The book launch for Margrit Schiller’s Remembering the Armed Struggle: Life in Baader-Meinhof (Zidane Press, ISBN: 978-0955485046; 0955485046) will take place Friday 6 June 2009 at the Card Room, Millbank (entrance through Chelsea College of Art and Design [near Tate Britain]), 16 John Islip Street, London SW1P 4JU.

Attendance is by invitation only, and needs to be confirmed in advance, by emailing: zidanepress@gmail.com.

Mark Derby (ed.). 2009. Kiwi Compañeros: New Zealand and the Spanish Civil War. Christchurch. NZ: Canterbury University Press. Paperback, 304pp, b/w illust. & photos. ISBN: 978-1-877257-71-1. 240 x 170 mm, 765g. $45

“This book is the first-ever account of New Zealand’s role in the Spanish civil war of 1936–39, a war that became a ruthless rehearsal for World War Two.

Volunteers from more than 50 countries arrived in Spain to take sides. This book records the actions of New Zealanders involved, including those who worked for the Spanish cause at home by raising funds, lobbying politicians, writing poems and spreading propaganda.

Kiwi Compañeros includes contributions from some of New Zealand’s leading writers and historians. It draws on personal letters, recently released military documents and previously unpublished photographs to tell an all-but-forgotten story.”

Available for purchase online from Canterbury University Press.

Kiwi Compañeros - New Zealand and the Spanish Civil War

The launch issue of Twentieth Century Communism: a journal of international history is published in May 2009. The theme of issue one is ‘Communism and the leader cult’.

From Franz Borkenau’s commentaries of the 1930s, through Khrushchev’s secret speech in 1956, the cult of the leading individual provided one of the distinguishing features of the Stalinist party and an epitome of centralisation. The proliferation of such cults, however, also posed potential dilemmas: for if there was to be a cult of leadership, Stalin’s ideal of a single monolithic will implied that this too should be centred in Moscow, and on the person of Stalin himself. Ranging across several countries and different levels of communist leadership, the first issue of Twentieth Century Communism provides new insight into how and when these cults were constructed, and with what political consequences. The issue will also feature reviews, a roundtable discussion of the Italian communist leader Togliatti and an interview with the influential German historian and architect of the concept of Stalinization, Hermann Weber.

A detailed guide to the contents of issue one, and subscription information can be found on the Lawrence & Wishart web site.

Twentieth Century Communism - issue one

1989-2009: The East European Revolutions in Perspective

Organised by: Debatte. Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe

Location and date: London, 17-18 October 2009.

Keynote speakers:

Caroline Humphrey, Boris Kagarlitsky, Gáspár Miklós Tamas, Peter Gowan, Alex Callinicos, Bernd Gehrke, Catherine Samary.

Deadline for abstracts and panel proposals: 22 June 2009.

Rationale

Debatte is marking the twentieth anniversary of the revolutionary upheavals of 1989 by inviting scholars and students of Central and Eastern Europe to reflect upon the events of that year, their causes and processes, and the ensuing transformation of the region. In line with Debatte’s credo, the conference encourages critical and inter-disciplinary contributions. Especially welcome are papers that:

• examine the part played by social movements in overthrowing regimes and bringing about democratic change
• explore the power relations involved in the post-1989 restructuring of Central and Eastern Europe
• look afresh at the seminal contributions and debates in this area of research
• investigate ways in which research on 1989 and the transition has affirmed, deconstructed or challenged dominant ideological conventions

Topics for inquiry

Promising areas for papers include:

