Etikettarkiv: European history

New Title: ”The Elephant and the Porcelain Shop”. Transnational Anti-Colonialism and the League against Imperialism, 1927-1937

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Edited note: The book has a new title: ”The Elephant and the Porcelain Shop”. Transnational Anti-Colonialism and the League against Imperialism, 1927-1937 [31.1.2017]

With this note on 11 April 2014 I launch one of my forthcoming book projects: The Dark International. The League against Imperialism, Anti-Colonialism, and International Communism, 1925 – 1937. The major reason for why is that I want to write, revise, and publish a transnational history on my doctoral thesis on the sympathizing organization the League against Imperialism (1927-37).

Congress Presidium, "First International Congress against Colonialism and Imperialism", Brussels 10-14 February, 1927

The book will be divided in three thematic parts: Part I will introduce a general survey over the relationship between anti-colonialism and communism as radical political movements during the interwar years. The chronology will abide to a spatial principle, i.e. begin in Versailles 1919, initiated in Brussels, developed and reaching a critical point in Berlin, only to end in Paris and London.

Part II will focus on the internal aspects of the League against Imperialism and the relations to its main beneficiary, the Communist International. This part will rely extensively on my doctoral disseration ”We Are Neither Visionaries Nor Utopian Dreamers”. Willi Münzenberg, the League against Imperialism, and the Comintern, 1925-1933 (Åbo Akademi University, 2013).

Part III shall explore and analyze the transnational political and cultural exchanges of the League against Imperialism. This calls for examining the national sections of the LAI, and, the nature and political discourse of the LAI’s propaganda. This part will also include an examination of the critique introduced and vigorously maintained by the European socialist movement against the LAI, a question that addresses the difficulties of the socialist movement to approach and take a stand on the colonial question during the interwar years.

Aside from these three themes, the book will include an introduction and discussion on the very idea of ”the Dark International”, a conclusive discussion, and a dramatis personae. Based on documents collected in archives in Moscow, Berlin, Amsterdam, Paris, London and Stockholm, the general aim of the book is to produce an extensive and thorough history that will cover every aspect of the League against Imperialism.

 

”…a smooth operator”: Laszlo Dobos (a.k.a. Louis Gibarti) Short Personal File in the Comintern Archive

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Enclosed Picture in Gibarti's Personal File, National Archives (Kew Gardens, London) Public Records Office KV2/1401

Picture of Louis Gibarti, Source: The National Archives (Kew Gardens, London) Public Records Office KV2/1401

In 1946, an unknown writer remembered and described the Hungarian Laszlo Dobos as ”a smooth operator”, a person that had been active under the name of Louis Gibarti (1895-1967), and was intimately connected to Willi Münzenberg’s activities. I will not here go further into detail about Gibarti/Dobos life and career in the international communist movement during the interwar years. However, the definition of Gibarti as ”a smooth operator” aptly describes his life and the ambigous traces left behind in the Comintern Archive in Moscow, traces that leave more questions than answers. While some of the active individuals in the Comintern left a trail of documents, compiled and categorized in personal files, Gibarti’s personal file consists only of half a page (see below), which, in all of its scarceness, give no substantial evidence or clues about his actual role or contributions in various communist movements or activities during the 1920s-30s. 

Still, Gibarti is a fascinating character in the history of international communism, a person that played a part in shaping the outcome of the League against Imperialism and the Anti-war movement in 1932 (the Amsterdam Congress in August, 1932) to mention a few examples. In 1941, the political police in Madrid arrested Gibarti ”while trying to cross illegally Spain”, whereupon he spent 27 months in Spanish prisons and camps. After the Second World War, Gibarti held a position in the UNESCO, later suspected of being an informant for the FBI in connection with the communist spectre beginning to haunt the USA as the Cold War made its entrance. In 1955, Gibarti re-established some of the contacts from the 1920s as he interviewed the Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru in the French paper Le Monde diplomatique in relation to the Afro-Asian Conference in Bandung 1955. Thus, this is one of several historical threads which link together the Bandung Conference in 1955 with the ”First International Congress Against Colonialism and Imperialism” in Brussels 1927.   

Below follow Gibarti’s ”total” personal file in the Comintern Archive:    

RGASPI 495/205/6048: Louis Gibarti (LUIZ GIBARTI)

List 1, Biography on Gibarti, undated

Luis Gibarti, geb. 26.4.95. Ungarn. Politisch organ. Seit 1913 Jug. 1919 ung. KP. KPD seit Febr.29 (?) Arbeitete im internationalen Auftrag für die IAH, war in Amerika usw. Vor Eintritt der Hitlerdiktatur war G. Instrukteur der Telefunkenzelle. April [19]33 verließ er Deutschland auf Anweisung des Gen. Mü [Münzenberg]. Er meldete sich nur bei seiner Zelle ab, da er die UBL nicht erreichen konnte. War dann in Paris Sekr. d. Welthilfskomitees, und reiste in dessen Auftrag auch andere Staaten.

The sparse content in Gibarti’s personal file in the Comintern Archive stands in stark contrast with his personal file, located in the British National Archives in Kew Gardens, London. The dossier contains documents and accounts which entails a thorough understanding of Gibarti’s life both within and outside the international communist movement. The history of Gibarti will be continued…

Willi Münzenberg, the League against Imperialism, and the Comintern, 1925-1933 (Vol.I-II)

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The Honorary Presidium and Executive Committee of the League against Imperialism (1929) prior to the 'Second International Congress against Colonialism and Imperialism'

The Honorary Presidium and Executive Committee of the League against Imperialism (1929) prior to the ’Second International Congress against Colonialism and Imperialism’

On 10 February 1927, the “First International Congress against Imperialism and Colonialism” in Brussels marked the establishment of the anti-imperialist organisation, the League against Imperialism and for National Independence (LAI, 1927-37). The complex preparations for the congress were though initiated already in 1925 by Willi Münzenberg, a German communist and General Secretary of the communist mass organisation, Internationale Arbeiterhilfe (IAH, 1921-35), together with the Communist International (Comintern, 1919-43). Berlin was the centre for the LAI and its International Secretariat (1927-33), a city serving the intentions of the communists to find colonial émigré activists in the Weimar capital, acting as representatives for the anti-colonial movement in Europe after the Great War. With the ascendancy to power of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) on 30 January 1933, the LAI reached an abrupt, but nonetheless, expected end in Berlin. This book, based on Petersson’s doctoral dissertation, examines the role, purpose and functions of a sympathising organization (LAI): to act as an intermediary for the Comintern to the colonies. The analysis evaluates the structure and activities of the LAI, and by doing so, establish a complex understanding on one of the most influential communist organisations during the interwar period, which, despite its short existence, assumed a nostalgic reference and historical bond for anti-colonial movements during the transition from colonialism to post-colonialism after the Second World War, e.g. the Afro-Asian Conference in Bandung, Indonesia in 1955. Fredrik Petersson’s study, based on archives in Moscow, Berlin, Amsterdam, London, and Stockholm, uncovers why the Comintern established and supported the LAI and its anti-imperialist agenda, disclosing a complicated undertaking, characterised by conflict and the internal struggle for power, involving structural constraints and individual ambitions defined by communist ideology and strategy.
Publisher: Queenston/Edwin Mellen Press
Publication Date: Nov 15, 2013