, its ambitions in this

114  José Luís Lima Garcia area had resulted from the Berlin Conference and were due to the fact that its colonies (­Damaraland and Tanganyika) adjoined the aforementioned Portuguese land. Portugal had to invest in these colonies (Angola and Mozambique) to protect its borders. There were just a few troops from the mainland, even before the clashes with the Germans, although the occupation of these territories had not yet ended. According to Aniceto Afonso: Angola’s military garrison before the war was almost insignificant... In fact, since João de Almeida’s military actions, little had been required of Angola’s colonial troops.6 Within this framework, urgent action was needed, as the danger had worsened and the colony’s defence had to guard against tribal uprisings, but also against German ambitions. The instructions were very clear for the military based on the southern border: never to confront the Germans directly, as Portugal had not yet entered the war, and its forces should only fight back if they were attacked. To overcome its vulnerable defence system, the Portuguese government had already sent the first expeditions in September 1914 to the overseas territories, with the Angola expedition being led by Alves Roçadas. At the end of October, the Germans showed signs of their presence, attacking Naulila and Cuangar. But the major clash occurred in December in Naulila. Of the more than 3,000 Portuguese forces, one-third were native soldiers. This incursion caused a high number of casualties. In the face of such a disaster, and because national sovereignty was at stake, the Government reinforced the forces on the ground, centralising the military command with the civil command, headed by Governor Pereira de Eça, who had arrived in Angola in March 1915 to try to create a strong defensive barrier in Lower Cunene, a region crucial for the exploitation of hydropower. These warlike measures, which served to prevent new incursions from the south, slowed down as soon as the South African army occupied the territory.7 It remained for the Portuguese army to calm the local ethnic groups, many of whom were manipulated and fuelled by Berlin’s interests in the area. In order to avoid the same demands from the new Windhoek authorities (redefinition of borders and the exploitation of the Cunene River) and because the First World War was still in progress, Portugal would have to be aligned with London’s stance, as it would ward off any other attempt at territorial greed in the area. For this partnership to work, however, the Portuguese army would have to adopt a different stand, one of greater preparation, better organisation, greater commitment, and better integration with the allied forces on the ground. Unfortunately, this strategy did not work, and Portugal was unable to thwart the theory that the defence of

The (re)discussion of the Portuguese colonial heritage  115 its colonial possessions implied being involved in the theatres of o ­ peration in Europe. This weakness in not imposing military supremacy over the German army in Southern Africa would have serious consequences at the time of the Peace Conference and the granting of war reparations. The Portuguese armed forces showed clear signs of being unprepared, incompetent, and lacking coordination along the eastern coast of Africa, especially in northern Mozambique, where, due to the lack of motivation, fatigue, and poor adaptation to the climate, the local soldiers were unable to ward off the attacks by General von Lettow-Vorbeck. Unlike Angola, this region did not need major interventions to subdue the local tribes, except for small uprisings in Sangage (Niassa) and Memba (­Nampula).8 When the first expedition of around 1,500 men left for the Indian Ocean in ­September 1914, Massano de Amorim, its commander, was given three tasks: First, to fend off any invasion of the colony in northern Mozambique; second, submit the currently subjugated gentiles to Portuguese sovereignty, as they could rebel if they heard of any ‘white man’s war’ in neighbouring colonies; third, prevent the territory of the province from becoming a ‘fighting arena between combatants’, in other words, between the British who controlled the south and the west of ­Mozambique and the Germans stationed north of Rovuma.9 However, this expedition ultimately failed, not because of combat-related fatalities, but because of tropical diseases (21 per cent of casualties in the barracks based in Porto Amélia). Meanwhile, a second expedition was organised, which left for Mozambique in the first week of October 1915, commanded by Major Moura Mendes. Álvaro de Castro, appointed Governor-general of the colony, also travelled in the same ship. One month later, they were already settled in the north. Little or nothing happened up until the German declaration of war in 1916, and the soldiers’ behaviour was similar to that of the first contingent. The lack of preparation and motivation of the soldiers, who came from the 21st Infantry Regiment, did nothing to change the fictitious war scenario. The rainy season and endemic diseases also contributed to this passive attitude. The entry into the war in Europe pushed Governor Castro to urge the troops based in the administrative division, under his responsibility, to set more specific targets: the occupation of the Quionga triangle, under the control of the Germans since 1894. The Governor’s request involved a more active collaboration with the British army so as to consolidate the military dominance of the Allies in this region. In mid-1916, as the results were not very encouraging, the Portuguese government sent a third expedition to Africa at a time when Germany

116  José Luís Lima Garcia began to remove its troops therefrom since it was determined to ensure ­victory in Europe. This contingent, composed of more than 4,600 men commanded by Colonel Ferreira Gil, took military action much further than the previous defensive-minded forces. These forces counter-attacked by advancing on Nevala and conquering it, but not for long. At the same time, the Belgian and British armies commanded by General Smuts engaged in joint operations in the northern and western regions of Mozambique. The German activity in this region would continue until September 1918, especially in the Quelimane region, a few weeks before the end of the ­conflict, in November of that year.10 After the Armistice was signed, the parties met for a peace conference in Paris between January and June 1919 to decide on the sanctions to be imposed on the losing parties. The basis of this meeting was to discuss a document approved by the Congress of the United States of America, delivered by President Woodrow Wilson, “The Fourteen Points”, a declaration that reflected the way of thinking and stance of a power that, albeit having rather belatedly joined the conflict, sought to establish the rules of future international relations with regard to disarmament, free trade, and the protection of colonial territories. Although it was not rejected, this proposal led to a rift between the various powers, not only because of the rivalry between those involved in war reparations but also because of the way in which the interests of the defeated party were dealt with. As ­Germany was excluded from participating, it was at the mercy of the victors’ demands concerning the allocation of responsibilities and the compensation to be paid for damages caused. Being one of the Allies that took part in the war, Portugal was also a full participant in the Peace Conference, represented by Sidónio Pais’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Egas Moniz, from November 1918. In March 1919, Afonso Costa replaced Moniz in the claims against Germany for fair reparations. Costa, who had played a decisive role in Portugal’s entry into the conflict, now claimed compensation to offset the money spent on sending the squadrons, for damages on account of the fatalities and the crippled, but also for the restitution of Quionga, in northern Mozambique. However, the Portuguese delegation had raised the bar very high in respect of claims against the Teutons. According to Filipe Ribeiro de Menezes, not even the countries that suffered great losses went as far as the demands proposed by Costa, who believed that the war had been beneficial to solve a number of problems faced by the Republican governments, hoping that they would restore national accounts, that the Navy would be provided with modern ships seized from the German fleet, that part of the German colonial empire be handed over to Portugal, and that Portugal would

The (re)discussion of the Portuguese colonial heritage  117 be given the role of representative of the Iberian-American world in the League of Nations.11 Despite all the pressure of the small interventionist nations led by Afonso Costa, Portugal, contrary to the claims made in the press sympathising with the “Sacred Union” cause, was defeated in Paris. In general, military aid had hardly been considered in the conflict, especially in Mozambique, where the Portuguese contingents had done almost nothing to contain the German army’s craftiness and fighting spirit. This meant that the country was unable to hold any mandate. Quionga eventually returned to Portugal. As for the replenishment of war material, Lisbon had only received six Austrian destroyers, although two of them soon ran aground on entering the Tagus River. As for financial reparations, Portugal received less than 1 billion of the 132 billion gold marks allocated by the 1920 Spa ­Conference, that is, 0.75 per cent, a very low percentage when compared to other countries (France, 52 per cent; Great Britain, 22 per cent; Italy, 10 per cent; Belgium, 8 per cent).12 In addition to this discrepancy between the large and small countries in the geopolitics of peace, what shocked Lisbon’s representative in Paris was the fact that the Conference had given Spain, a neutral power, a seat on the Executive Council of the League of Nations. Portugal, who had entered the conflict to defend its overseas possessions, found itself, together with other victorious powers, in a position to question what was to be done with the possessions hitherto managed by Germany. In addition to this discussion, Portuguese diplomacy was not interested in territories being exchanged during the Peace Conference. Although P ­ ortugal was against any redistribution of possessions in its Empire, some of the signatory countries to the Armistice held on 11  November 1918 soon began to show their interest in discussing this matter. Four months later, on 21 March 1919, Lord Milner, President of the Colonial Commission, summoned the Portuguese representation for a meeting under the pretext of a working group that was to be set up at the Peace Conference for the allocation of mandates over the German possessions.13 Milner was not only apprehensive about Lisbon’s attitude towards the future Mandates Commission. He was worried about the lack of good neighbourly relations between the South African Union and Mozambique. Portuguese diplomacy was right as to the assumption that the entry into the war had been made at great cost and much sacrifice to consolidate the Portuguese position in Africa, well aware of Germany’s greed for the possessions of the smaller empires. The position of these countries, such as Portugal and Belgium, had to be understood as that of victorious powers

