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National communism is a term describing various forms in whichMarxism–Leninism andsocialism has been adopted and/or implemented by leaders in different countries using aspects ofnationalism ornational identity to form a policy independent fromcommunist internationalism. National communism has been used to describe movements and governments that have sought to form a distinctly unique variant ofcommunism based upon distinct national characteristics and circumstances, rather than following policies set by othersocialist states, such as theSoviet Union.[1]
In each independent state, empire, or dependency, the relationship betweensocial class and nation had its own particularities. The Ukrainian communistsVasil Shakhrai,Alexander Shumsky, and Mazlakh, and then theTatarSultan Galiyev, considered the interests of theBolshevik Russian state at odds with those of their countries.Communist parties that have attempted to pursue independent foreign and domestic policies that conflicted with the interests of the Soviet Union have been described as examples of national communism; this form of national communism differs from communist parties/movements that embrace nationalist rhetoric. Examples includeJosip Broz Tito and his independent direction that ledYugoslavia away from the Soviet Union,Imre Nagy's anti-Sovietdemocratic socialism,Alexander Dubček'ssocialism with a human face, andJános Kádár'sGoulash Communism.[1][2]
Communist parties that have sought to follow their own variant of communism by combining communist/socialist ideals with nationalism have been described as national communist. These include theSocialist Republic of Romania underNicolae Ceaușescu, theDemocratic Kampuchea underPol Pot,[3] andNorth Korea underJuche.[4][5]
Communism asKarl Marx andFriedrich Engels envisioned it was meant to beinternationalist, as proletarian internationalism was expected to placeclass conflict well ahead of nationalism as a priority for theworking class. Nationalism was often seen as a tool that thebourgeoisie used todivide and rule the proletariat (bourgeois nationalism) and prevent them from uniting against theruling class. Whereas the influence ofinternational communism was very strong from the late 19th century through the 1920s, the decades after that—beginning withsocialism in one country and progressing into theCold War and theNon-Aligned Movement, made national communism a larger political reality.
During the decade of the 1840s,communist came into general use to describe those who hailed the left-wing of theJacobin Club of theFrench Revolution as their ideological forefathers.[6] In 1847, theCommunist League was founded in London. The League asked Marx and Engels to draftThe Communist Manifesto, which was adopted by the league and published in 1848.The Communist Manifesto included a number of views of the role of the nation in the implementation of the manifesto. Thepreamble says thatThe Communist Manifesto arose fromEuropeans from various nations coming together in London to publish their shared views, aims, and tendencies.[7] Chapter one then discusses how the rise of the bourgeoisie has led toglobalization and the place of national issues.[8]
InMarxism and the Muslim World,Maxime Rodinson wrote: "Classical Marxism, for once faithful to Marx himself, postulates that a socialist state cannot be imperialist. But no proof is provided to support this thesis."[9] According toRoman Rosdolsky: "When the Manifesto says that the workers 'have no country', this refers to the bourgeois national state, not to nationality in the ethnical sense. The workers 'have no country' because according to Marx and Engels, they must regard the bourgeois national state as a machinery for their oppression and after they have achieved power they will likewise have 'no country' in the political sense, inasmuch as the separate socialist national states will be only a transitional stage on the way to the classless and stateless society of the future, since the construction of such a society is possibly only on the international scale."
Milovan Đilas popularized the term "national communism" in hisNew Class (1957), where he wrote: "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, ex-communist Manabendra Roy said: "Communism in Asia is essentially nationalism painted Red."Anton Pannekoek, a Dutchleft communist, and Russian monarchists Nicholas Ustrialov and Vasilii Shulgin stated in 1920 that Russians first nationalized communism. They drew attention to how far theBolsheviks differed from all other European social democratic parties in terms of structure and ideology and to the factVladimir Lenin'sBolshevik Party (formed from the left-wing of theRussian 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 theOctober Revolution (1917) and to the various communist regimes that emerged after 1945 in other parts of the world.
