The first show trial of a Bolshevik
Given his prominence as a high-ranking Bolshevik, Mirsad Sultan-Galiev is very little known. This is partly because he was cut off early in his career by persecution and ultimate execution in Stalin’s purges and his writings suppressed for decades, but also due to distortion and lack of comprehension of his arguments even by many anti-Stalinists. This is a pity, because there is much we can learn from his writings as well as his practice even today.
Kavita Krishnan, a Marxist feminist who had been for three decades a member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation, a member of the Politbureau, leader of its women’s wing (the All-India Progressive Women’s Association) and a prominent spokesperson of the party, suddenly quit these posts and the party itself in early September 2022. Many admirers were unclear about what had happened and why, although from her subsequent statements and articles it became clear that the reason was a disagreement with the party’s position on the war in Ukraine.
On April 10, 2023, she was interviewed by Rohini Hensman on her departure from the party and her differences with it.
The war in Ukraine has pulled into focus the notion of non-alignment among states of the ‘Global South’. Some observers have drawn parallels with the emergence of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) that formed in the wake of the 1955 Bandung Conference, seeking to organise postcolonial states into a movement for decolonisation, nonaggression, and noninterference in the internal affairs of another country (Final Communiqué of the Asian-African Conference 1955). The first summit of the NAM was convened in Belgrade by Jawaharlal Nehru of India, Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Sukarno of Indonesia and Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia in 1961. One of its core principles in the context of the Cold War was that members should refrain from allying with either of the super-powers, the United States and the USSR (Munro n.d.).
With the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the NAM seemed to have lost its raison d’etre. Yet today, around the world and across the political spectrum, there is a sense that the NAM’s values are being resurrected, or must be, although the definition of these values is disputed.
From the previous presentations, it should be obvious that the USSR was not a union of equal republics. It was an empire in which Russia dominated the former Tsarist colonies, sometimes in extremely cruel ways.
Lenin envisaged a different set-up from the centralised and Russified Tsarist empire, and he did try to bring about equality as the civil war was winding down. A series of treaties in 1920–1921 recognised Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Finland and Poland as independent states. Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan became independent Soviet Socialist Republics. In smaller minority ethnic enclaves, local and regional self-government and linguistic and cultural development were encouraged. On December 30, 1922, the First Congress of Soviets of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics approved the Treaty on the formation of the USSR. Lenin insisted on a clause proclaiming the right to self-determination, including secession from the USSR. Lenin made some serious mistakes; for example, he prevented the Constituent Assembly from taking place and stifled opposition, laying the basis for Stalin to come to power. But his insistence on the right to secede was absolutely correct. If the USSR was to be a voluntary union of equal republics, every republic had to be free to secede from it.
On July 14, 2022, Sri Lanka’s parliamentary speaker announced that he had accepted the resignation of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, sent by email from Singapore where he had fled via The Maldives.[1] That this former military commander – known as ‘the terminator’ due to his propensity to get critics assassinated[2] – was forced to resign by an overwhelmingly non-violent mass movement marks this as a major episode in Sri Lanka’s protracted democratic revolution.[3]
On July 14, 2022, Sri Lanka’s parliamentary speaker announced that he had accepted the resignation of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, sent by email from Singapore where he had fled via The Maldives.[1] That this former military commander – known as ‘the terminator’ due to his propensity to get critics assassinated[2] – was forced to resign by an overwhelmingly non-violent mass movement marks this as a major episode in Sri Lanka’s protracted democratic revolution.[3]
Introduction
Christianity came to India and Sri Lanka from other countries at various periods ranging from ancient times to the present. Therefore a general view of the link between Christianity and capitalism (or anti-capitalism) is necessary in order to understand how the specific relationship between Christianity and capitalism (or anti-capitalism) developed in these two countries. The first section of this paper will present a general view of Christian attitudes to poverty, wealth and capitalism in early Christianity, during the Reformation, and in the modern period; the second and third sections will look at the shapes and forms these attitudes took in India and Sri Lanka respectively; and the conclusion will sum up the findings of the paper.
SRT provides a wealth of empirical description, especially of domestic labour in Western capitalist societies and the provision of education...