118  José Luís Lima Garcia claiming any material compensation, and not as fragile countries whose possessions were the object of greed. This plan to covet foreign territories was not new, taking up, in another context, the idea previously tested in the Anglo-German treatises of 1898 and 1913 of dividing the territory of Mozambique into two areas of influence, with the British Empire being given the southern region. Since integration in the form of domination was not possible, Milner had proposed substantial mutual aid for roads, a matter which, together with labour, was crucial to Transvaal’s economy. However, the integration of this part of the country into the South African Union was not the sole reason for these talks. The issues of Quionga and Cabinda were also addressed. Regarding the former, Lisbon wanted the Peace Conference to accept the right of sovereignty over that territory which had been usurped by Germany. The recognition of sovereignty over that region, on 25 September 1919, by the Supreme Council of the Allied and Associated Powers,14 showed that the interventionist politicians of the “Sacred Union” were right. The conference at the Hotel Majestic also addressed the issue of Cabinda and Portugal’s relationship with Belgium. The problem was that Belgium complained that the Portuguese domination throttled the outlet to the sea of its colony in Congo, and they hoped that mediated negotiations would assign the territory to them. Portugal’s foreign affairs were resolute in rejecting this claim, in line with the policy it had adopted. Portuguese diplomatic briefings advised against discussions on territorial exchanges, even if these were beneficial to the country. The talks for the allocation of mandates initiated a new redistribution process of colonial possessions. This philosophy had begun to take shape after the approval of Article 119 of the Treaty of Versailles, which stipulated that the German possessions would be handed over to the Allies. While the creation of the future League of Nations was being discussed, the South African representative (General Smuts) proposed, for the first time, this alternative form of administering the possessions confiscated from a country defeated in a war. This idea adopted by the Council of Ten, which consisted of the Heads of the five powers and their Foreign Ministers, was to draw up a Mandates System, a model for the management of “nonautonomous” territories that was incorporated into the final text of the Treaty of Paris, particularly in the “Covenant of the League of Nations”. On 29 March 1919, British politician General Smuts met in Paris with the Portuguese delegation to the Peace Congress, revealing that he knew of the events that had taken place eight days earlier, that is, the meeting between Afonso Costa and Lord Milner on 21 March.15 Following his proposition, Smuts reminded the Portuguese delegation that the entry of Mozambique into the South African Union would be the best way to solve the country’s financial difficulties, without losing its sovereignty and

The (re)discussion of the Portuguese colonial heritage  119 in exchange for receiving a significant sum of money for the economic development of Angola. To enhance his arguments, Smuts made a point of referring to the “separatism” that existed among the European population of the Indian Ocean colony. Portugal’s representative at the peace ­negotiations, Freire de Andrade, counter-argued that the separatist trends among the Portuguese in Mozambique were not real. They were more based on political issues, but deep down they were all patriots and would never support separation from their motherland.16 Mozambique was experiencing the impact of the assassination of Sidónio Pais (in 1918) and the collapse of the “New Republic”. It comes as no surprise that the overseas possessions suffered from the chaos resulting from these events, which were used by Portugal’s rivals to claim territories that better served their hegemonic goals. In this case, the South African claims sought to resolve matters related to the port and railways of Lourenço Marques, and to labour and other matters which were pending since the time of the Boer Republic of Transvaal. After the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, some European powers with hardly any imperial tradition, such as Italy and Poland, began to demand that mandates should not be assigned only to the territories of defeated Germany but also to the territories of other countries. The (re)discussion of colonial heritage had left open an issue that was crucial in accelerating the tension between the two militarily strongest powers in Europe, Germany, and Great Britain. There were only two solutions to overcome this diplomatic malaise: negotiations with the governments of those countries, or an arms race to impose the principles upheld by each of the protagonists. After all, the theory of the “vital space” was the assumption defended by each of the belligerents, which Versailles had been unable to resolve. London did not want to lose the vast maritime area gained since the late 16th century, while Germany, emerging from Bismarck’s Prussia, desired more and more area in which to settle its surplus population. Notes 1 Marco Fortunato Arrifes, A Primeira Guerra Mundial na África Portuguesa: Angola e Moçambique (1914–1918) (Lisboa: Edições Cosmos, 2004). 2 Fernando Rosas, “A República e a Grande Guerra”, in História da Primeira República Portuguesa, ed. Fernando Rosas and Maria Fernanda Rollo (Lisboa: Tinta-da-China, 2009), 247–248. 3 Aniceto Afonso, Grande Guerra. Angola, Moçambique e Flandres. 1914-1918 (Lisboa: QuidNovi. 2008), 56–58. 4 Filipe Ribeiro Meneses, “A União Sagrada”, in História da Primeira República Portuguesa, ed. Fernando Rosas and Maria Fernanda Rollo (Lisboa: Tintada-China, 2009), 277–286.

120  José Luís Lima Garcia 5 Ana Paula Pires, “A Economia de guerra: a frente interna”, in História da Primeira República Portuguesa, ed. Fernando Rosas and Maria Fernanda Rollo (Lisboa: Tinta-da-China, 2009), 319–347. 6 Afonso Aniceto, Grande Guerra…, 35. 7 Ibid., 35–37. 8 Aniceto Afonso, A Grande Guerra…, 292. 9 Manuel Carvalho, A Guerra que Portugal quis esquecer (Porto, Porto Editora: 2015), 43–69. 10 Aniceto Afonso, A Grande Guerra…, 56–58. 11 Filipe Ribeiro de Meneses, “A paz e o Tratado de Versalhes”, in História da Primeira República Portuguesa, ed. Fernando Rosas and Maria Fernanda Rollo (Lisboa: Tinta-da-China, 2009), 397–406. 12 Arquivo Diplomático e Biblioteca do Ministério dos Negócios Estrangeiros (AHDMNE, Diplomatic Archives and Library of the Foreign Affairs Office). Peace Conference. League of Nations (36643), room: S03, shelf/module: E62, directory: P01, no. 36643. 13 In addition to Portugal, the following countries were also members of the Mandates Commission: Australia, Belgium, New Zealand, and the South A ­ frican Republic. José Luís Lima Garcia, Moçambique e as relações com os territórios vizinhos: elementos para o estudo da natureza jurídico-diplomática e económico-social das relações de Moçambique com os territórios vizinhos no período compreendido entre as duas Guerras Mundiais (1919–1939) (Lisboa: Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas, 1987), 545–570. 14 AHDMNE. Dossier Colonies. Peace Conference. Portuguese Delegation to the Peace Conference, floor 3, directory 12, pack 13, document 31 a), 1918. 15 AHDMNE. Alfredo Augusto Freire de Andrade. Portuguese Delegation to the Peace Congress. Ata da Conferência com o General Smuts (Minute of the Conference with General Smuts), 29 March 1919, room: S 2.1, shelf/module: E16, directory: P5 a 7, file 2, 1. 16 Ibid.

9 Benito Mussolini, the first modern dictator Child of Italy’s war? Richard Bosworth

This paper comes in two parts. First, I shall rehearse what is widely accepted as the standard narrative about the rise and imposition of Fascist, “totalitarian”, dictatorship in Italy.1 Then, sketching the findings of my most recent book,2 I shall offer some revisionist comments. Let us start with the mainstream interpretation. In May 1915, the leaders of the Liberal regime took Italy, the least of the Great Powers, deliberately and aggressively, into the First World War on the Allied side, with the government maintaining that they were worthily fighting an irredentist “fourth war of the Risorgimento” to give the nation its natural and Goddesigned borders in the Alto Adige and Trieste. Nonetheless, the country could not rejoice in the sort of patriotic union sacrée common among the initial combatants of 1914. Neither the rising socialist movement in the cities and northern countryside nor the less than nationalised peasants of the South felt the conflict to be “their war”. Neither in 1915 nor later was war based on a political or social unity of Italians.3 However, by massive effort in its own version of “total war” – ­governments spent more between 1915 and 1918 than they had between 1861 and 1914 – and at a sacrifice of over 750,000 soldier and civilian lives, Italy emerged at Vittorio Veneto on 4 November 1918 with a sort of victory.4 At the peace treaty in 1919, it did duly add the Alto Adige and Trieste, where I­talian speakers but also German, Slovene and Croat ones lived, to national territory. It made the Brenner Pass into a sharp dividing line between Italy’s Mediterranean destiny and the Germanic world. Yet ­Gabriele D’Annunzio, ornate nationalist poet and, according to him, the world’s greatest lover, was soon coining the slogan ‘vittoria mutilata’ (wounded victory) to damn the results of the war, while, in March 1919 in Milan, frontline soldier and sometime socialist journalist turned patriot, ­Benito Mussolini founded a movement named the ‘fasci di combattimento’ (union of returned ­soldiers), unleashing what he called a trincerocrazia (­aristocracy of war veterans) into a divided political world.5

DOI: 10.4324/9781003399209-10

122  Richard Bosworth By the time the treaty of Versailles was signed on 28 June 1919, Italy’s international position had been underlined as still at best that of the least of the Great Powers. Under a new Prime Minister, Francesco Saverio Nitti, an economist markedly unable to express or comprehend human passion and “error” and peculiarly ill fitted for the times, the country’s wartime political and social divisions widened. The Italian crisis had potential parallels with the disasters that were by then afflicting revolutionary Russia and the various counterrevolutionary successor states of what Timothy Snyder has memorably called the “Bloodlands” of Central and Eastern Europe; as a Habsburg borderland, Trieste was a small outpost of such places.6 Although the per capita death toll in Italy was relatively low (a little over 3,000 political deaths 1919–1925) compared with some other countries, the first post-war years saw the collapse of Italian-style parliamentary and capitalist but scarcely democratic liberalism and the rise to power of ­Benito Mussolini. At the head of what in November 1921 had been organised as the Partito Nazionale Fascista (the National Fascist Party), the Duce was called by King Vittorio Emanuele III to become Prime ­Minister of a coalition government on 31 October 1922. Thereafter, 28 October was propagandised as “the March on Rome”, a Fascist “revolution”. ­Following turmoil produced by the murder on 10 June 1924 of the vocal reformist socialist deputy, Giacomo Matteotti, a man with ample international contacts, on 3 January 1925, Mussolini, pushed by party radicals, announced a dictatorship. He now ended any reluctance to endorse Fascist violence but rather proclaimed it as integral to his new regime.7 With this act, M ­ ussolini became the first modern European dictator. Over the next two years, he ended any lingering expectation that he, like the short-term dictators of the Roman Republic in classical times (and as Garibaldi had promised to be at various stages of the Risorgimento), might return to his farm after a curative six months in power. Instead, he forged what was marketed as the (first) totalitarian state, where “all was for the state, nothing outside the state and nothing and no one against the state”.8 In this “regime”, class was declared to have had its day as a social category. As a youthful Marxist, Mussolini had wanted a state where the power of the bourgeoisie had been replaced by that of the proletariat. Now, instead, Fascist rule would rivet together all the people of Italy. In such a “new state”, there could be only one political party, one press opinion, one trade union organisation, one culture and one seamlessly united nation. Italians must pledge themselves to the dictator in their deepest souls, thereby becoming “new men” and “new women”. Fascism was, thus, to be both a political and economic system, based on a “corporate state” that bound together capital and labour, and a new kind of civic religion, imposing full-scale mind control over its subjects and viciously punishing any hint of opposition. Such spiritual ambition was expressed through the

