A Trip to the Library

Programme of EMALEDH, 1977

I took a research visit today to the famed Tamiment Collection at New York University. The “Reference Center for Marxist Studies Pamphlet Collection” consists of a substantial pamphlet archive donated to the library by the Communist Party USA’s New York City offices. Since this archive was donated by the arch-revisionist CPUSA, today openly engaged in a discussion of whether to endorse right-social-democrat Bernie Sanders or neo-con Hillary Clinton in the Democratic Party primaries for the 2016 election, the Ethiopia portion of this archive is entirely material sympathetic to the Derg, the military committee that hijacked the popular 1974 revolution and ruled with great brutality until it was overthrown in 1991.

Nevertheless, it's a fascinating collection of a few dozen pamphlets — required reading for balanced research — and I'm happy to show a few of the covers here.

Above is the cover of EMALEDH's program from 1977, an English translation of an issue of Yehibret Dimtse. EMALEDH was the first of several attempts by the Derg at creating a united front of civilian left groups loyal to the government en route to creating an official ruling party in the image of the communist parties controlling the other countries of the Soviet bloc. (I will leave for another day any discussion of whether those countries earned their socialist credentials.) Eventually the Workers’ Party of Ethiopia was formed after Mengistu worked his way through and eliminated all competition to his own version of a communist party. The cover of that party's program, from the 1980s, is shown next.

Next are two fascinating pamphlets from “United Progressive Ethiopian Students Union in North America,” apparently a pro-Derg split from the much larger and more dominant ESUNA, which was pro-EPRP. The first pamphlet is a length polemic against EPRP entitled, “Petty Bourgeois Radicalism and Left Infantalism in Ethiopia: The Case of EPRP,” from 1977. I'm guessing that Meison was the actual force behind UPESUNA, and this pamphlet rehashes debates from the Ethiopian student movement going back to the 1960s. The second UPESUNA item also dates from 1977, a periodical entitled “Ethio-Inform” which consists entirely of clips about Ethiopia sympathetic to the Derg from the Soviet Press. 

The cover photo of this piece is fascinating. Above the caption “Revolutionary Ethiopia or Death,” a crowd of Ethiopians carries a Meison hammer-and-sickle banner, a well-known Chinese portrait of Joseph Stalin, and a Chinese cultural revolution-vintage poster of Lenin. It's put together in classic low-tech 1970s leftist style.

“The Men-in-Uniform in the Ethiopian Revolution” from 1978 dates from the period after Meison outlived its usefulness to the Derg, it includes a section accusing Meison of “deserting” the revolution. This pamphlet, about the armies and militias of Ethiopia, is one of several in the collection reflecting the increased nationalism and militarism necessitated by the war against Eritrea and the invasion by Somalia that marked the later part of the 1970s.

“The Ethiopian Revolution (Tasks, Achievements, Problems and Prospects)” is attributed to Senay Likke. It's plain, undated and bears no reference of publisher. Likke was the chief civilian leftist advisor to Mengistu, representing his own group Waz League. He was killed by an EPRP sympathizer in retaliation during Mengistu's 1977 internal coup. Likke was educated in the United States.

Finally here, a pamphlet celebrating May Day, from 1977, issued by the Derg's own information ministry. There was plenty more in the collection, so I'll need to make a second trip!

A reminder that I am looking for archival materials like these, more especially materials in English issued by the EPRP and the sections of the student movement sympathetic to it: publications like Forward, Combat, Challenge, Struggle and Zena. If you have something available, either original, photocopy, or pdf, please contact me. You may leave a comment marked "not for publication" with your contact info and I will get back to you.