Vanguard Vol.3, Issue 14 Editorial: Our history, our present and our future

“Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past.”

Karl Marx, The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852): MECW Vol.11, p.103 The Great October Socialist Revolution which occurred in Russia on 25th October 1917 (Old-Style Julian Calendar) and which we celebrate on 7th November (New-Style Gregorian Calendar), was the starting point for socialist, national democratic and anti-imperialist revolutionary struggles globally. This was the first stage of the complex movement from capitalism to socialism. Revolution does not happen in ideal conditions. Revolutionaries are not a ‘band of angels’. Counter-revolution frequently follows revolution, but when it happens, society rarely, if ever, returns completely to its pre-revolutionary ways.

The Soviet Union and Russia

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) also known as the Soviet Union was formed in 1922 and dissolved in 1991 against the wishes of the majority of its people; it is true that this was made possible because the Soviet bureaucracy had become complacent and self-serving and the Party’s links with the people had become weakened. But the conditions which Russians today refer to as ‘wild capitalism’ under the alcoholic Yeltsin were not anticipated. Inflation, breakdown of social services and the emergence of the oligarchs, gangster capitalists dominated the 1990s. In 1999, Vladimir Putin took over the leadership of the Russian Federation. At first Putin was anti-Communist but in his efforts to improve from the chaos of the Yeltsin period, he slowly led Russia back towards relative prosperity.

In an interview with journalist Pavel Zarubin aired on Russian television on 17th December 2023, Putin admitted that he had been naive early in his political career despite his background in Soviet intelligence. He said that he was wrong to assume the West would establish productive relations with Russia after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. On several occasions, Vladimir Putin has said, “The destruction of the Soviet Union was the greatest geo-political catastrophe of the 20th century. What has this to do with Africa?

The Russian Revolution and Africa

It is not an exaggeration to say that the liberation of Africa began with the Great October Socialist Revolution in 1917. In 1919 the Communist International (Comintern) was formed. Increasingly during the 1920s, Africans and people of African descent became involved in Comintern business. Following a visit to Europe and the USSR by James La Guma of the Communist Party of South Africa and J.T. Gumede of the African National Congress in1929, the Resolution on the South African Question was adopted by the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI) following the 6th Congress of the Comintern, this stated:

“…the Communist Party of South Africa must combine the fight against all anti-native laws with the general political slogan in the fight against British domination, the slogan of an independent native South African republic as a stage towards a workers’ and peasants’ republic, with full equal rights for all races, black, coloured and white.”

And to achieve this goal:

“The Party should pay particular attention to the embryonic national organisations among the natives, such as the African National Congress. The Party, while retaining its full independence, should participate in these organisations, should seek to broaden and extend their activity. Our aim should be to transform the African National Congress into a fighting nationalist revolutionary organisation…”

By 1930, both Africans and people of African descent in the Americas were involved with and trained by the Comintern. Most notably, Moses Kotane, later long-serving General Secretary of the South African Communist Party, was trained in Moscow from 1931-1933. In October 1945, at the 5th Pan-African Congress held in Manchester, England on October 1945, attended by many future African leaders, the three most prominent persons were veteran US Pan-African leader, W.E.B. Du Bois, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana and George Padmore of Trinidad, all strongly influenced by communism and the Soviet Union.

During the 1960s and 1970s the armed liberation struggle in Africa was supported and funded by the USSR, German Democratic Republic and the People’s Republic of China. Cuba sent troops and at the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale in Angola 1987-1988, a combined force of Cubans and Angolans defeated the apartheid South African Army. An agreement was made that if the Cubans left Angola, the South African army would leave Namibia, thus giving it Independence in 1990 and the end of apartheid in South Arica in 1994.

The revolutions in China and Cuba owe a great deal to the USSR as did the formation of the German Democratic Republic: without their support, the freedom of Africa from direct colonial control would have been very difficult indeed. The starting point was the Great October Socialist Revolution of 1917.

Modern Russia

Modern Russia, through co-operation with China has given us BRICS, Brazil, Russia, China, India, South Africa now joined by an increasing number of other countries as BRICS+ are rejecting the economic and military domination of the USA and its allies. This economic alliance is broadly ant- imperialist in character. It is still an alliance of capitalist states, but the destructive neoliberal stage of capitalism is coming rapidly to an end. It is being replaced to a great extent by state monopoly capitalism, which Lenin told us in 1918 “is the last stage before socialism”. The process is complex and the importance of the establishment of BRICS as a stage on the road towards socialism should not be under- estimated or over-estimated.