Benito Mussolini, the first modern dictator  123 palingenetic promise to make Italy great again, as it had a­ llegedly been under the Roman Empire.9 The new order was patrolled by an active secret police, headed by the efficient career bureaucrat, Arturo Bocchini. Under his capable and ruthless administration, more than 10,000 Italians were sent into “internal exile” or confino, while well over 100,000 were put under surveillance.10 An American historian, Michael Ebner, has argued that the prison system amounted to an “archipelago”, with implication of parallels to the Stalinist gulag in the USSR. Ebner has added the claim that “reclamatory violence” was more central to Fascism than to Nazi Germany, the USSR or Franco’s Spain. The regime, he adds not incorrectly given its fondness for bellicose and masculinist rhetoric, took upon itself a permanent right to “beat, torture and kill”.11 For many, the special domain of the dictatorship’s uncontrollable violence lay in the regime’s foreign policy. In the judgement of London-based American historian, Macgregor Knox, Mussolini was a “radical nationalist” who “longed” for war, in inevitable partnership with a revisionist Germany. In this regard, the Duce was a “revolutionary”, not for social equality but rather to overthrow the world order. He was permanently spurred by his “swift conversion in Summer-Autumn 1914 to ‘that fearful and enthralling word: war’” and thereafter determined to wreck the international system, led by the triumphant liberal democracies who had won a victory in 1918 (even though they were empires at least as much as nations).12 Marking the regime’s Decennale or tenth-anniversary celebrations in 1932, Mussolini switched from a stance in most of the previous decade that the principles of his regime were “not for export” to a proclamation of “universal fascism”. His ideology must become the “doctrine of the 20th century”, he proclaimed. Marxist internationalism, he thereby argued, was a delusion, and so was liberal globalism. Despite its heavy emphasis on nationalism, an international Fascism must bestride the world. Regime propagandists now took to explaining that FDR’s New Deal in the United States and Stalinism in the USSR were variants of Fascism, destined to move ever closer to the Italian system.13 But the most obvious other “fascist” regime was Nazi Germany, where Hitler’s accession to the Chancellorship in January 1933 rapidly followed the celebrations of the Decennale. The Führer had long made plain his deep personal a­ dmiration for the Duce.14 Unlike almost every other German nationalist, he was willing to forgive what race theorists usually maintained was Italian racial inferiority and what all patriots damned as Italy’s “treacherous” betrayal of the Triple Alliance in 1914–1915 and the unjust seizure of the ­Südtirol (Alto Adige) in the peace treaties. By November 1936, the two ­dictators had harnessed their regimes into “the Axis”. Together they would fight

124  Richard Bosworth all the Second World Wars, whether in Europe (even if Italy only ­belatedly engaged in battle on 10 June 1940) or across the globe, where Mussolini joined in the attack on the USSR in June and the United States in December 1941. In 1940, when Italy entered the war, with the possibilities of victory still untrimmed, Mussolini and his advisers compiled a massive list of potential “booty”, as he liked to call it. Fitting Italian propaganda under the dictatorship as well as under its Liberal predecessors, some of the potential acquisitions had been ruled by classical Rome. However, at least as much territory was to be transferred from the far-flung Empires of France and Britain, after their expected defeat. So, Italy aspired to rule Nice, Malta, Corsica, Dalmatia and Tunisia but also part of Algeria, Djibouti, Chad, Niger, Sudan, British Somaliland, Kenya, Uganda, Tanganyika, ­Nigeria, Cyprus, Perin, Socotra, Aden, Kuwait, Bahrain, Transjordania and ­Hadramaut, while controlling Egypt.15 Here indeed seems conclusive ­evidence that “Fascism meant war”. Such greed appeared to be the full expression of “revolutionary” totalitarianism. Mussolini’s movement may have begun by repressing socialist peasants in the Po Valley, Tuscany, and Umbria but its real first base was in Trieste where it grew on exacerbated nationalism (Mussolini was the first to use the death-dealing term, “ethnic cleansing”). Fascism’s essence may have been ideologically anti-Marxist, but its soldierly ethos sprung from officers and NCOs, who had fought the First World War and learned to devote their souls to the nation,16 was at least as committed to violence and murder, at home and abroad. It was determined to stamp out every liberty that had spread from the French Revolution. It was no real friend of business nor of the monarchy or Papacy, institutions which survived under its rule in Italy but which, in a never to be achieved Fascist utopia, were eventually to be liquidated. So, too, its participation in the Holocaust was no mistake or U-turn (for all the fact that, until the imposition of severe Anti-Semitic legislation after 1938, many Italian Jews had belonged to the PNF and its vast web of social institutions).17 Genocide was always its major aim, and such a policy was foreshadowed in the savagery with which it pursued its “pacification” of Libya in the 1920s and early 1930s, its colonial war in Ethiopia in 1935–1936 (and after) and developing settlement plans for its empire by the end of the 1930s.18 Fascist war-making aimed more to kill and destroy than anything else and was, therefore, different from the methods pursued by countries with other ideologies and especially liberal democratic ones.19 All in all, then, there might seem few reasons to question the conclusions of “Anti-Fascist” historiography that Mussolini and his followers were the enemies of decent humankind and that the surprisingly numerous surviving present-day “neo-fascist” nostalgics for his dictatorship should

Benito Mussolini, the first modern dictator  125 be discountenanced. There is a strong case for the view that, once Italy entered its First World War, its modern history was damned for a generation. Can it be, as the leading Italian historian of Fascism, Emilio Gentile, has stated directly, from 29 October 1922 “fu subito regime”; from the very first Mussolini in office headed a terrible war-mongering dictatorship. It took a cinematographer to portray this historiographical stance most vividly. In his effort at a visual interpretation of the 20th century, Bernardo Bertolucci, in Novecento (1976), depicted his archetypal Fascist as a dim sexual deviant and murderer and called him Attila (“the scourge of God”). “Fascism” is an Italian word that has spread into every language and few would disagree that it is by now used loosely indeed. But, except among small, usually bickering, groups on the far right, its reputation is always negative, the ideology rightly defeated in the “good war” of 1939–1945 and never to be permitted return performance. So much for the standard story, then. Now let me see what revisions I can make to this simplistic moralising story, with its constant implication that we “liberal democrats” are different and better. My first qualification is one that I launched in my first book in 1979 (to the disgust of such patriotic, liberal, Italian historians as Rosario Romeo and Roberto Vivarelli). Italy’s First World War was scarcely devoted modestly to obtaining the just borders of a democratic nation afflicted by aggressive foes. Christopher Clark won global fame in 2012 by arguing that the leaders of the Great Powers, in reality rather more empires than nations, were “sleepwalkers” when they unleashed the conflict in 1914.20 But the same case cannot be made for Italian entry on 24 May 1915. Rather Liberal Italy joined the conflict deliberately and aggressively, responding to no Austrian aggression. It did so with malice aforethought and with plenty of “imperial” as well as national hopes, and with much rhetoric about a “third Rome” fending off barbarians from the north as “it” allegedly had done two millennia before. In this war of unashamed aggression, more than 750,000 Italian soldiers and civilians died, a tally 50 per cent higher high than the number of Italians lost in the Nazi-fascist war, often dubbed ironically as the battle for “Mussolini’s Roman Empire”.21 No doubt the dictatorship expended much rhetoric and lavish funds on romanità. Even today, the Duce has a politically active great grandson euphoniously named Caio Giulio Cesare Mussolini. Yet, if the architecture of the city of Rome is to be reviewed, the biggest, most aggressive, pompous and unrealistic building in the city is the Victor Emmanuel monument in Piazza Venezia, athwart the Capitol and the Forum.22 But it is a Liberal and not a Fascist structure, planned from the 1880s and opened in June 1911 as part of the nation’s Cinquantennio or fi ­ ftieth-anniversary celebrations, even though, in fact, unfinished. Its inauguration was followed almost immediately by the launching of aggressive, brutal and

126  Richard Bosworth murderous, imperial hostilities when reforming liberal Prime Minister, Giovanni Giolitti, landed troops in Tripoli in September 1911 before any formal declaration of war had reached Turkey, the territory’s ostensible ruler. Ignoring protests from liberal European opinion and the collateral damage that inexorably led certainly to the outbreak of the Balkan wars and perhaps to the great conflict of 1914, in November 1911, Giolitti annexed the lands out of hand; they were to be called Libya as they had been under the Caesars and there was much cheap talk of their agricultural productivity in that era and present potential for Italian emigration (and no serious exploration for the oil that lay not far below the desert sands). No doubt after 1914 Italy was forced to curtail its military presence in Libya. Its map of power, in reality, lay in Europe, not Africa. Yet empire was not renounced, and, in the Ministry of Colonies, plans continued to erect the Italian flag over wide sectors of Asia Minor, to retain the ethnically Greek Dodecanese islands occupied in 1912, not to forget Ethiopia where the calamitous defeat at Adowa in 1896 was still “unavenged”, and to annex the Portuguese colonies should they become available. Among the ruling elites of Liberal Italy, imperialist ambition, much of it scarcely about territory where Roman legions had once trod, had few limits. Only empire could edge Italy up the table of Great Powers from its last place.23 When, after 1929, Mussolini moved his office to the Sala del Mappamondo in the Palazzo Venezia and grew accustomed to bellow b ­ elligerently from its balcony to the “oceanic” crowds, assembled with police help in the square below, he was shadowed by the Victor Emmanuel monument and blessed as it were by the nation of Italy’s ambition to “bring empire back to the destined hills of Rome” (as the Duce would put it after seeming triumph in Ethiopia in May 1936).24 I shall comment further about the formation of the Axis. But for the moment, I must emphasise that the course of Italy’s “Fascist” foreign policy in the 1930s, another war in Africa that helped de-stabilise the international system, and then entry into world war after nine or ten months of watching what was happening at the fronts, is disturbingly parallel to what had happened between 1911 and 1915. Maybe deep national structures explain each war entry rather better than do their ideologies of the moment or the presence of this Leader or that. Were Mussolini and his dictatorship children of the 1914–1918 conflict in regard to foreign policy? To quite a degree, yes is the answer to this question. But it is at least as true that the imperialism and aggression that drove Italy’s First (and Second) World Wars were made in that Italy which, ever since the Risorgimento, felt impelled to behave as a Great Power. For this yet to be fully nationalised nation, an observer might conclude, all weakness corrupted and absolute weakness corrupted absolutely. The nation, Italy, meant war at least as much as Fascism or Mussolini did.

