social revolutions
History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme
Samuel Langhorne Clemens
(American novelist, anti-imperialist, 1835 - 1910)
Time and again in the past 100 years, millions of urban workers, farmers, housewives, ethnic minorities and others acted together forcefully to improve their lives. In so doing, they radically transformed their shared social futures in Asia, the Pacific, Africa, Europe and the Americas. "Asian Nationalisms, Social Revolutions" provides an overview and details essential for appreciating these developments — Vincent K. Pollard, Editor, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa.
Observers who downplayed the potential of social movements as early indicators of emerging trends often were surprised by dramatic political change. They might have paid more attention to crossnational theorizing of social movements.
By the same token, romantic defenders of social movements who shield them from criticism risk becoming apologists for disappointments, defeats and betrayals attributable to cynical leaders who sometimes rose to the top in those milieux. Asian communist parties as leaders in revolutionary nationalist movements are the focus of the present essay.
In the title of this annotated Internet essay, the word nationalisms is in the plural. The use of the plural noun is is deliberate. For some purposes, pointing to characteristics shared by, diverse nationalisms globally can be useful. But for other purposes, sensitivity to the differences is more important. And how you understand nationalism or nationalisms will depend on your objectives! (Or if you wish, substitute patriotism for nationalism.
This essay is intended to be a quick, provocative reference and overview. It lays a foundation for understanding the rise – and sometimes the fall – of communist-led nationalist movements in Asia by summarizing seven dimensions or developments of the context and pathways of these movements.
These developments may be summarized under the following themes: 1) Communists respond to colonial rule in Asia; 2) Seizing state power with major military assistance from the Soviet Union; 3) Communist leaderships gain the loyalty of majorities in nationalist movements; 4) Communist parties relegated to subnational power; 5) Marginalization of Maoists; 6) Militarily defeated communist parties; and 7) Containment in Russia today.
In 1900, people living within the boundaries of most of what later became today's independent countries in East, South, South East and North East Asia were not self-governing. And aside from justifiable animosity toward foreign occupiers, people then living within the future national boundaries of most present-day Asian countries had just begun to think of themselves as being a single people or nation.
By the middle of the lengthy rule of Japan's Meiji emperor (1868-1912), it broke free from "unequal treaties" with Europeans and the U.S. And during that period, Japanese imperialism began colonizing Korea and Taiwan — with the secret acquiescence of the United States in 1907 and on into the 1920s. Meanwhile, the eastern borders of nominally self-governing Thailand were squeezed by the French in Laos and Cambodia—with the British in Burma pressing from the west. During the 1800s, previously expansionist Qing ("Manchu") Dynasty China began ceding (losing) jurisdiction over its territory to Europeans and Japan. In 1931 Japan occupied Manchuria, invading the rest of a divided and weakened China six years later.
Throughout colonized Asia, struggles erupted for political leadership of the nationalist movement. In most cases, one or more communist parties contended for leadership. Since the 1920s, Asian communist parties have seized national political power, lost it, and even bounced back to regain it. In some cases, communist parties failed to take power and were domesticated—tamed. In others, communist parties have not abandoned armed struggle against the government. In China and Vietnam, nationalist social movements propelled communist parties to power and where communist parties held subnational power for years before unifying their respective countries. In contrast, Mongolia and North Korea represent a mixed road to power.
But what about underlying similarities between capitalism and existing socialist systems? Analyzing that question once discouraged on the Left and on the Right. Indeed, just asking the question threatens claims made by Leftwing and Rightwing political orthodoxy. Nonetheless, historical and existing communist systems may, in my view, usefully be understood as a state-capitalist expression of global capitalism.
How could this possibly be so? From a heterodox but textually and historically defensible Marxian perspective, the following paragraph gives a brief summary.