The anti-imperialist struggle and the class struggle between capital and labour are related, but they are not identical.

The class struggles within the BRICS nations will continue for some time to come.

The arrogant and ill-conceived proxy war by NATO against Russia began in 2014 (though preparations had begun in 1944). The war has been catastrophic for Europe and has caused acute political and economic crisis in Germany, France, Britain and Italy. The USA firstly under the murderous liberal/fascist regimes of the Clintons, Obama and the senile Biden, is now under the crazed and clownish leadership of Donald Trump. Speculation can no longer be on “Will the US economy collapse?” the question is now, “When will it collapse?”

Through the support by the West for the continuing genocidal war against the Palestinian people and the punishment of ordinary citizens opposed to genocide, the Western establishment can never again present itself to the world as the “Defender of Democracy and Human Rights”.

In Africa, the support by Russia for the Sahel Alliance of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger has meant the beginning of the end for the heavy-handed rule of France in West Africa, rule that has deprived the region of its natural resources with only a modest payment to the African elite and nothing for most of the people. There has not only been military support against the Western-backed jihadists, but also support for the building of infrastructure and industry. Africa is changing.

Zimbabwe

One of the most distressing features of the political landscape in Zimbabwe is the failure of the majority of our people to understand how important history has been in terms of shaping the present and the future.

It is not in the interests of ZANU(PF) and the looting class which controls it for the people of Zimbabwe to have a clear grasp of their history. Neither is it in the interests of the various opposition factions formed from the splintering of the MDC to let the people know that the USA, Britain and Europe are not now, and never have been, the guardians of ‘Human Rights’ ― not in Africa nor anywhere else in the world. (The fact that many opposition activists have been maintaining themselves from funding from various US or European based NGOs does not make this any less true.) The brutality shown to the Palestinian people including the deliberate bombing of hospitals, murder of hospital staff and of journalists has sickened the world: yet, Zimbabwean Christian Friends of Israel continues to quote scripture in favour of genocide by a settler state which continues not only to oppress the Muslim majority, but also to remove Palestinian Christians from their ancestral homes around Bethlehem. Israel is a country in which priests and nuns of the Orthodox and Catholic churches and Evangelical Christians preaching the Gospel are spat upon by Zionist Jews in the streets of Jerusalem, regardless of which branch of the Christian faith they belong to. Brutality has even been used against religious anti-Zionist Haredic Jews who identify as Palestinian Jews.

In this issue of Vanguard (14) we deal with the lies around the events of 7th October 2024 and the history of this troubled land. We will also revisit the background of the NATO war against Russia and how it started. The West calls it ‘Putin’s War’ but anyone who has studied the run-up to it will know that if any single person is responsible for this war, it is Victoria Nuland, US Assistant Secretary of State from 2013 to 2017.

We are currently in a period of a major change in the world balance of forces. The imperialist West led historically by Britain, the USA and France is in rapid decline economically and socially. Led by the two most prominent countries to adopt socialism during the 20th century, Russia and China and the countries of the BRICS alliance have long surpassed the collective West in production. The USA and its allies are trying to hang on through manipulation of banking and trade and also by direct military intervention.

The US National Debt is now at US $37 trillion and the complete collapse of US world domination is coming very soon, hastened by President Trump’s crude attempt to put tariffs on even his closest allies. The new world order will be to our benefit if we consciously use the new conditions to rebuild our economy and our society. Real change will not come spontaneously. In this changing environment, our country, Zimbabwe and our continent, Africa needs to find its way. And we cannot ‘wait and see’ and just ‘hope for the best’.

The liberation of Africa was able to take place, precisely because of the victory of the Russian Revolution, the victory over fascism in Europe in 1945 was principally the victory of USSR and its Red Army coupled with the support of Communist-led resistance groups. In the East, Communists in China, Vietnam and Korea played a major role in defeating Japanese militarism, and by the end of the Second World War, Britain and the USA were already engaged in efforts, to ‘Roll back Communism’, and, through falsified media, to take the major credit in a war in which their role was secondary. The liberation of Africa from direct colonialism began with the 5th Pan-African Congress in Manchester England in October 1945, during the 1950s independence of sorts began and the process accelerated during the 1960s. During the 1970s the liberation war in Zimbabwe gained momentum, due in particular to the liberation armies of ZANLA and ZPRA.

But what then happened to the two army commanders, Josiah Tongogara of ZANLA and Lookout Masuku of ZPRA?

Let us also remember our own history, our own heroes.

Ian Beddowes, Editor