Benito Mussolini, the first modern dictator  127 But what about the domestic story of Italy’s post-war,25 the ­dictatorship, its “totalitarianism”, where the tautological neologism sprang from the “total war” of 1915–1918, its paramilitary squadrists and their never renounced masculinist violence, its “universal fascism” and the Duce’s boasts that he had forged the doctrine of the 20th century? How total, it must be quizzically asked, was Italian totalitarianism? I remain an Anti-Fascist historian, scarcely won over by the views of the “Anti-Anti-Fascist” school that flourished in the 1990s after the fall of the USSR and has not disappeared. I have no doubt, as I tallied at the start of my biography of Mussolini, that this dictatorship bore responsibility for the premature death of a million people. Yet the make-up of that number deserves reflection. About half were Italian soldiers and civilians, killed in the aggressive wars that Italy launched or joined in 1935–1936 in ­Ethiopia, 1936–1939 in Spain and, in great majority, after 1940. About as many were indigenous peoples, Arabs and Berbers in Libya and the different ethnic groups of the Ethiopian empire, victims of Italian imperialist invasion and (incomplete) “pacification” of their lands. Over 7,000 Italian Jews died as a result of the tougher and tougher AntiSemitic ­legislation imposed after 1938, most killed by the Nazis or their aides from 1943 on transfer to the East, but where their collection and passage needed active Italian assistance. As I have already noted, 3,000 killings accompanied the Fascist rise to power and, with the regime in office, squadrist violence was never fully renounced or contained, even if, by official tabulation, murder rates had fallen from their highish level under the preceding regime, and scarcely approached tallies in the United States, for example. Two points need to be made about this list. The worst killing fields of the regime were in Africa, not Europe. It is hard to wean European historians off their compulsive metropolitan focus. Moreover, the rapidity of Italy’s decolonisation in 1945, by contrast with that of other Western European nations, confirmed the lack of interest of Italian scholars in their country’s imperial story. But the obsession that the word “fascism” entails in seeking parallel with Nazi Germany (or other European “fascist” movements) does need the qualifying thought that Fascist imperial murder, doubtless belated, may deserve as much comparison with Britain and France, Portugal, Spain, Belgium (and the United States) in their empires as with the Holocaust-impelled, anti-“Judeo-Bolshevik”, Hitler dictatorship. Commentators have often been puzzled by the way so many Italians remain nostalgic in their memory of Mussolini and his regime. In the very days when I was writing this essay, the Guardian contained a worried report of Italians flocking into Mussolini’s home paese and (ultimate) burial place, Predappio, to snap up images of the Duce.26 In her new biography of Mussolini’s daughter, Edda, Caroline Moorehead, evocatively paints

128  Richard Bosworth an image of the nearby Villa Carpena, the residence of Mussolini’s widow, Rachele, until her death in 1978, and still a place of pious pilgrimage.27 Yet one obvious reason for such lingering worship is that, for the great majority of Italians, the regime’s murders were inflicted on others (while both the Holocaust and the Second World War can readily be blamed on the overweening Hitler). The regime did end the enlightened formal cancelling of capital punishment by its Liberal predecessors, restoring the death penalty in November 1926. It then set up a “Special Tribunal”, backed by its active secret police, to deal with political opposition with little restraint from legal nicety. It executed a scattering of its foes but, by comparison with other dictatorships and even some liberal democratic polities, it was only a scattering.28 In his account of the torture and illegality involved, the fine Anti-Fascist historian, Mimmo Franzinelli, tallies the numbers: one in 1928 and 1929, four in 1930, one in 1931, two in 1932, one in 1933, one in 1939 and then forty-five during the war to 1943, a total of fifty-six. It is a disgraceful figure.29 Yet it pales away compared with the victims of Nazism or the Soviets or Franco’s Spain or the United States, with its dedication to the execution of “criminals”, disproportionately black, or to plenty of other countries. In England and Wales, 113 men and women were executed between 1927 and 1939. In the United States, an annual average of 167 suffered capital punishment through the 1930s. Nazi Germany formally condemned 16,500 of its citizens to death in peacetime.30 As Roberto Vivarelli put it, the Duce, compared certainly with Hitler or Stalin, was “more moderate, more malleable, alien to fanaticism, deprived of all the most repugnant traits of those bloody tyrants”. Crude, vain, self-obsessed and cynical, no doubt Mussolini was; yet he was also a recognisable Italian man, Vivarelli maintained. This dictator required less fanatically religious belief from those he ruled and more “obedience and conformism, an individual’s renunciation of his own dignity and character”. The main practical ideology of the regime, therefore, was not so much deep theory as “vulgar Machiavellianism”.31 There is quite a lot that needs unpacking from Vivarelli’s conclusions. One question, after all, often worth asking about a personality from the past whose story we know from start to end is what would be our view if he or she had left office or died before what actually happened. Let’s try to apply this test to Mussolini and make the date 1932. When we do, significant results appear. By that time, a marked view had spread that Mussolini headed a brutal and vicious, “Fascist”, often in the Anglo-Saxon world (and perhaps sometimes by Mussolini himself)32 pronounced “fassist”, dictatorship. By 1928, the Comintern had pronounced (optimistically, they hoped) that, “in the

Benito Mussolini, the first modern dictator  129 situation of growing imperialist contradictions and sharpening of the class struggle, increasingly fascism becomes the dominant method of bourgeois rule”, while Trotsky, enemy of the people, embodied a “Bonapartism of Fascist origin”.33 When, after 1941, it came to the Great Patriotic War, the Red Army was given the task of liberating Europe from “the scourge of fascism”. Why “fascism” and not Nazism, it must be asked, all the more since, despite Mussolini’s frequent bursts of rhetoric about the evil of Marxism, Soviet-Italian relations were little troubled until 1941 and there was a curious collaboration in the arms trade? One event in Italian Fascist history never forgotten among circles on the left, extending well beyond Soviet orthodoxy, was the kidnapping and murder of Giacomo Matteotti (born 1885), by an armed squad led by Amerigo Dumini (born in Saint-Louis in the United States in 1894, returned to Italy in 1913 and a volunteer for Italy’s First World War), on 10 June 1924. The impulse to murder Matteotti came from Mussolini and his immediate entourage, with its context being the squadrist paramilitary violence that had been an integral part of the Fascist rise to power and Mussolini’s continuing in office. The dead Matteotti was soon elevated into a lay saint of Anti-Fascism (and its civic religion) inside and outside Italy.34 Cartoons mocked his killer, the Duce; songs kept the memory of the victim alive; the Establishment’s L’Illustrazione italiana gave ample space to his family funeral in his home paese. One anarchist, with the splendid name Ribelle Fornasiero, from Matteotti’s home province of Rovigo, was imprisoned in 1932 for penning a poem with the title “the appearance of the Martyr Matteotti to a worker” and reading it to his friends.35 In 1943–1945 left-wing socialists thought it natural to call their partisan group the “Matteotti brigade”. Léon Blum, intellectual socialist head of France’s Popular Front in 1936, was only one foreigner who always viewed Mussolini as the murderer of Matteotti36 and the assassination of the Rosselli brothers in Normandy on 9 June 1937 ensured that most self-conscious Anti-Fascists were confirmed in their view that Mussolini was a serial killer. If the Left was mostly united in its condemnation of Mussolini and ­Fascism, more so than on many other matters, the same can scarcely be said about other, more powerful, segments of the political world. Through the 1920s, a reviving Italian economy floated on American loans, generous extended by bankers, well contented with an Italian dictatorship. In the broader realm of international diplomacy, Francesco Lefebvre D’Ovidio has shown how, during that decade, in practice Italy mostly held to a respectful cadet role in its “traditional friendship with Britain”.37 To give but one graphic example of positive resulting opinion, in October 1927, Clementine Churchill, the wife of the British Chancellor of the Exchequer,

130  Richard Bosworth attended March on Rome ceremonies in Florence. She told her husband how impressed she had been: It is wonderful how Mussolini holds not only his power but the public imagination and interest. And he never seems to play to popularity. He always does the hard cruel thing. I hope he lasts and does not get killed, she ended still a little troubled by what she thought were Italian habits.38 It, therefore, should not be a surprise to find that, in 1932–1933, as the world order began to grapple with the presence of Adolf Hitler, there were plenty of anxious hopes among ruling elites across the liberal democratic world that, despite Nazism’s violence and Anti-Semitism, the new dictator would go the way of Mussolini. As the London Times put it, Mussolini was doubtless given to making “fiery speeches in the provinces”, but that was merely because “Fascist audiences expect Fascist speeches”.39 The Economist, journal of British liberal capitalism (with global ties), did not demur. Mussolini, it maintained, had “immeasurably strengthened Italy and made her into a steadying influence in the bedlam world of 1932”; “gradually but imperceptibly the demagogue has turned into a statesman”.40 In March 1933, The Economist surmised that the Italian case made it probable that Nazi Germany would foster peace, not war. Two months later, the weekly submitted that both Hitler and F. D. Roosevelt in the United States, each newly in office, demonstrated a global move towards a “dictatorial centralised government of industry”, while the New Deal was much like the Italian Corporate state in its purpose and nature.41 The Times, which in October 1932, had worried about the method by which one man had “impressed his personality upon a whole people”, while conceding that Mussolini was “one of the great creative statesmen of history”, now similarly hoped that Hitler, “like his great Italian prototype, [would show] he is capable of constructive leadership in office”.42 It took the attack on Ethiopia (and the League of Nations) in 1935–1936 to reverse such opinion. When such reversal came, it came quickly. So, by March 1936, The Economist was in understanding mood about German infraction of the peace treaties when the news of the remilitarisation of the Rhineland came through. Hitler, it argued, might well be in the wrong. But his policy could not be condemned morally in the fashion that Mussolini’s imperial venture into Africa could. While Herr Hitler has not occupied one square yard of foreign territory or caused the death of a single French or Belgian national, Signor Mussolini is engaged as actively as ever in murdering with bombs ­ and poison gas the civilian population of a wantonly invaded foreign country,