In the self-styled socialist and communist countries, leaders of the parties have acted as a collective capitalist class. As such, they have extracted surplus value from the paid and unpaid labor power of farmers, housewives, urban workers and other less privileged groups of people and from the environment. None of the urban and agricultural Asian working classes ostensibly benefiting from the socialist revolutions controlled the organizations running the parties that directed the nationalized property and did the centralized planning. Revolutionary organizations opposed to the party's dictatorship over the working classes were suppressed.
Since the 1980s, communist party-led state capitalism in China, Vietnam, Laos and North Korea has undergone major political, economic and social changes. In these countries, state capitalism taken a variety of political pathways.
In 2005, the population in Laos was 6.2 million. "Below the party, which numbers nearly 100,000 privileged members, internal pressure for change has been minimal. Expatriate groups based in the United States and France, the former colonial ruler, have proved ineffectual, although some have claimed responsibility for a spate of bombings in recent years" (Dennis D. Gray, Associated Press [dateline: Vientiane, Laos], "Laotian Regime's Grip is as Tight as Ever," Yahoo! News, 1 December 2005 [no longer hyperlinked].
Central European societies were not the first to experience a major infusion of Soviet military power in support of a communist party's successful rise to power. For an example of that pathway to power, one may look to Central Asia.
In 1921, Wai Menggu or "Outer Mongolia" seceded from the Republic of China (ROC). Despite ROC claims at the time of secession, it controlled less of that part of Outer Mongolia administered earlier by China's Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) than local warlords did.
"Actual control of Outer Mongolia had been in the hands of the Soviet government since 1921, when the Red Army marched into that region and defeated the Russian White Guards of Ungern Sterberg, who [during the Russian Civil War] had shortly before established a puppet Mongolian regime there. The Sino-Soviet Treaty of 1924 reaffirmed Chinese sovereignty over Outer Mongolia but did not change the reality of actual Soviet control" of the Mongolian People's Republic (Tang Tsou, America's Failure in China, 1941-1950 [Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press/Toronto: The University of Toronto Press, 1963], p. 276).
Russian military intervention in Mongolia foreshadowed what would transpire later in Central and Eastern Europe, usually with acquiescence from local communist parties.
Despite Mongolia's secession in 1921, the public declaratory foreign policy of the People's Republic of China agreed to establish diplomatic relations on 6 October 1949. Thus, China treats Mongolia differently from the way it views Taiwan which it characterizes as a "renegade province."
In 1990, the ruling formerly communist Mongol Ardyn Khuv'sgatt Nam ("People's Revolutionary Party of Mongolia") reacted to demonstrations demanding reform by announcing the future withdrawal of all Soviet troops and by amending the constitution to allow a multi-party system. In 1991, the country's name was changed to the Republic of Mongolia. After the Soviet Union collapsed at the end of the year, the Party agreed to gradual democratic reforms. It temporarily lost power in the 1996 national elections. But on 2 July 2000, voters returned the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party to power in a landslide electoral victory that gave it 94% of the seats in the People's Grand Hural assembly — Mongolia's parliamentary goverment.
Four years later in 2004, however, the election resulted in a nearly even split. Challenges to published results of Mongolia's national on 27 June 2004 election forced the PRPM into a parliamentary minority and, as of 18 July 2004, to consider forming a coalition government. "Subsequently, the MPRP's number of seats in Ih Hural was reduced to 36. The opposition Motherland Democratic Coalition took 34 seats, and in August its leader, Tsakhiagiyn Elbegdorj, was appointed prime minister to lead a coalition government," according to Natalia Lissenkova (University of Leeds, H-Asia [H-Net list for Asian History and Culture], 8 September 2004).
