#Communist history

[bolshevikitherat]

from the Lavender and Red Union, a group of communists who wrote this in 1975.

"GAY LIBERATION IS IMPOSSIBLE WITHOUT SOCIALIST REVOLUTION. SOCIALISM IS INCOMPLETE WITHOUT GAY LIBERATION."

[saltyteethbooks]

First time doing a title inset so thanks to @keystonepublishing for the wonderful typeset on a piece of not very well known piece Malayan (before the Malaysian Federation existed) history on the local version of The American Red Scare.

I fucked up the Bradel binding and had to jerryrig a fix which probably made the hinges a bit too stiff so I ended up with a not-ideal throw-up (yes that's the actual term)

And here's some process photos

Yes I used an expensive bottle of foraged wild jungle honey to apply directed pressure to shape the inset on the cover after applying the book cloth lol.

[hussyknee]

Unrolled twitter thread by Progressive International (@ProgIntl)

30 Sept 24 • 4 minute read • Read on X

On 30 September 1965, the Indonesian military, working closely with the US government, initiated a coup that would depose President Sukarno and install the brutal, 30-year dictatorship of General Suharto.

In the dark years that followed, the dictatorship massacred over a million Indonesian communists, with the CIA and US diplomats drawing up “kill lists” for the Indonesian military. The operation would become a template for the US’s regime change operations for decades to come.

Major-General Suharto with Indonesian Army in 1966

In 1945, President Sukarno led Indonesia to independence from Dutch colonial rule. He championed the Non-Aligned Movement and hosted the historic Bandung Conference, a meeting of Afro-Asian states, in 1955.

First President of Indonesia Sukarno making a speech circa 1945

Opening the conference and forecasting what was to come, Sukarno said: “We are often told ‘Colonialism is dead’. Let us not be deceived or even soothed by that… Colonialism also has its modern dress, in the form of economic control, intellectual control, actual physical control by a small, but alien community within a nation.”

Leaders attending the Bandung Conference 1955 in Bandung, Indonesia. From left: Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, Ghanian Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah, Egyptian Prime Minister Gamal Abdel Nasser, President Sukarno, and Yugoslavian Prime Minister Josip Broz Tito.

By 1965, Indonesia possessed one of the world's largest communist parties, the PKI. The PKI had a mass membership and mobilized vast numbers of people in the battle against Indonesia’s ruling class.

Campaign of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) in September 1955.

Terrified by the strength and organization of Indonesia’s people, the Indonesian military’s 30th September Movement began to purge the PKI.

Men suspected of being IPK members being transported under guard by an armed Indonesian soldier

In the early hours of 1 October, a group of military conscripts murdered six high-ranking generals. Blaming the deaths on the PKI, Suharto used the attacks as a pretext to seize power. CIA communications equipment allowed him to spread false reports around the country and begin a long campaign of anti-communist propaganda.

The US had tried to overthrow Sukarno for years; in 1958, the CIA backed armed regional rebellions against the central government. In 1965, they did all they could to aid Suharto’s murderous power grab.

The campaign soon became genocidal. On islands like Bali, up to 10% of the population was massacred — and luxury hotels soon began to appear over the killing fields.

One US embassy staffer told the US press that Suharto’s military “probably killed a lot of people, and I probably have a lot of blood on my hands, but that's not all bad.”

Time Magazine referred to the killings as “the West’s best news for years in Asia”.

A cable from the US embassy’s first secretary, Mary Vance Trent, to the State Department referred to events in Indonesia as a “fantastic switch which has occurred over 10 short weeks”. It also included an estimate that 100,000 people had been slaughtered.

Cementing his power, Suharto became president in 1967. His ‘New Order’ policy allowed Western capitalism to exploit Indonesia’s cheap labour and plunder its natural resources. Civil rights and dissent were suppressed.

In one of the world’s most populous countries, any possibility for the emergence of a new, democratic political project was eliminated. Richard Nixon described Indonesia as “the greatest prize in Southeast Asia”. Suharto would not leave office until 1998.

U.S. President Ronald Reagan stands with Indonesian President Suharto in the White House South Lawn at the arrival ceremony for Suharto's State Visit. Oct 12, 1982

CIA officers described Suharto’s rise to power and anti-communist purge as the “model operation” and “Jakarta” soon became the codeword for anti-communist extermination programs in Latin America, where hundreds of thousands were massacred in regime change efforts engineered by Washington.