In the wake of their Russian counterparts, left-wing socialists inUkraine and theMuslim areas of the formerRussian Empire also developed distinct variants of communism that continued in the Soviet Union until 1928. 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 and 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 groups which predated theRussian Revolution, joining the Russian Bolshevik Party between 1917 and 1920—some of whom later wereNarkomnats underJoseph Stalin, thePeople's Commissar.[citation needed]
The term "national communism" was adopted by a small number ofFrench fascists, such as politicianPierre Clémenti. TheFrench National-Communist Party existed between 1934–1944 and espoused a national-communist platform noted for its similarities withfascism, and popularizedracial antisemitism. The group was also noted for its agitation in support ofpan-European nationalism andrattachism, maintaining contacts in bothNazi Germany andWallonia. Later, the party would dropNational-Communist from its name, renaming itself the French National-Collectivist Party.[10]
TheMurba Party was anIndonesian political party that proclaimed itself to be national communist.[11] HistorianHerbert Feith labelled the profile of the party as "extreme nationalism and messianic social radicalism (whose inchoateness was only mildly tempered by the Marxist and Leninist theory to which it laid claim), it was a citadel of 'oppositionism', the politics of refusing to recognize the practical difficulties of governments'."[12]
In 1918, the bookDo Khvyli (translated into English asOn The Current Situation in the Ukraine, as edited by P. Potichnyj in 1970), written by the Ukrainian communists Serhii Mazlakh andVasyl' Shakhrai, challenged what they saw as Russian domination over Ukraine under Bolshevik rule. The precursors of the Ukrainian communists, the Ukrainian left-social democrats in March 1919 tried to direct the mass anti-Bolshevik uprising that began then in Ukraine but failed to win control over a sizable territory. Their main military force under Danylo Zeleny was defeated by July 1919. Faced withAnton Denikin's successful offensive, they decided to stop further military activity and ally with the Bolsheviks as thelesser evil. In January 1920, they formed theUkrainian Communist Party, which recognized Russian Communist rule over Soviet Ukraine but criticized Bolshevik administrative, cultural, political, party, and economic centralization. In a letter submitted to theThird International that year, they extended the analysis of Shakhrai and Mazlakh.[13]
Another prominent Ukrainian national communist movement was theBorotbists led byAlexander Shumsky. Shumsky took a more pro-Bolshevik position than Shakhrai as he started theJanuary Uprising to attempt to overthrow theUPR government. Shumsky also attempted to overthrow the hetmanPavlo Skoropadskyi through a revolution. After the establishment of the USSR, Shumsky became a promoter of Ukrainization in the CPSU, and he contributed to theKorenizatsiya, which favored the promotion of language and culture of ethnic minorities in the USSR. Shumsky was also a Soviet negotiator of thePeace of Riga.
Due to Shumsky's opposition to theRussification policy by the Stalinist regime, he was later condemned in 1927 for his national communist position, which the Soviet authorities referred as ‘national deviation.’ He was arrested and prosecuted by the regime in 1933 and was labeled as a nationalist and counterrevolutionary, which led to his death sentence in 1937. In 1946, he was murdered by NKVD agents under the instruction ofJoseph Stalin andLazar Kaganovich during his transfer from Kyiv to SaraToby.[14]
Open conflict between prominent Muslim theorists such asMirsäyet Soltanğäliev on the one hand and Lenin and Stalin on the other broke out in 1919 at theSecond Congress of the Communist International over the autonomy of the Muslim Communist Party. This also happened at theCongress of the Peoples of the East, the First Conference of the Turkic Peoples' Communists of Soviet Russia, and more significantly at theTenth Congress of the Bolshevik Party (April 1921). The crisis resulted in the purge of theCommunist Party of Turkestan in December 1922 and the arrest ofSultan 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 ofgreat-power chauvinism with local nationalism. Galiev commented that reaction to great-power chauvinism was not nationalism, and it was simply reaction to great-power chauvinism. Nine days later, he was arrested.
During this time, Soltanğäliev,Turar Ryskulov,Nariman Narimanov, andAhmet Baytursunov were very influential, especially through theCommunist 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 Soviet Union, such asManabendra Nath Roy,Henk Sneevliet, andSultan Zade, also taught there, formulating similar political positions. Students of the university includedSen Katayama,Tan Malaka,Liu Shaoqi, andHo Chi Minh.
The great purge in the Muslim republics began in 1928 with executions ofVeli İbraimov of the Tatar Communist Party andMilliy Firqa followed by the leaders ofHummet, the Tatar Communist Party, and theTatar Union of the Godless. It also happened in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and theYoung Bukharians.
Although the term "national communism" was never officially used by theRomanian Communist Party, it has been used to describe the ideology of theSocialist Republic of Romania between the early 1960s and 1989.Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej originally developed an emphasis onRomanian nationalism when attempted to pursue a more autonomous domestic and foreign policy independent from the Soviet Union. This culminated in 1964 when Gheorghiu-Dej announced a "declaration of independence", abandoning communist internationalism.[15] Gheorghiu-Dej's successor,Nicolae Ceaușescu, developed this further by combining both Marxist–Leninist principles and doctrines ofRomanian nationalism. In 1971, through hisJuly Theses manifesto, Ceaușescu declared a nationalcultural revolution. National communism in Romania was built aroundCeaușescu's cult of personality and the idealization ofRomanian history, also known asprotochronism. The main argument of the tenet was the endless and unanimous fighting throughout two thousand years to achieve unity and independence.[16]
Part of Romanian national communism was the rehabilitation of Romanian historical figures who had previously been denounced by thecommunist regime. Examples include the nationalist historianNicolae Iorga andIon Antonescu, a fascistConducător[citation needed]. These figures were deemed as Romanian patriots despite their stronganti-communist views.
Since the 1930s, when theVietnamese Communist Party was founded, many nationalists decided to join the party. This is remarkable because it marks the fact that nationalism has been recrystallized into an organized system rather than as individual struggle movements as before. On the other hand, nationalism in Vietnam has existed for a long time, even clinging to many different types of political institutions, from feudal states to one-party states. Thus, unlike communist parties or otherleft-wing parties, the Communist Party of Vietnam is a nationalist party in nature, withHo Chi Minh Thought often regarded as the main ideology of the party. This may have enabled the party to attract the support of the Vietnamese people.
In place of the old wants, satisfied by the production of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. Just as it has made the country dependent on the towns, so it has made barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent on the civilised ones, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois, the East on the West. ... Though not in substance, yet in form, the struggle of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie is at first a national struggle. The proletariat of each country must, of course, first of all settle matters with its own bourgeoisie.