Upon Japan's surrender in the Pacific War (World War II in Asia), Korea was divided between the U.S. and U.S.S.R.. The U.S. military imposed administrative authority over the southern zone while the Soviet Union moved into the northern half. As under the earlier Japanese colonialism, the two foreign powers did not ask Koreans for aproval of this occupation of their territory. In 1945, Kim Il-Sung, a veteran of guerrilla campaigns against the Japanese in Manchuria, led one of the smaller communist factions on the Korean peninsula. Division of the two Koreas hardened — and split the communist movement geographically. In turn, that split favored the fortunes of conservative anticommunists in South Korea — and Kim Il Sung in the North. In 1946, the Workers Party of Korea (Choson Nodongdang [WPK]) was established.
The WPK would lead the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (Choson-minjujuui-inmin-konghwaguk) established in 1948. (See KIM Soo Min, "Political Legitimization in North Korea, 1945-1950," Ph.D. dissertation, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, 1999.) Korean News Service (KNS) is a media product of the Korean Central News Agency of the DPRK. The disastrous Korean War (1950-1953) followed. North Korea was forced to retreat after almost driving U.S. forces off the peninsula. North Korea's retreat elicited Chinese military assistance to the DPRK. The People's Liberation Army helped to repel the U.S.-led U.N. counterattack reaching near the border of the People's Republic. The Korean War ended in political and military stalemate and human disaster. Nonetheless, by 1956, Kim Il-Sung's faction dominated North Korean political life.
Upon the elder Kim's death in July 1994, his son and political heir Kim Jong-Il was well positioned to continue the family's grip on leadership. Significantly, Kim Jong-Il has elevated the position of the military over the Workers Party of Korea. Thus far, the sultanistic DPRK has survived the collapse of the Soviet Union.
But North Korea is more than the hereditary domain of the Kim Family. According to Dae-Sook Suh's carefully documented political anthropology (book chapter, 2004), North Koreans are encouraged to view Kim as divine. Meanwhile, countervailing forces chip away at the mirage. Cell phones and VCRs have cracked the ruling Party's formerly total control over information access.
Also, consider Yoel Sano's prognosis for North Korea during the decade ending in 2014.
The invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 marked the final military effort of the Soviet Union to maintain a communist party in power. This resulted in k to military defeat and contributed domestic political disaster for the U.S.S.R.
With assistance from two representatives of the Third ("Communist") International (or Comintern), a local Shanghai communist group was established by Li Dazhao (1889-1927) and Chen Tu-hsiu (1879-1942) in the summer of 1920. The meeting designated as the "First Congress of the Communist Party of China" met one year later in the same city. Mao Zedong (1893-1976) did not attend the earlier of these two meetings. Nor do official histories of the Communist Party emphasize its importance.
The cult of Mao Zedong — Mao-worship — dates to the Yenan period in the second half of the 1930s. The People's Republic China (Zhonghua Renmin Gongheguo) was established on 1 October 1949. It is led by the Communist Party of China. In the coming years, keep your eyes open to the possibility that ongoing and increasingly militant levels of self-organizing by employed and unemployed Chinese workers transcend protests against the management of individual enterprises.
In the second half of the nineteenth century, France colonized Tonkin, Annam and Cochin-China. Despite pronounced regional differences, before 1954 Vietnam had never been politically divided on a north-south basis. Taken together, these areas compose today's Vietnam.
By the end of the Second Indochina War, the United States also had failed to achieve its political and military objectives. One year after the collapse of the U.S. client-state the Republic of Vietnam ("South Vietnam"), the unified country became the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (Cong Hoa Chu Nghia Viet Nam) in 1976. The ruling party is the Communist Party of Vietnam (Dang Cong San Viet Nam). Its online newspaper is published in Vietnamese, English and Chinese editions.
Several other minor political parties with a history of involvement in Vietnam's National Salvation Movement are nominally permitted to function. (Please note: English-language pages on the Party's website sometimes need updating.) Nhân Dân is the Party's main newspaper (in Vietnamese and English).
View video clips by independent journalist John Pilger reporting on doi moi or "renovation" in Vietnam.
