National communism

Scholars normally associated National Communism with the countries of the old Soviet Bloc. Milovan Djilas popularized the term in his New Class (1957): “No single form of communism…exists in any other way than as national communism. In order to maintain itself it must become national.” A few years earlier then ex-communist Manabendra Roy noted: “Communism is Asia is essentially nationalism painted Red.” The Dutch Social Democrat Anton Pannakoek and Russian monarchists Nicholas Ustrialov and Vasilii Shulgin pointed out in 1920 that Russians first "nationalized" communism. They thus drew attention to how far the Bolsheviks differed from all other European Social Democratic parties in terms of structure and ideology and to the fact Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik Party (formed from the left wing of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party) can be considered the first "National Communist" party. In March 1918 Lenin renamed his party the Russian Communist Party. National Communism also refers to non-Russian communist currents that arose in the former tsarist empire after Lenin seized power in October 1917.

Left-wing socialists in Ukraine and the Muslim areas of the former tsarist empire developed distinct variants of communism that continued in the USSR until 1928.Ukrainian, like Muslim, Irish or Asian communism, differed from that of imperial metropoles because it emerged in a periphery and involved national liberation. Roy’s account of the founding of the Indian party could just as well describe the situation in Ukraine: “ I had only told them that driving the British out of India would be no revolution, if it was followed by replacing foreign exploiters by native ones… Instinctively idealists, they readily agreed with my opinion and jumped to the conclusion that if the revolution had to liberate the toiling masses it would have to be a communist revolution.” As a “peripheral” party the Ukrainian shared with others like it common theoretical postulates: they regarded the exploited or colonized as a "proletarian nation," considered that changes in the relations of production did not automatically eliminate foreign rule, and that the proletariat of ruling nations could be as imperialist chauvinist and exploitative in its attitudes towards former subjects as their nobility or bourgeoisie. The colonized were "proletarian" because they were dominated by a foreign ruling class and their liberation could only be socialist in nature. The future would be characterized not by classless society but by classless nations. National freedom and independent states were impossible for as long as international capital dominated national markets but, social liberation could not occur without national liberation and the creation of a national state. “Anti-imperialism” had to include independent socialist republics and parties for every nation united in the future in a confederation of socialist national states.

Ukrainian and Muslim variants differed from each other on two points in particular. The Muslims believed the fate of world revolution depended on events in Asia not Europe. They also argued alliances with the national bourgeoisie were necessary for the duration of the liberation struggle. Class divisions had to be ignored,otherwise the national bourgeoisie would turn away from national liberation, ally with their imperial counterparts and thus ensure the ultimate collapse of any revolutionary struggle and national liberation. In its Muslim variant 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 (Russian Bolshevik Party) between 1917 and 1920—some of whom later were Narkomnats, under the People's Commissar Joseph Stalin.

In Ukraine

In 1918, the book Do Khvyli (translated into English as On The Current Situation in the Ukraine, P. Potichnyj ed. [1970]), written by the Ukrainian communists Serhii Mazlakh and Vasyl' Shakhrai, challenged what they saw as Russian domination over Ukraine under Bolshevik rule. The analysis was extended in the 1919 letter of the Ukrainian Communist Party to the Third International.

In Muslim regions of the former Russian Empire

Open conflict between prominent Muslim theorists such as Sultan Galiev Mirsäyet Soltanğäliev and Lenin and Stalin broke out in 1919 at the Second Congress of the Communist International 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 Galiev in 1923. Galiev was the first Bolshevik party member to be arrested by Stalin. The immediate cause of his arrest were his comments on the 12th Congress resolutions regarding concessions to non-Russians. Stalin was infuriated that Galiev rejected his juxtaposition of "great power chauvinism" with "local nationalism." Reaction to great-power chauvinism Galiev explained was not "nationalism". It was simply reaction to great power chauvinism. Nine days later he was arrested.

During this time however, Soltanğäliev, Turar Ryskulov, Nariman Narimanov and Ahmet Baytursunov 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 Shaoqi 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 Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and the Young Bukharians.

Groups

Historic

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

General references

• Bennigsen A., Muslim national communism in the Soviet Union : a revolutionary strategy for the colonial world (1979).
• F0rd C., "Outline History of the Ukrainian Communist Party (Independentists): An Emancipatory Communism 1918-1925." Debatte: Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe, Volume 17, Issue 2 August 2009, pages 193 - 246 http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a915069181~frm=titlelink?words=ford&hash=1816545092
• Gizzatullin H. G., D.R., Sharafutdinov D.R., eds., Mirsaid Sultan-Galiev. Izbrannye trudy (Moscow, 1998).
• Mace, J., Communism and the dilemmas of national liberation : national communism in Soviet Ukraine, 1918-1933 (1983).
• Velychenko S., Painting Imperialism and Nationalism Red. The Ukrainian Communist Critique of Russian Communist Rule in Ukraine 1919-1923 (forthcoming: University of Toronto Press).

Bold text