[theradarchive]

"I am not tolerant. I do not tolerate fascism." -Pedro Lemebel

Today would be the 72nd birthday of Chilean artist and queer comrade Pedro Lemebel, who fought tirelessly for queer inclusion in the fight against the dictatorship of Pinochet.

You can read his formative novel, My Tender Matador, here for free on the Internet Archive.

[comradeowl]

Sharing Some Texts

Hi, everyone! Wanted to announce that I’ve a few texts scanned and uploaded onto Internet Archive.

It’s a mix. Soviet pamphlets from Progress Publishers, including some books. I’m going to continue uploading from whatever texts I find at my local bookstore. 

If something isn’t popping up: give it some time. Up to an hour and a half to appear at least from my end.

Please enjoy and spread these.

https://archive.org/details/lenin-imperialism-and-imperialists-compressed/mode/2up

https://archive.org/details/leninist-standardsof-party-life_202307

https://archive.org/details/lenin-on-public-education-compressed

https://archive.org/details/adhd-punished-vo-communism-https-t.co-2-unu-8-ozvn-x-2

https://archive.org/details/lenin-party-work-inthe-masses-compressed

[workersolidarity]

HEROS OF THE GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR

Roza Georgiyevna Shanin

3 April 1924 – 28 January 1945

Roza Shanina was a graduate of the Central Women's Sniper Training School credited with 59 confirmed kills.

Shanina volunteered for the military after the death of her brother in 1941 and chose to be a sniper on the front line. Praised for her shooting accuracy, Shanina was capable of precisely hitting enemy personnel and making doublets (two target hits by two rounds fired in quick succession).

In 1944, a Canadian newspaper described Shanina as "the unseen terror of East Prussia". She became the first servicewoman of the 3rd Belorussian Front to receive the Order of Glory.

Shanina was killed in action during the East Prussian Offensive while shielding the severely wounded commander of an artillery unit. Shanina's actions received praise during her lifetime, but conflicted with the Soviet policy of sparing snipers from heavy battles. Her combat diary was first published in 1965.

#source

@WorkerSolidarityNews

[arctic-hands]

Quick I've got a godless heathen commie friend whose birthday is coming up. I need an old timey propaganda poster for artistic reference. I don't care about the flavor of communism (except maybe not the khmer rouge) as long as the composition of the art is interesting and it features a person, either a whole body or just a head

[snatching-ishidates-wig]

Komsomol member pin.

The Komsomol (abbreviation of the Russian Vsesoyuzny Leninsky Kommunistichesky Soyuz Molodyozhi -- All-Union Leninist Communist League of Youth in English) was a Communist youth organization created in 1918.

[kvetch19]

Soviet Marines on Mount Mithridates in Kerch

[titsoutfornature]

oh wow so like, conversion therapy logic.

[cocacolonization]

DOSSIER NO. 80 The Telugu People’s Struggle for Land and Dreams

Accessed January 4-5, 2025 in Istanbul through the link below.

https://thetricontinental.org/dossier-80-culture-and-the-telugu-peoples-class-struggle/#toc-section-1

Notes are below.

[whereserpentswalk]

The nazis that you see in movies are as much a historical fantasy as vikings with horned helmets and samurai cutting people in half.

The nazis were not some vague evil that wanted to hurt people for the sake of hurting them. They had specific goals which furthered a far right agenda, and they wanted to do harm to very specific groups, (largely slavs, jews, Romani, queer people, communists/leftists, and disabled people.)

The nazis didn't use soldiers in creepy gas masks as their main imagery that they sold to the german people, they used blond haired blue eyed families. Nor did they stand up on podiums saying that would wage an endless and brutal war, they gave speeches about protecting white Christian society from degenerates just like how conservatives do today.

Nazis weren't atheists or pagans. They were deeply Christian and Christianity was part of their ideology just like it is for modern conservatives. They spoke at lengths about defending their Christian nation from godless leftism. The ones who hated the catholic church hated it for protestant reasons. Nazi occultism was fringe within the party and never expected to become mainstream, and those occultists were still Christian, none of them ever claimed to be Satanists or Asatru.

