National communism

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National Communism, is a form of communism that strongly influenced by national circumstances. Arguably, the first "national communists" were the Russian Bolsheviks, whose adaptations of Social Democracy and Marxism served to distinguish them significantly from the other parties in the Second International.Communism was given national features in Ukraine and the Muslim areas of the [[Soviet Union] between 1918 and 1928. These variants were distinct from Socialism in one country and [[Russian National Bolshevism] because they combined social revolution with national liberation.^[1]. In its Muslim varient it was a synthesis of nationalism, communism and anarchism as well as religion. Muslim communists included people from both left and right wing groups which predated the Revolution, joining the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Russian Bolshevik Communist Party) between 1917 and 1920 - some of whom later were Narkomnats, under the People's Commissar Josef Stalin.

Ukrainian communists Serhii Mazlakh and Vasyl' Shakhrai first condemned colonialist aspects of Russian bolshevik rule in Ukraine in 1918 in the book DO Khvyli ( translated into English as: On The Current Situation in the Ukraine, (P. Potichnyj ed. [1970]. The analyis was extended in the 1919 letter of the Ukrainian Communist Party to the Third International. Open conflict between prominment Muslim theorists such as Sultan Galiev Mirsäyet Soltanğäliev and Lenin and Stalin broke out in 1919 at the Second Congress of Communist Organisations of Peoples of the East over the autonomy of the Muslim Communist Party as well as at the Congress of the Peoples of the East and the First Conference of the Turkic Peoples' Communists of the RSFSR and significantly at the 10th Congress of the Russian Communist Party (b) (April 1921). The crisis resulted in the purge of the Communist Party of Turkestan in December 1922 and the arrest of Sultan Glaiev in 1923. Ukrainian Communists were purged earlier.

During this time however, Sultan Galiev, Turar Ryskulov, Nariman Narimanov and Ahmed Baytursan were very influential especially through the Communist University of the Toilers of the East which opened in 1921 and was very active until its staff was purged in 1924. Communists from outside the Soviets such as Manabendra Nath Roy, Henk Sneevliet and Sultan Zade also taught there, formulating similar political positions. Students of the university included Sen Katayama, Tan Malaka, Liu Shao-Chi and Ho Chi Minh.

The great purge in the Muslim republics began in 1928 with executions of Veli Ibrahimov of the Tatar Communist Party and Milli Firka followed by the leaders of Hummet, Tatar Communist Party and even the Tatar Union of the Godless. It also happened in Azerbyjan, Kazakhstan and the Young Bukharians.

[edit] Other uses of the term

The term is also used in association with the implementation of policies used after the death of Stalin as the Soviet government loosened its control over the other communist states. Leaders of the communist regimes also felt the need to peruse more national policies in order to bolster their legitimacy in the eyes of the peoples they ruled.^[2]

Which policies were referred to as national communism depended on different national contexts. In Romania or Albania, for example, it referred to a preservation of Stalinism and a cult of personality at the same time those techniques were being repudiated elsewhere.^[3] In East Germany it meant the rehabilitation of German historical figures such as Wagner and Friedrich the Great.^[4] In general throughout Eastern Europe national communism consisted of “de-emphasising the political hegemony of the Soviet Union and involved some accommodation of pre-socialist national identities.”^[5]

[edit] National Communist groups

• Muslim Socialist Committee of Kazan
• Azeri Hummet
• Kazakh Alash Orda
• Milli Firka
• Young Bukharians
• Young Khivians

[edit] References

1. ^ The Islamic Threat to the Soviet State by Alexandre Bennigsen and Marie Broxup, 1984, Services Book Club, Lahore
2. ^ Bideleux and Jefferies, 489.
3. ^ Tismaneanu, 188.
4. ^ Bideleux and Jefferies, 491.
5. ^ Pttaway, 137.

Bennigsen,A., Muslim national communism in the Soviet Union : a revolutionary strategy for the colonial world (1979)

Mace, J., Communism and the dilemmas of national liberation : national communism in Soviet Ukraine, 1918-1933 (1983).