Benito Mussolini, the first modern dictator  131 the weekly editorialised. It would be a “travesty of justice” to allow such a “criminal” to win in Africa when Hitler’s foreign policy so far was “innocent of material devastation and bloodshed”.43 The invasion of Ethiopia, although the liberal democratic powers clung with little repentance to their own empires acquired bloodily through the previous century, left a stain on Italy’s image and confirmed that (Italian) “Fascism meant war”. From a “good dictator” Mussolini had turned into a bad and the change in opinion was irreversible. Liberal democrats and Marxists were now agreed at least on Italy. So, we should ask in conclusion, were contemporary Anti-Fascists right in condemning a serial killer? Perhaps is my controversial answer. In the last segment of this paper, let me quickly and summarily sketch the major new theses that I have made in greater detail in my new book, Eclipse. The word “populism” in its title is a key to many of these. The book starts in 1932–1933 with the Decennale and the regime’s loud reversal of the major line of the previous decade that Fascism was “not for export” into the proclamation of “universal fascism”, its credo being formalised by Giovanni Gentile, with at least titular collaboration from Mussolini, in a summary article for the Enciclopedia italiana.44 In its second decade in power, Fascism was to be “the doctrine of the 20th century”. Yet there was also a curious qualification. First making the promise in Naples late in 1931, Mussolini also now maintained that his regime intended “andare decisamente verso il popolo” (to go decisively towards the people),45 the phrase becoming the watchword of Achille Starace’s long tenure of the PNF secretaryship, 1932–1939. Just when Mussolini proclaimed intellectual and ideological victory, what we have recently become accustomed to call populism became part of the amalgam of his regime’s policies and philosophy. In regard to what we should conclude about the changing meaning of F/fascism, I can do no more than list a set of theses: 1 Mussolini was always an aspirant intellectual, “Professor Mussolini”, seeking to craft an ideology that would, indeed, surpass the Marxism of his father and his own youth. 2 He was simultaneously an ambitious politician, ruthless in grasping power and determined not to relinquish it. 3 By 1932, the talk about “universal fascism” hid the many limits of the regime’s boasted “totalitarianism”. Whatever achievements it in that regard had were in the événementielle story of Fascism. They were not of Italy’s longue durée (to borrow Braudelian terminology itself sprung from France’s Second World War).46 4 Compromise can be traced between the violent squadrist, perhaps “revolutionary”, aspects of Fascism and very many aspects of Italian life. The Vatican, Catholicism in its social variants, spread out in the

132  Richard Bosworth countryside, the monarchy, the family, regions, classes, genders and many other features of Italians’ way of living were scarcely wrenched out of shape by Fascist rule. Not for nothing did Pius XI on more than one occasion talk positively about the totalitarianism of his Church. Not for nothing did the family remain the key identifying factor for the majority of Italians. 5 In 1932 and for some years afterwards, “fascism” could be applied to a wide variety of regimes and societies that included, perhaps at the top of the list, the regime of Dollfuss in Austria (not Hitler, but Dollfuss, was the man whom Mussolini viewed, in his misanthropic manner, as a genuine “friend”).47 Parallels were also drawn with Metaxas in Greece, Stalin’s USSR, Kemal Atatürk in Turkey and FDR’s New Deal USA, as well as with Nazi Germany. 6 However, after 1933, and made blatantly evident by Italy’s acceptance of the Anschluss in March 1938 (and so the reversal of its key gain from the First World War, control of the Brenner Pass), Italy lost the cultural and foreign policy battle that it was implicitly contesting with Nazi Germany (rather as the United Kingdom would drastically lose its Second World War political, economic and cultural conflict with the United States). Typical was the bathetic failure of the attempt in 1934–1935 to create an (Italian) Fascist International. When, in March 1938, as the Germans arrived to cheers in Vienna, Hitler promised effusively that he would never forget him [Mussolini] for it [Italy’s lack of countering action], never, never, never, come what may. If he should ever need any help or be in any danger, he can be sure that do or die I shall stick by him, come what may, although the whole world rises against him, what Hitler was really demonstrating was that Mussolini was by then the last universal Fascist. Hereafter, as Ian Kershaw has made clear, “Hitler felt after the Anschluss that he could take on the world – and win”.48 The Anschluss in sum marked a major turning point in the world order and in the fanatical Nazi desire for conquest. It also marked the end of any genuine possibility that Italy, if it still wanted “booty” out of the regime’s version of traditional Italian sacro egoismo, could avoid becoming Germany’s “ignoble second” in the coming global war. From March 1938 onwards, Germany defined the new order, Italy merely hoped to exploit it. 7 The accompanying talk about “going to the people” did not entail deeper and more genuine totalitarian Fascism, forced into Italian souls. Instead, like the populism of today, the new formula offered futile solutions to Italians’ problems, economic, cultural and political, notably in

Benito Mussolini, the first modern dictator  133 its violent and destructive policies in Ethiopia, Spain and Albania and in the switch to racism. It was at the same time fraudulent and viciously destructive. Indeed, despite the massive propagandising of Mussolini’s charisma to the Italian people, in practice, the regime was visibly tiring and losing its ideological gloss. Police reports noted how widespread was popular disillusion with the evident corruption and incompetence of Fascist hierarchs. In 1939, popular enthusiasm for the Nazi alliance was at least as doubtful, even if, maybe, in June 1940, quite a few ­Italians agreed with their dictator that, since Germany had won the war, Italy should quickly intervene on its side and then defend its self-interest and not Germany’s at the imminent peace-making. In sum, in Eclipse and my other recent work, I argue that it is time to look again at established liberal democratic clichés about the dictatorship and about fascism. A telling aide may be the Anti-Fascist but staunchly independent leftist historian, Gaetano Salvemini’s clear-eyed depiction of Mussolini, the once fellow journalist who had driven him from his chair at Florence to the uncertain life of exile, granted some comfort in a (relatively underpaid) post at Harvard. After all, Salvemini often manages to be wittier and more challenging in a page that such laboured academic historians of the regime as Renzo De Felice were in 6,000. Mussolini, Salvemini tells us, was a journalist, given to waging: A war of words against every nation on earth. He could therefore always claim that any war he might have cared to fight had been in preparation for years. He always lived from day to day, cloaking his daily expedients with pronouncements as solemn as the commandments of Mount Sinai, unmindful if today’s pronouncement was in flat contradiction of yesterday’s… [He] had a rare gift of perception and assimilation, and was able to discuss any question, even if entirely new to him, with as much facility as if it had been completely familiar to him. But he was easily swayed by the influence of others and was unfailingly ready to agree with the last person who spoke to him. … He had infinite contempt for all men, with the sole exception of himself. Intelligence, judgment, uprightness, he scorned. (…) That was the man: uncommon intelligence, rapid insight into mass psychology, universal contempt for everybody, common sense in discussing any and all subjects, absolute lack of common sense in passing from words to action, constant dissociation between one thought and another,… always a journalist and an improviser.49 Today’s populists come with considerable variety from Donald Trump to Boris Johnson, not yet dictators but most working within a parliamentary

134  Richard Bosworth system if corrupting and demeaning it. Perhaps in thinking about them, it might be as well to contemplate Salvemini’s reading of the character of their predecessor, Benito Mussolini, as to harry ourselves with alluring but exaggerated fear of the re-emergence of “fascism” and “Auschwitz”. As what we might decide was a variety of “weak dictator”, given to “working towards the Italians”, Mussolini’s life is better worth our current study than is that of his Axis partner, Adolf Hitler, unique in his utterly fanatical and fully genocidal determination to use (pseudo-) science to liquidate “Judeo-Bolshevism”. Notes 1 For general historiographical review, see Richard J. B. Bosworth, The Italian Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives in the Interpretation of Mussolini and Fascism (London: Arnold, 1998). 2 Richard J. B. Bosworth, Mussolini and the Eclipse of Italian Fascism: From Dictatorship to Populism (London: Yale University Press, 2021). 3 For background, see Richard J. B. Bosworth, Italy the Least of the Great Powers: Italian Foreign Policy before the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979); Richard J. B. Bosworth, Italy and the Approach of the First World War (London: Macmillan, 1983); Richard J. B. Bosworth, Italy and the Wider World 1860–1960 (London: Routledge, 1996); Richard J. B. Bosworth, “Italy’s Wars of Illusion 1911–1915”, in Bid for World Power? New Research on the Outbreak of the First World War, ed. Andreas Gestrich and Harmut Pogge von Strandmann (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 181–200; cf. Gianpaolo Ferraioli, Politica e diplomazia in Italia tra XIX e XX secolo: vita di Antonino di San Giuliano (1852–1914) (Soveria Mannelli: ­Rubbettino, 2007). 4 For a lively description, see Mark Thompson, The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front 1915–1919 (New York: Basic Books, 2009). 5 The standard biography remains that of Renzo De Felice in eight separate volumes, published in Turin by Einaudi, 1965–1997. In English, cf. Richard J. B. Bosworth, Mussolini (London: Bloomsbury, 2010). 6 Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin (New York: Basic Books, 2010). 7 For the detail of corruption allegations, see Mauro Canali, Il delitto Matteotti (Bologna: il Mulino, 2004). 8 Still the standard account is Alberto Aquarone, L’organizzazione dello Stato totalitario (Turin: Einaudi, 1965). 9 For perhaps credulous account, see Emilio Gentile, Il culto del littorio: la ­sacralizzazione della politica nell’Italia fascista (Bari: Laterza, 1993); Emilio Gentile, La via italiana al totalitarismo: il Partito e lo Stato nel regime fascista (Rome: La Nuova Italia, 1995) (each of these works is also available in English); Emilio Gentile, E fu subito regime: il Fascismo e la Marcia su Roma (Rome: Laterza, 2012). 10 For the detail see Mimmo Franzinelli, I tentacoli dell’OVRA: agenti, collaboratori e vittime della polizia politica fascista (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 1999); Mauro Canali, Le spie del regime (Bologna: il Mulino, 2004). 11 See Michael Ebner, Ordinary Violence in Mussolini’s Italy (Cambridge: ­Cambridge University Press, 2011); ‘Coercion’ in The Politics of Everyday Life