• The dissolution of the Soviet system. The roles played by relative economic decline, military competition, social and cultural change, the Western media. Comparison with the trajectory of ‘communism’ elsewhere: China, North Korea, Cuba etc
• Revolution and social change. The question of the ‘revolutionary’ nature of the events of 1989. Comparative revolutions and pseudo-revolutions. The contribution of social movement theories to analysing processes of mobilisation etc. in 1989. The history of dissident, resistance and reform movements
• Post-1989 transitions
• Geopolitical: Russia and the West; E.U. enlargement
• Geo-economic: Central and Eastern Europe’s changing location within the global division of labour; labour migration
• Geo-ideological: what has become of the Cold War mentality?; the repositioning (‘othering’?) of Central/Eastern Europe within Western discourse
• Economic: neoliberal reform; ‘shock therapy’; comparative economic policy
• ‘Bringing labour back in’: working-class recomposition and industrial relations
• Political and social: expansion and privatisation of the public sphere; the restructuring of social power ; elite continuities and discontinuities; democratisation and ‘managed democracy’; the evolution of Communist parties and of pre-1989 currents of dissidence and resistance; changing gender roles and relations; old and new nationalisms (including the break-up of Yugoslavia); the environment, transport and climate change
• Anthropological: cultures of everyday life; the ethnography of societies in ‘transition’; new forms of division and exclusion
• Cultural: new freedom, new censorship; the changing role of the artist; developments in cinema, literature, art and music; the creation of collective memories and narratives of the pre-1989 era
• Historiography of post-1989 Central and Eastern Europe: assessing the debates and breakthroughs; identifying gaps and silences in the scholarly literature

Papers and panel proposals

Submission of a panel proposal: The proposal should be no longer than 500 words, and should include the panel convenor’s full name and e-mail address, as well names and e-mail addresses of at least two other panel participants.

Questions, as well as submissions of panel proposals and abstracts, should be directed to Gareth Dale,
For updates: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/0965156X.asp

Nikos Christodoulides writes:

“I am doing a research on the policy of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) on Cyprus during the period, 1948-1960. As you know a lot of Cypriots based in the UK were active members of the CPGB, and Ezekias Papaioannou, the General Secretary of the Cyprus Communist Party (AKEL) from 1949, was an active member of the CPGB before returning in Cyprus.

I am trying to examine if the CPGB’s policy and stand οn Cyprus was in line with AKEL’s policy, how the party was approaching the issue of Cyprus, what was its stand on the struggle of EOKA, what was its position regarding the London and Zurich Agreements of 1959 which led to the independence of Cyprus and the establishment of the Republic of Cyprus, how it approached the attempts of the British Government from 1948 to 1960 to “solve” the issue of Cyprus, and etc.

I would appreciate it if anybody can provide me with information over the issue of my research, or advise me for any information available.

I already did a research on the archives of the party in Manchester, in the PRO, in the communist press in Cyprus and the UK, and interviewed a number of Cypriots who were active members of the CPGB.

Thank you.”

Dr Nikos Christodoulides
Post doctoral fellow
Department of History and Archaeology
University of Cyprus
email: n_christodoulides@yahoo.com

New publication

Jonathan Jeffries and Tom Sibley, The Shameful Deportation of a Trade Union leader: the story of Albert Fava, 64pp, TGWU Section of Unite Gibraltar

The year 2008 marked sixty years since the Gibraltarian trade union leader Albert Fava was deported by the British authorities from his homeland at less than a week’s notice. His alleged ‘crime’ was to engage in unnamed communist activities in the tiny British colony adjoining Spain which at the time was a fascist dictatorship which had assisted Hitler’s war on Britain, the Soviet Union, and the USA.

This pamphlet shows how the British authorities, in collusion with the British Trades Union Congress and local politicians, and the security were involved in securing his deportation.

Recently opened government files in London and Gibraltar show that there was in fact no evidence of Fava’s involvement in any activity prejudicing the security of the colony which at the time was a strategically important military fortress and home to extensive naval dockyards used by both the British and US fleets.

Copies available from: Tom Sibley, 156 St Stephens Rd, Hounslow TW3 2BW UK, price £3 including postage and packing. Please make cheques payable to Unite Section – Gibraltar.

Roundtable discussion on Western European Communist Leaders: John Bulaitis on Maurice Thorez; Donald Sassoon on Palmiro Togliatti; Andrew Thorpe on Harry Pollitt. Discussants: Giuseppe Vatalaro, Stephen Hopkins.

Saturday 31 January 2009
Club Room, Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, London WC1; 2.00-5.00p.m.
Admission £1.50
Nearest tube: Holborn.