Like Vietnam and Cambodia, the Lao People's Democratic Republic (Sathalanalat Paxathipatai Paxaxon Lao) is also a former French colony. The Lao People's Revolutionary Party is the ruling party. According to Amnesty International, leaders of a small peaceful public protest calling for political change on 26 October 1999 in Vientiane, the capital city,were arrested and imprisoned.
Taking a back seat to overtly capitalist political parties, members of other Asian communist parties have been elected to subnational government positions in a number of countries—at the municipal, state, prefectural or provincial level. Sometimes with a majority of their own party or as the leading party in a coalition, they are strong enough to run subnational governments. Meanwhile, some of the same parties have also elected members to their country's national legislature. In some respects, these parties are increasingly similar to Eurocommunist and social democratic parties in Western Europe.
In 1964, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) split from the Communist Party of India at its Seventh Congress.
The Japanese Communist Party (JCP) began in 1922 as a secretive, Moscow-directed organization. JCP leaders were imprisoned for supporting Korean communists' anticolonial campaigns and for opposing Japan's invasion of China. After Japan's disastrous defeat in 1945, the Party's principled wartime anti-imperialism won it respect. JCP leadership in postwar labor struggles attracted other loyal followers. The JCP rode undulating tides of popularity into the 1960s. The JCP's website (link above) is in Japanese and English.
In competition with the Socialists and later also with Komeito for urban working class votes, the JCP has sought greater mainstream respectability, especially since the 1970s. The "loveable Communist Party" continues to receives protest votes in municipal and national from Japanese citizens who do not necessarily agree with its stated goals. On 13 January 2004, the JCP held its 23rd Party Congress. While the JCP's concern for respectability helps to elect Party members as mayors and to the National Diet, the same dynamic makes the Party an increasingly unlikely candidate for leading social movements that may arise in coming years.
In several Asian countries, insurgent armed Communist parties have contended for power for decades with uneven but decreasing success, although that could change. In order to become distinct organizations, some split off from their antecedent Moscow-oriented communist parties. However, after Mao Zedong (1893-1976) died, many Maoist parties lost their theoretical anchor.
Originating in the Kabataang Makabayan ("Nationalist Youth") and pro-China Maoist movement, the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) established itself on Mao Zedong's birthday in 1968. When the dictator President Ferdinand E. Marcos declared martial law in 1972, the CPP fought politically and militarily against his regime. Later, the CPP chose not to participate in the four-day February 1986 demonstration and uprising that helped to end the Marcos dictatorship. This failure of leadership cost the Party much popular support. Resulting differences over policy led to multiple factional splits from the CPP during the 1980s and 1990s. Since late 1986, Jose Maria ("Joma") Sison, the CPP's chair, has mostly lived in self-exile in the Netherlands.
In 1998, a new Sosyalistang Partido ng Paggawa ([SPP] "Socialist Party of Labor") was formed by the previously competing Liga Sosyalista ([LS] "Socialist League") and the Rebolusyonaryong Partido ng Proletaryo ("Revolutionary Party of the Proletariat" [RPP]).
The Socialist Republic of Vietnam's invasion of Cambodia in December 1978 was self-serving. It was not altruistic. Indeed, the Vietnamese leadership had long been familiar with their Cambodian communist counterparts. Nonetheless, Vietnam's invasion led directly to the military defeat of the three-party coalition led by Pol Pot (Saloth Sar). The impact of Pol Pot's defeat should not be underestimated: It ended the Khmer Rouge's democide (political killing) of the Cambodian people.
While fighting against Vietnam, Pol Pot's regime was aided by the People's Republic of China and the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN). And during a seven-year period overlapping the Carter and Reagan Administrations (fiscal years ending in 1980-1986), the U.S. disbursed funds to the three-party military alliance dominated by Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge. Converted to constant FY1986 dollars, the total is $84.47 million. The largest part of this sum was disbursed to the Khmer Rouge by the Carter Administration.1
Undoubtedly, Pol Pot's peaceful death in 1998 minimized future embarrassment to his former patrons in China and ASEAN, as well as to American officials associated with the Carter and Reagan Administrations.