Benito Mussolini, the first modern dictator  135 in Fascist Italy: Outside the State?, ed. Joshua Arthurs, Michael Ebner and Kate Ferris (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 77–98. 12 Macgregor Knox, To the Threshold of Power, 1922/33: Origins and Dynamics of the Fascist and National Socialist Dictatorships (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 302–304. Knox’s theoretical approach is seconded by much other monographic work but cf. especially Robert Mallett, The Italian Navy and Fascist Expansionism 1935–1940 (London: Frank Cass, ­ 1998); R ­ obert Mallett, Mussolini and the Origins of the Second World War, 1933–1940 (Houndmills: Macmillan, 2003); Robert Mallett, Mussolini in Ethiopia 1919–1935: The Origins of Fascist Italy’s African War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015). 13 Augustea, XI, 31 January and 15 March 1933. Cf. similar thoughts in ­Gerarchia, XIII, February 1933 and Beniamino De Ritis, ‘L’America scopre se stessa: lettera dall’America del Nord’, Critica fascista, XI, 1 June 1933 and ­Sergio Panunzio, ‘Teoria generale della dittatura’, Gerarchia, XVI (April and May 1936), and Benito Mussolini, Opera Omnia (Florence: La Fenice 1951– 1962), vol. XXIX, 61–64, article in Il Popolo d’Italia, 6 March 1938, where Mussolini wondered if Stalin was a Genghis Khan-style, ‘Georgian’, Fascist (Hereafter BMOO). 14 For description, see Christian Goeschel, Mussolini and Hitler: The Forging of the Fascist Alliance (London: Yale University Press, 2018). 15 Giuseppe Pardini, “La nascita dell’impero di Roma e la diplomazia britannica”, Nuova Storia Contemporanea, vol. 2s, no. I (2018), 161. 16 Still worth reading in this regard is Joanna Bourke, An Intimate History of Killing: Face-to face Killing in Twentieth Century Warfare (London: Granta, 1999). 17 For the equivocations in the history and memory of Italian Jews about the dictatorship, see Shira Klein, Italy’s Jews from Emancipation to Fascism (­Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018). 18 See Roberta Pergher, Mussolini’s Nation-Empire: Sovereignty and Settlement in Italy’s Borderlands 1922–1943 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018). 19 For a recent application of this line, see Miguel Alonso, Alan Kramer and Javier Rodrigo, ed., Fascist Warfare: Aggression, Occupation, Annihilation (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021). 20 Christopher M. Clark, The Sleepwalkers: How Europe went to War in 1914 (London: Allen Lane, 2012). 21 For straight-forward example, see John Gooch, Mussolini’s War: Fascist Italy from Triumph to Collapse, 1935–1943 (London: Allen Lane, 2020). 22 For rival accounts, see Emilio Gentile, Fascismo di pietra (Bari: Laterza, 2007) and Richard J. B. Bosworth, Whispering City: Rome and its Histories (London: Yale University Press, 2011). 23 For background, see Richard J. B. Bosworth and Giuseppe Finaldi, “The ­Italian Empire”, in Empires at War 1911–1923, ed. Robert Gerwarth and Erez Manela (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 34–51. 24 BMOO XXVII, 265–266; 268–269, speeches of 5 and 9 May 1936. 25 For background, see Richard J. B. Bosworth, Mussolini’s Italy: Life under the Dictatorship 1915–1945 (London: Allen Lane, 2005). 26 The Guardian, 27 July 2019. For a new attempt to display the foolishness of such views, see Paul Corner, Mussolini in Myth and Memory: The First Totalitarian Dictator (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022). 27 Caroline Moorehead, Edda Mussolini: The Most Dangerous Woman in Europe (London: Chatto and Windus, 2022).

136  Richard Bosworth 28 For a detailed account of the fate of law under the regime, see the careful Paul Garfinkel, Criminal law in Liberal and Fascist Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016). 29 Mimmo Franzinelli, Il tribunale del Duce: la giustizia fascista e le sue vittime (1927–1943) (Milan: Mondadori, 2017), 103–105. 30 See http://www.capitalpunishmentuk.org/hanged2.html (accessed 8 ­November 2022); Roger Hood and Carolyn Hoyle, The Death Penalty: A Worldwide ­Perspective (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 13 and 129. For a full file, see Executions is the US 1608–2002: The ESPY File Executions by State: https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/executions-us-1608-2002-espy-file (accessed 8 ­November 2022). 31 Roberto Vivarelli, Fascismo e storia de’Italia (Bologna: il Mulino, 2008), 22 and 106–107. 32 Giuseppe A. Borghese, Goliath: The March of Fascism (London: Gollancz, 1938), 182. 33 David Beetham, Marxists in Face of Fascism: Writings by Marxists on Fascism in the Inter-war Period (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1986), 35 and 155. 34 During the inter-war, his fate as a saintly victim might be contrasted with the reputation of the liberal democrat and patriot, Giovanni Amendola. See ­Richard J. B. Bosworth, Politics, Murder and Love in an Italian Family: The Amendolas in an Age of Totalitarianisms (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022). 35 Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Confinati politici, b 426, 20 January 1932. Questura Rovigo to Prefect. Fornasiero was amnestied within a few months but, in time, volunteered as a communist in Spain and earned another five years when caught in 1942 trying to repatriate. 36 Georges Bonnet, Quai d’Orsay (London: Anthony Gibbs, 1965), 156. 37 Francesco Lefebvre D’Ovidio, L’Italia e il sistema internazionale dalla formazione del governo Mussolini alla Grande Depressione, vols. I and II (1922–1929) (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2016). 38 Churchill papers (Cambridge), 1/179/52-53, 31 October 1927, Clementine Churchill to Winston. 39 The Times, 21 May 1930. 40 The Economist, 23 July, and 29 October 1932. 41 The Economist, 25 March and 27 May 1933. 42 The Times, 18 October 1932, and 17 February 1933. 43 The Economist, 14 and 21 March 1936. 44 BMOO XXXIV, 117–138. An authorised English translation was placed in an American scholarly journal. See Benito Mussolini, “The political and social doctrine of Fascism”, Political Quarterly, vol. 4 (1933), 341–356. 45 BMOO XXV, speech of 25 October 193, 148–151. 46 For my analysis of such matters, see Ricard J. B. Bosworth, ­ Explaining Auschwitz and Hiroshima: History Writing and the Second World War ­ 1945–1990 ­(London: Routledge, 1993), 94–117. 47 There is much evidence in the ample diary of Claretta Petacci, Mussolini’s last lover, of his deepening misanthropy and depression. See Ricard J. B. Bosworth, Claretta: Mussolini’s Last Lover (London: Yale University Press, 2017). 48 Ian Kershaw, Hitler 1936-45: nemesis (London: Allen Lane, 2000), 64 and 78. 49 Gaetano Salvemini, Prelude to World War II (London: Gollancz, 1953), 34–36 and 41.

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Contributors’ biographies

Bebiano, Rui Centre for Social Studies (CES) | University of Coimbra Coimbra, Portugal Former professor of Contemporary History at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Coimbra, he is a Portuguese historian and researcher at the Centre for Social Studies (CES). He is, since June 2011, the director of the 25th of April Documentation Centre. Bosworth, Richard Jesus College | University of Oxford Oxford, England Australian historian and author, a leading expert on Benito Mussolini and Fascist Italy. He held several teaching positions at the University of Sydney, the University of Western Australia, and the University of R ­ eading. He is currently Emeritus Fellow at Jesus College, Oxford. Branco, Sérgio Dias Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies (CEIS20) | University of Coimbra Coimbra, Portugal Professor of Film Studies at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Coimbra. He has taught at Nova University (Lisbon) and at the University of Kent. Between 2018 and 2020, he was president of the board of the Association of Moving Image Researchers (AIM).

156  Contributors’ biographies Camps Girona, Jaume Centre d’Estudis sobre Conflictes Socials (CECOS) | University of Rovira i Virgili Tarragona, Spain Professor at the Department of History and Art History of the University of Rovira i Virgili and researcher at the Centre for the Study of Social ­ Conflicts (CECOS). His academic background is profoundly ­interdisciplinary, including research experience in several fields of social sciences and humanities, with emphasis on conflict studies. Garcia, José Luís Lima Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies (CEIS20) | University of Coimbra Coimbra, Portugal Former Coordinating Professor at the Polytechnic Institute of Guarda (Portugal), he is a researcher at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies (CEIS20) and at the Institute of Contemporary History (IHC, Nova University, Lisbon). He has published several books and dozens of articles on Communication, Education, and History. Hirschfeld, Gerhard University of Stuttgart Stuttgart, Germany German historian and author, he has been, from 2000 to 2010, the ­president of the International Committee for the Study of the Second World War. His fields of research include the History of the First and of the Second World Wars and the History of Emigration from Nazi Germany after 1933. Neto, Sérgio Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies (CEIS20) | University of Coimbra Coimbra, Portugal Research Fellow at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies (CEIS20) and Invited Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Coimbra. His academic background includes research experience in several fields of humanities, with emphasis on the (anti)colonial question, the literature of the First World War, and the didactics of History.