Nazis were also not queer or disabled. They killed those groups, before they had a chance to kill almost anyone else actually. Despite the amount of disabled nazis or queer/queer coded nazis you'll see in movies and on TV, in reality they were very cishet and very able bodied. There was one high ranking nazi early on who was gay and the other nazis killed him for that. Saying the nazis were gay or disabled makes about as much sense as saying they were Jewish.

The nazis weren't mentally ill. As previously mentioned they hated disabled people, and this unquestionably included anyone neurodivergent. When the surviving nazi war criminals were given psychological tests after the war, they were shown to be some of the most neurotypical people out there.

The nazis weren't socialists. Full stop. They hated socialists. They got elected on hating socialists. They killed socialists. Hating all forms of lefitsm was a big part of their ideology, and especially a big part of how they sold themselves.

The nazis were not the supervillians you see on screen, not because they didn't do horrible things in real life, they most certainly did, but because they weren't that vague apolitical evil that exists for white American action heros to fight. They did horrible things because they had a right wing authoritarian political ideology, an ideology that is fundamentally the same as what most of the modern right wing believes.

[valkyries-things]

CLAUDIA JONES // JOURNALIST

“She was a Trinidad and Tobago-born journalist and activist. As a child, she migrated with her family to the United States, where she became a Communist political activist, feminist and Black nationalist, adopting the name Jones as “self-protective disinformation”. Due to the political persecution of Communists in the US, she was deported in 1955 and subsequently lived in the United States. Upon arriving in the UK, she immediately joined the Communist Party of Great Britain and would remain a member for the rest of her life. She then founded Britain’s first major Black newspaper, the West Indian Gazette, in 1958, and played a central role in founding the Notting Hill Carnival, the second-largest annual carnival in the world.”

[comradeowl]

New upload! A monograph of the history leading up through the '33-'41 years. Hope ya'll enjoy this one.

[workersolidarity]

How can I explain to people who ask me how can I be a Leninist and still anti imperialist?

Lol, well Lenin literally wrote the book on Imperialism in his pamphlet; Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism. I would strongly suggest reading and rereading it, and rereading it again.

But in Chapter 10 of Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, Lenin characterizes imperialism as a stage of monopoly capitalism marked by monopolies, cartels, the role of banks as monopolists of finance capital, and a new colonial policy centered around the struggle for raw materials and capital exports. He argues that imperialism has led to increases in the cost of living for working people and increased unevenness in the economic development of states. Lenin sees the monopolies' oligarchical powers as a symptom of a transitional era and a "moribund" capitalism.

Lenin thus argues that advanced capitalist nation-states and cartels exploit both their own citizens and the resources and people of other countries, creating a parasitic relationship that allows cartels to profit and expand. This ultimately relies on the use of force or threat of use of force to protect private interests. Exploited nations are unable to achieve meaningful development due to this exploitation. This affects their ability to engage with each other and defend themselves. Imperialism's all-encompassing power distorts social and economic processes in both imperialist and colonized nations. Therefore, the struggle between imperialism and decolonization is the most important conflict for the future of humanity.

Lucky for me, another Marxist Leninist has gone over this exact question and goes into detail why the Soviet Union was NOT Imperialist. In fact, by definition, the Soviet Union was an Anti-Imperialist State:

[snatching-ishidates-wig]

Pavel Nikolayevich Milyukov in 1917.

According to Milyukov, a contemporary historian and politician, Bolshevism had two aspects:

"One is international; the other is genuinely Russian. The international aspect of Bolshevism is due to its origin in a very advanced European theory. Its purely Russian aspect is chiefly concerned with its practice, which is deeply rooted in Russian reality and, far from breaking with the "ancien regime," reasserts Russia's past in the present. As geological upheavals bring the lower strata of the earth to the surface as evidence of the early ages of our planet, so Russian Bolshevism, by discarding the thin upper social layer, has laid bare the uncultured and unorganized substratum of Russian historical life."

Bolshevism: an International Danger: Its Doctrine and Its Practice Through War and Revolution, by Pavel Nikolayevich Milyukov.

Members of the Russian Provisional Government, Milyukov top left (serving as Foreign Minister).