Organised by the Socialist History Society.

Ralf Hoffrogge: Richard Müller – Der Mann hinter der Novemberrevolution, Karl Dietz-Verlag, Berlin 2008, 240 p., 19,90 Euro, published in German.

Book announcement: Richard Müller – The man behind the German Revolution 1918 / Richard Müller – der Mann hinter der Novemberrevolution.

In the summer of 1914 both the german unionist movement and the Social Democratic Party (SPD) capitulated even before war had started: The unions decided to drop all strikes and support the national war-effort, the SPD decided to vote for the military budget in parliament. The strongest labor movement in Europe had given up its practise of class struggle and its marxist principles

But the nationalist turn did not go uncontested. By the end of 1914 Karl Liebknecht was the first member of parliament to refuse further support for war-finances in parliament. At the same time local wildcat-strikes showed practical protest against the collaboration of the unions. For two years, these protests remained relatively isolated phenomena. But in 1916/17 the unionist anti-war movement consolidated on a national scale.

Especially the Berlin metalworkers were active and organized themselves from below. Their resistance had to be a double one: both against the bosses and their own union bureaucracy which collaborated with the military authorities. Three mass-strikes took place in the metalworking industry from 1916-1918, all of them organized by an underground organization calling itself the “revolutionary shop-stewards”. The group was lead by a lathe operator called Richard Müller. Their strikes entirely stopped the german war industry and only massive threats could bring the workers back to their factories.

The fourth movement was more than a strike: by the end of 1918 the revolutionary shop stewards were collecting arms and made plans for an uprising. After a mutiny in the german war fleet had started the dissolution of the armed forces time for change had come: the 9th of November saw the Revolution in Berlin. The monarchy fell, the war ended and workers councils formed a new government.

Although the November Revolution was one of the most important dates in German history, the revolutionary shop-stewards and their influence on these events are almost unknown even among experts in the field. The leader of the shop-stewards, Richard Müller was more or less forgotten – although he was one of the main-organizers of the 1918 Revolution in Berlin and chairman of the highest workers-council in the newly declared “Socialist Republic of Germany”. This means, that Müller was nothing else than head of state during the revolutionary era. Nevertheless, almost no biographical information existed on him.

This has changed now. The author Ralf Hoffrogge portraits the life of Richard Müller from his early days in a small village in rural East of Germany, tells the story of his career in the metalworkers union and his role in the Revolution of 1918. By following the life of Richard Müller, Hoffrogge draws a differentiated picture of the of rise and fall of the German workers-council movements.

Hoffrogge also draws on unpublished sources to present the first Picture of Richard Müllers activities after the revolution: His short carreer in the German communist party, his time as author and historian of the November-events, his engagement in one of the smoll anti-stalinist revolutionary Unions during the 1920s. The first time ever Hoffrogge tells the story of his final goodbye to politics in order to become an entrepreneur and finally, a millionaire from real-estate business.

Both the information about Müllers early youth and his late days were unknown up to know, this biography therefore is the first complete portrait of a forgotten revolutionary.

A Man Between Two Worlds? Palmiro Togliatti, the PCI and the Making of Post-War Italy

Professor Aldo Agosti (Turin)

University of Manchester, Samuel Alexander Building room A7, Friday 17 October, 3-5 p.m.

Further details from Kevin.Morgan@manchester.ac.uk

Download a promotional flyer for this event.

A Man Between Two Worlds? Palmiro Togliatti, the PCI and the Making of Post-War Italy

A roundtable discussion to mark the appearance in English of Professor Aldo Agosti’s biography of Palmiro Togliatti and featuring leading specialists in the field of modern Italian history:

• Tobias Abse
• Aldo Agosti
• Geoff Andrews
• Maud Bracke
• Carl Levy
• Linda Risso (chair)

To be held at : Marx Memorial Library, Clerkenwell Green, London EC1 (Farringdon tube station) 2-4 p.m., Tuesday 14 October.

ALL WELCOME!

Download a promotional flyer for the event.