Contributors’ biographies  157 Pires, Ana Paula History, Territories, Communities (HTC) | University of the Azores Azores, Portugal Associate professor at Azores University, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Stanford and at the Nova University (Lisbon). She is the co-founder of the international network The Great War in Africa Association (GWAA), and the Portuguese editor of the 1914–1918-online, International Encyclopaedia of the First World War. Sánchez i Cervelló, Josep Centre d’Estudis sobre Conflictes Socials (CECOS) | University of Rovira i Virgili Tarragona, Spain Full professor at the University of Rovira i Virgili, he is a Spanish h ­ istorian and a researcher at the Centre for the Study of Social Conflicts (CECOS). His lines of research are the Second Spanish Republic, the S­ panish Civil War and Francoism, and the Iberian political transitions in the 1970s. Serrano, Clara Isabel Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies (CEIS20) | University of Coimbra Coimbra, Portugal Invited Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Coimbra and Researcher at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies (CEIS20). Her main research areas are the political and cultural history of the 19th and 20th centuries, European perceptions and identities, and didactics of History. Werth, Nicolas Institut d’Histoire du Temps Présent (IHTP) | Centre National de la ­Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) Paris, France Director of research at the CNRS until his retirement, he is one of France’s leading specialists in the history of the Soviet Union. He wrote the chapters dedicated to the USSR in The Black Book of Communism. He was the historic consultant of Staline: le tyran rouge, and co-author of Gulag: une histoire soviétique.

Index

Note: Bold page numbers refer to tables; italic page numbers refer to figures and page numbers followed by “n” denote endnotes. Abelló, T. 31 Acton, E. 7, 13; Critical Companion to the Russian Revolution 7 aerial combat 85 Afghanistan 56, 57 Agricultural Congress 35 agricultural productivity 126 Akushinskii, A-.H. 52 Albania 133 Alberto, M.S. 107 Ali, T. 45 allies 4, 48, 49, 54, 57, 60, 77, 100, 101, 116, 118 Alsace-Lorraine 84 Amsterdam 35, 36 Andalusia 26, 35 andare decisamente verso il popolo 131 Anglo-Afghan Treaty 56 Anglo-Soviet agreement 54, 59 Angola 96, 99, 112–114, 119 Anguiano, D. 38 Aniceto, A. 114 anti-anti-Fascist school 127 anti-Fascist 124, 129, 133 anti-Judeo-Bolshevik 127 anti-semitic legislation 124 anti-semitism 130 Apcehaa 66 apocalypse 20 Arab Spring 3 archipelago prison system 123 arditi 89 Arendt, H. 89; Origins of Totalitarianism, The 89

Arlandis, H. 34 Armenfilm studio 68 arts 64–72 Asamblea de Parlamentarios (Parliamentary Assembly) 24 Asseev, N. 82 Assmann, A. 95 atheism 51 Atkinson, D. 13 Aurora 1 Babi Yar 1 Balfour Declaration 47 barbarization of warfare 87 Barcelona 28–30, 32, 34, 40 Bek-Nazaryan, A. 68 Belarus 52 Belle Époque 2 Berlin Conference 96, 114 Bernstein, L. 2 Black Book of Communism (Werth) 3, 7 Bloodlands 122 Bolsheviks 4, 8, 9, 10, 11, 14, 17, 18, 19, 28, 34, 38, 48, 51–55, 57, 60, 75, 77–80, 94 Bolshevism 14, 16–19, 23, 53 Bonamusa, F. 27 Bonapartism of Fascist origin 129 Bonch-Bruyevich, V. 65 Bonnel, V. 13 border battles 84 Bosworth, R.J.B. 4, 5 Bouldakov, V. 16 bourgeois government 15

160 Index bourgeois rule 129 Branco, S.D. 4 Brest-Litovsk peace treaty 4, 53, 78 British liberal capitalism 130 Bronenosets Potyomkin 71 Buenacasa, M. 31 Bulgakova, O. 71 Bund der Frontsoldaten 89 Camacho, B. 76 Camps Girona, J. 4 capital punishment 128 Carnation Revolution 3 Casanova, S. 23, 41n2 Casas, J.G. 31 Catalan Republican Party (PRC) 30 Catalan Socialist Federation 37 Catholicism 87 Catalonia 24, 26, 29, 32, 40 Cértima, A. 107 Cinquantennio 125 Civil War 51 Clark, C.M. 125 CNT 24–27, 32–34, 40 Cold War 7 colonialist policy 55 communism 7, 19, 28–30, 38–40, 45 Companhia de Moçambique 104 Constantinople 50, 66 constitutional experiment 11, 12 continuum of crises 10 Corpo de Artilharia Pesada Independente (CAPI) 101 Corpo Expedicionário Português/ Portuguese Expeditionary Corps (CEP) 101, 113 Cortes Constituyentes (Constituent Parliament) 24 counter-revolution 15, 70 coup d’état 10, 15, 18–20, 34 Covenant of the League of Nations 118 Critical Companion to the Russian Revolution (Acton) 7 cultural heritage 82 Daniels, R. 14, 18 debates and controversies 7–21 Decennale 123, 131 The decline of the West 2

decolonisation 20 decree, 1919 65–66 defeatism 14 De los Ríos, F. 38 De Sousa Mendes, A. 102 D’Ovidio, F.L. 129 Dovjenko, A. 66, 67, 72 dress rehearsal 11 Duce 122, 123, 125, 127, 128 Ebner, M. 123 Eclipse 131, 133 The Economist 130 Edwardian Era 2 Egypt 46, 124 El Pueblo de Tortosa 31 Empresa Nacional de Navegação 104 Enciclopedia italiana 131 England 38, 48, 101, 128 Ermolieff, J. 65 Ethiopia 124, 126, 127, 130, 131, 133 ethnic cleansing 124 explosion of zoological instincts 16 e Zemlia 66 Faintsimmer, A. 68 fasci di combattimento 121 fascism 122–125, 127, 129, 131–134 Fascism meant war 124, 131 Faulkner, N. 75; A People’s History of the Russian Revolution 75 Federació Comarcal Obrera Agrícola de l’Alt i Baix Penedès 27 Federació de l’Alt i el Baix Priorat, the Federació Agrària Comarcal de Valls and the Federació d’Obrers Pagesos d’El Vendrell 27 Federació de Treballadors Agrícoles de la Regió Espanyola (18931896) 27 Federació Nacional de Obrers Agricultores de España (19131918) 27 Federación Nacional de Obreros Agrícolas de España 27 Federació Provincial d’Obrers del Camp de Tarragona 27 “Federation of Soviet Republics” 52 Ferdinand, A.F. 2, 45, 103 Ferro, M. 80

Index  161 Figes, O. 17, 19, 20, 21; Révolution Russe 17; A Tragédia de um Povo (A People’s Tragedy) 78 film production 64–72 First World War: Britain 4; Germany 87, 94; Hitler 90, 92, 93 (see also Nazi party); Ialy 125; influenza pandemic 1; Komintern 63n80; Mozambique 4, 96–108; national folk community 91; nature or character 87; NCO 124; Ottoman defeat 56; Portuguese colonial 112–119; Russian Revolutions 3, 10; studios and cinemas 65; tansgression 87; United Kingdom and France 58; Vom Kriege 88 Fitzpatrick, S. 81 The Fourteen Points 52, 116 fourth war of Risorgimento 121 France 2, 46, 48, 86, 92, 124, 127 Franco-German war 84 Franzinelli, M. 128 French Impressionism 71 French Revolution 2, 3, 9, 14, 74, 91 Fronterlebnis 90 Frontsoldaten 92 Führer 90 Furet, F. 9 fu subito regime 125 Garcia, J.L.L. 4 Gaskrieg 86 Gatrell, P. 20 Gentile, E. 125 Gerasimov, M. 82 German Expressionism 71 German High Commands (OHL) 88 German revolution 91 Germany 15, 38, 46, 48, 52, 71, 87– 89, 94, 99, 101, 102, 104, 113, 116–119, 123, 133 Giolitti, G. 126 Golden Age of Security 2 Gómez Casas, J. 31 Gorky, M. 16 Goskinprom Gruzii 66, 68 government party 15 Graziadei, A. 40

Great Depression 3 Great October Socialist Revolution 8, 9 Great Patriotic War 59, 94 Great War see First World War Grémio Africano 98 grey coats 17 Grey, E. 2, 105 größte und unvergesslichste Zeit meines irdischen Lebens 90 Guarda Nacional Republicana 105 Haimson, L. 10, 12, 14 Halbwachs, M. 95 hegemony 9 Heldengedenktag 91 Hemingway, E. 2 Herbert, U. 89 Hirschfeld, G. 4 historicisation 95 Hobsbawm, E. 3, 4 Holquist, P. 20 Holy Martyr 8 Hotel Majestic conference 118 Iglesias, P. 37 Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (Lenin) 50 imperialist war 76 influenza pandemic 1 In Stahlgewittern 86 Instruction Division 113 intelligentsia 79, 81 International Labour Organization (ILO) 35 International Workers’ Association (IWA) 32 Istanbul 46, 57 Italy 47, 57, 89, 119, 121–127, 129–133 IWA Berlin Congress 35 jiha 46, 55, 56, 58, 59 Jim Shvante 68, 69 Judeo-Bolshevism 134 Jünger, E. 86 Juntas de Defensa (Defence Committees) 24 Kalatozov, M. 68, 69, 72 Kazakh pan-Islamic group 51

162 Index K-D party 15, 16 Kepley, V. 66 Kerenski, A. 14 Kershaw, I. 1, 90, 132 Khanzhonkov, A. 65, 66 Knox, M. 123 Koenker, D. 14 Kollontai, A. 81 Komintern’s policy 56–58 Krieg der Worte 87 Krieg in den Köpfen 89 Kriegsjugendgeneration 89 Lamszus, W. 84 landlordism 29 Langemarck-Day 91 Las Hurdes 68 la Tragédie d’un Peuple 17 League of Nations (LoN) 2, 58 Lebanon 47 Le Blanc, P. 75; October Song 75 Leninism 76 Lenin, V.I. 65, 66, 69, 70; Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism 50; The State and Revolution 76; The Tasks of the Proletariat in our Revolution 76 Le Passé d’une Illusion 9 Les Six 2 liberal globalism 123 liberal revolution 12 liberal schools 4 Libya 126 Lichtheim, G. 36 L’Illustrazione italiana 129 Liudyna z Kinoaparatom 67, 68 Lliga de Viticultors Rabassaires de Catalunya (1882-1883) 27 Lliga Regionalista (Regionalist League) 24 London 47 long term revolutionary events 17 lost generation 2 Ludendorff, E. 85 Lunatcharski, A. 65, 69, 70, 81 Lursmani cheqmashi 68 A Luta 76 Machaqueiro, M. 76, 79 Maiakovski, V. 81, 82 Malevich, K. 72