Hun Sen was a low-level Khmer Rouge commander until 1977. Only then did he break from the Khmer Rouge. In the following year, he founded the United Front for the National Salvation of Kampuchea (UFNSK). And with Vietnam's invasion in late 1978, Pol Pot retreated to the border of Thailand while Hun Sen rose quickly. By 1985, he was prime minister and foreign minister. With few interruptions, he has been sole prime minister for most of the time since then.
While most of Pol Pot's collaborators were amnestied by Hun Sen's government, a few were in detention as of mid-2007. Doubts still remained whether Hun Sen would permit trials for genocide to go ahead without United Nations involvement. While, they dithered, former Khmer Rough military chief Ta Mok (Ung Choeun), described as "one of Pol Pot's most ruthless henchmen," died on 21 July 2006. Ta Mok was "in detention awaiting trial on charges against humanity," according to Ker Munthit reporting from Phom Penh Cambodia, for the Associated Press on the same day. Apparently, some trials may yet take place.
TOP OF THIS PAGE. Insurgent Maoist political parties have been active in several States of the federal Republic of India since the 1970s. The PRC no longer supports these parties.
"Following a long period of relative quiet, the Naxalites in the past several years have expanded their presence to 13 of India's 28 states, according to official estimates, spurring talk of a "red corridor" extending from Nepal, which is battling a Maoist insurgency of its own, down through the wooded heartland of central and southern India. The Maoist rebels in India and Nepal have acknowledged ideological ties, and security officials suspect logistical collaboration as well" (John Lancaster, "India's Ragtag Band of Maoists Takes Root Among Rural Poor," [dateline: Bastar Forest, India], The Washington Post, 13 May 2006, page A01.)
The Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) is led by Pushpa Kamal Dahal, a former teacher. As General-Scretary of the Party, he uses the nom de guerre Prachanda. It means "the Fierce One." In 1996, "People's war" led by the Party against the monarchy began.
Ten years later, according to the Associated Press (AP), "Prachanda has emerged from the mountains to stake his claim as a leader in the country's transition to democracy — looking more like a media-savvy politician than a ruthless guerrilla leader....."
Prachanda is quoted as asserting in the same AP report that people "'can be mobilized for construction works. We can use millions of people in building transportation and electrification projects'." With the monarchy's powers delimited, Prachanda agreed to enter the government of Nepal (Binaj Gurubacharya [dateline: Katmandu], "Nepalese Rebal Emerges from the Jungle," Yahoo! News, 19 June 2006). Several months later, an agreement on the disposal of weapons was reported (Binaj Gurubacharya, Associated Press {dateline: Katmandu}], "Nepal, rebels finalize deal on weapons," Yahoo! News, 6 November 2006).
• In early April 2008, Maoist candidates were elected to about two thirds of the seats in Nepal's parliament. The electionis part of a larger movement that will end the monarchy in Nepal (See Binag Gurubacharya, [dateline: Katmandu], "Maoist leader wins seat in Nepal," Associated Press, in Yahoo! News,12 April 2008).
Examples of militarily defeated communist parties are found in the former Federation of Malaya and the Republic of the Philippines in the 1950s, the Republic of Indonesia in the mid-1960s, and Burma/Myanmar more recently.
The Malayan Communist Party (MCP) played a major role in the anti-Japanese movement during World War II. However, MCP attacks on mines and rubber plantations led to the British colonial regime's banning the MCP. In the Federation of Malaya, the Emergency of 1948-1960 entailed British and Australian military intervention and helped to defeat the Malayan Communist Party (MCP). With the expansion of Malaya into Malaysia and the consolidation of former British colonies, the MCP did not enjoy a resurgence.
After becoming the largest communist party outside the Soviet Union and China, 500,000 to 1,000,000 members of the Partai Komunis Indonesia (PKI) were annihilated by General Suharto's forces and local anticommunists during the 1965-1966 purge of the Left in Indonesia.