Manifesto of the Communist Party 45 Mann, T. 2 mão de obra 106 March on Rome 3, 122, 130 march towards modernity 13 Marroyo, F.S. 26 Marx, K. 5, 9, 45 Matteotti brigade 129 medium-term confrontation 19 Meierhold, V. 81 Mein Kampf 90 Menschenschlachthaus 84 Mezhrabpomfilm 71 Miéville, C. 74, 75; October. The Story of the Russian Revolution 74 Mikaberidze, K. 68 Milioukov, P. 11, 14 Moorehead, C. 127 Moscow 8, 33–35, 39–41, 55–60, 67, 71, 77, 78, 80 Mozambique: battle of Naulila 99; British and German territory 104; comings and goings 102–103; contingents 97; declaration of war 101; European foreigners 103; financial life 97; German East Africans 104; Grémio Africano 98; Indian colony 100; lack of labour 106; mass recruitment 105; Muslim populations 101; recruitment of porters 106; régulos 104; Republican Party 98; strikers 105; White Foreign Population (1912) 103 multi-class revolution 12 Muslim Communist Party 55 Muslim world: Bolsheviks war 48–49; colonial empires 46; Congress of Baku and Sultan-Galiev 53– 55; fall of old empires 45–46; Great Patriotic War 58–59; Islamic resistances 55–56; issues 50–53; Komintern policy 56–58; Ottoman Empire 46; Russian Empire 49; Turkish authorities 47; years of Stalinism 58–59 Mussolini, B. 4, 89, 121–134

Index  163 Namus 68 National Farmers’ Federation 32 National Fascist Party 122 national folk community 91 Naulila 99, 100, 114 Nazi party: anti-partisan warfare 93– 94; foreign policy 131; Mein Kampf 90; military strategy 93; propaganda 93; war aims 93; war economy 93 Nazism’s violence 130 neo-fascist nostalgics 124 new army 78, 79 New Economic Policy (NEP) 69–71, 80 nizy 17 Nobody of Vienna 90 Novaya Ekonomiceskaya Politika (NEP) 70 Novecento 125 O Africano 98 October Revolution 3, 4; core process 74–83; cultural policy 81; 1919 decree 65–66; eighthour workday 79; NEP 69–71; political phase 78; revolutionary process 75, 76; revolution in production 71–72; structures and productions 66–69; Thermidorian phase 74; women’s issue 80 October Song (Le Blanc) 75 October. The Story of the Russian Revolution (Miéville) 74 Oktyabr’: Desyat’ dney kotorye potryasli mir 72 Operation Alberich 86 Operation Faustschlag 52 Origins of Totalitarianism, The (Arendt) 89 Palestine 47, 48, 50 Pan-Russian Congress 14 Pares, B. 10 Paris 2, 116–118 Paris Peace Treaties 88 parliamentary revolution 12 Partito Nazionale Fascista 122 Pasternak, B. 82 A People’s History of the Russian Revolution (Faulkner) 75

Percursos de uma Revolução 76 Peredvizhniki 72 Pestaña, Á. 33 Petrograd 1, 2, 77–80 petty-bourgeois parties 15 Pipes, R. 11 Pires, A.P. plebeianisation 18 populism 131 Portugal’s engagement: colonies 114; diplomatic malaise 119; financial reparations 117; interventionism 112; monarchists and republicans 112; nonautonomous territories 118; tasks 115; vulnerable defence system 114 Portuguese First Republic 112 Portuguese Republican Party 99 Poruchik Kizhe 68 post-modern historians 4 Potemkin 1 proletarian culture 82 Proletkino 66 PSOE 35–41 Putin, V. 7, 8 Quelimane region 116 Rabinowitch, A. 18 Raeff, M. 13 raison d’être 15 Red Army 4, 32, 33, 51, 52, 54, 56, 59, 78, 79, 129 Red Chaos 16 Red International of Labour Unions 35 Red Mufti 58 red peril 2 Reds and Whites, civil war 53 Reed, J. 54 reformism 16 revisionist 10, 17 revisionist schools 4 revolutionary anthology of Futurism 81 revolutionary defencism 15 revolutionary engineering 82 revolutionary feast 82 revolutionary legalism 20 revolutionary totalitarianism 124 Révolution Russe (Figes) 17

164 Index Reynold, M. 20 Risorgimento 126 Rogan, E. 46 Roman Floralia Festival 3 Rosas, A. 106 Rose-Coloured Map 113 Roth, J. 2 Russell, B. 85 Russian-Japanese War 85 Russian October Revolution 1 Russian Revolution of 1917: debates and controversies 7–21; German attack on Russia 94; German attack 94; influence of Spain (see Spain); Muslim (see Muslim world); outbreak in October 74 Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic 77 Russification policy 13 sacred union 96, 113, 118 sacro egoismo 132 Sala del Mappamondo 126 Salvemini, G. 133, 134 Sánchez i Cervelló, J. 4 Sánchez Marroyo, F. 26 Sandborn, J. 20 al-Saffah 47 Second World War 86, 87, 92, 94, 95, 124, 126, 128 seismographic apparatus 30 separatism 119 Service, R. 18 Seven Wonders of the Modern World 2 shame treaty of Versailles 90 Shanin, T. 13 short-term confrontation 19 short term revolutionary events 17 Simões, A.M. 107 Sindicatos Libres de Maestros 41 Sindicato Vertical 41 Sinngebung 89 sleepwalkers 125 Smith, S. 14 Snyder, T. 122 social organization system 33 Solidaridad Obrera 33 Somatenistas 32 Somme–Marne–Verdun 92 Soviet filmmaking 64

Soviet historiography vs. liberal historiography 18 Sovietization 57 Soviet power 20 Sovietskoye Kino 69 Sovnarkom 77 Spain: Andalusian day labourers 26–27; Catalan day labourers 26–27; Catalan rural areas 27; CNT membership 26; communism haunts 28–30; communist control 33–35; democratic socialism vs. Marxism-Leninism 38; 24-hour general strike 25; impact on anarchists 31–33; labyrinth and communist splits 39–40; law of flight 29–30; before October Revolution 24; Pestaña 33–35; political centre-left 30–31; PSOE 36–38; UGT in defence 35–36; underprivileged classes 25–26 Spanish Communist Party (PCE) 39–41 Spanish Communist Workers Party (PCOE) 39 Spanish workers’ organization 29, 36 Spengler, O. 2 Spring and Autumn 2, 3 The Springtime of Peoples 3 squadrismo 89 Stahlhelm 89 Stalinism 58–59, 64 The State and Revolution (Lenin) 76 stikhia 17 Strachan, H. 85 street violence 13 Sultan’s Army 56 suspected defeat 89 Sweden 57, 65 Sykes-Picot Agreement 47, 49 Syria 47, 52 The Tasks of the Proletariat in our Revolution (Lenin) 76 Tcheka 77 Teatro Comedia 32 Teatro de la Comedia 27 Teatro Varietá 98 Teutonic hegemony 112

Index  165 Thompson, K. 73n14 10th Party Congress 55 three Russian revolutions 11 totalitarianism 127, 131 totalitarian systems 85, 121 total war 121, 127 A Tragédia de um Povo (A People’s Tragedy) (Figes) 78 transgression 87 transitory elements 31 Traverso, E. 75, 76 Treaty of Brest-Litovsk 53 Treaty of Rawalpindi 56 Treaty of Rome 49 Treaty of Versailles 2, 92, 118, 119, 122 trench Bolshevism 19 trincerocrazia 121 Tseretelli, I. 14, 15 Trotsky, L. 19, 23, 49, 52, 78, 79, 129 U-boat 86 UGT 24–26, 35–36, 39–41 Ukraine 52, 64, 66, 71 União Republicana 76 União Sagrada 112 Unification Congress 40 Unió de Rabassaires (UR) 27 Unió de Treballadors del Camp (18721874) 27 union sacrée 121 United Kingdom 58 United States of America 54, 65, 116 universal fascism 123, 127, 131 unknown Front Soldier 90 Verbrannte Erde 86 verkhi 17 Versailles Peace Treaty 89 Vertov, D. 67, 68, 72 Vienna 40, 66, 90, 132 violence of the soldiery 16

vital space theory 119 vittoria mutilata 5, 89, 121 Vivarelli, R. 125, 128 Völkischer Beobachter 92 Volksgemeinschaft 91, 92 Volkstrauertag 92 Vom Kriege 88 von Clausewitz, C. 88 von Schlieffen, C.A. 87, 88 Vseukrainske Foto Kino Upravlinnia (VFUKU) 66 VUFKU films 66–69 vulgar Machiavellianism 128 War Communism 78 war of annihilation 94 Waste Land, The 2 Wehrhaftmachung 91 Wehrmacht’s expansionist war 94 Weimar Republic 65, 89 Welles, H.G. 2 Wells, H.G. 88 Werth, N. 3, 4; Black Book of Communism 3, 7 Windhoek authorities 114 Workers’ Communist Party of Spain (PCOE) 36 “World of yesterday” 2 The Year 1905 1 The Year 1917 1 Young Turk Revolution 54 Zaragoza Conference 34 Zaragoza Pact 24 Zelnik, R. 10, 14 Zhenotdel 81 Zionism 47 Zivilisationsbruch 95 Žižek, S. 83 Zvenigora 66, 67 Zweig, S. 2