Formed in 1930, the Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas (PKP), a Moscow-oriented Left party, developed deep roots in the anti-Japanese guerrilla movement during World War II. While resisting increasing repression from the Philippines' landlord-dominated post-independence government, the PKP incurred massive arrests of its leadership and major military defeat in the 1950s. After jailed PKP leaders were released from prison by President Ferdinand Marcos, the PKP ceased advocating social revolution. By then, the PKP had been eclipsed by the new, then-Maoist Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP).
After decades of struggle in Burma (now Myanmar), the Burma Communist Party (Rakhine State), chaired by U Saw Tun Oo, surrendered its firearms to the central government in 1997.
Spatially, Asian Russia is the largest part of the Russian Federation — "Russia" for short. Present-day Russia is the core of the former Soviet Union (USSR).
Unlike revolutionary nationalist mass movements in China and Vietnam, a 1917 military coup (led by Lenin and Trotsky) catapulted the Bolshevik ("majority") faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party to state power. Having campaigned against participation in the inter-imperialist World War I on slogans of "bread, land and peace," the Bolsheviks briefly gained support from a majority of Russia's small but strategically positioned industrial working class. Bolshevik leaders renamed their faction the Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik) and later as the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU).
The Russian Civil War of 1918-1922 quickly led to one-party rule by the CPSU. The Soviet Union's urban and rural working classes never ran, controlled or administered that society. Josef Stalin (né Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili [1879-1953]) consolidated most political power within four years of Lenin's death in 1924. Stalin attained unchallenged control by the mid-1930s.
Stalin asserted that he was building "socialism in one country." With that rationale, he subordinated the aspirations of Asian communist movements in China and Vietnam to more traditional imperial concerns for protecting the Soviet Union's borders.
Almost sixty years later, a failed August 1991 military coup against reformer Premier Mikhail Gorbachev was followed by dissolution of the U.S.S.R. on Christmas the year. But the Communist Party of the Soviet Union regrouped. The CPSU's successor party is the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF). Although the Party continues to exert leadership in local, regional and national Russian politics, its share of the national party-list vote total fell to 12 percent in December 2003.
After August 1991, one of two competing successors to the CPSU's newspaper Pravda went online. Meanwhile, the printed (hard copy) newspaper Pravda is the CPRF's newspaper today.
This directory has been abstracted and linked in the following Web libraries:
• Patrick Fagan (Department of Political Science, College of the Southwest), "Bibliography - History," Working Paper Sites of Political Science.• Robert Y. Eng (Asian Studies Department, University of Redlands), "The History of East and Southeast Asia," East & Southeast Asia: An Annotated Directory of Internet Resources.
Imagining this Web project would have been impossible without the heroic efforts made by successive generations of oppressed people throughout the world seeking a better life.
I am indebted to Tang Tsou (1918-1999) at The University of Chicago for insisting on history and sociology as essential to the interplay of ideology, organization and leadership of communist movements in power and out of power.
Let me express my deepest appreciation to my senior co-teacher Professor Dae-Sook Suh at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa (1999-2001). I am also thankful to undergraduate and graduate students in the China, Vietnam, Philippines and South Asia modules of Political Science 345D for their stimulating questions and challenges.
Also, I thank students in my ASAN 320C ("Asian Nations Studies: China"), ASAN 485 ("Contemporary Chinese Development") and ASAN 491C ("China's Relations with Contemporary Asia") classes since January 2001 for sharing perceptive insights into Chinese culture, the Chinese Communist Movement, and the Communist Party of China in power.
© 1999-2008, Vincent K. Pollard.
Contribute to
high-quality, accessible Internet research by reporting dead links.
It is prohibited to include this website's content in passworded or fee-for-service electronic databases. If your website uses "no-frames" html web pages, linking is allowed.