Investigation Update

I started this blog a year and a half ago and promptly neglected it. The good news is that I have not actually neglected the investigation that I promised I was undertaking in my original Statement of Intent. I've compiled a lengthy reading list and acquired most of the books I have tasked myself with reading. I've been working my way through the stacks, really amazed at what I've been reading. I will publish that reading list soon.

My readings have thus far included historical accounts of Ethiopia and its revolution, participant memoirs, original sources, and the two extraordinary volumes of detailed internal EPRP history by Kiflu Tadesse entitled The Generation. I'm part way through the second volume of this as I write. Each reading answers many of my investigation questions and opens up more.

I've identified a number of key issues in understanding the revolution. While a sense of tragedy overwhelms me when I think of how the revolution ultimately unfolded, I find myself incredibly inspired by the young revolutionaries inside Ethiopia in the mid-1970s, and frankly shocked that the world left has failed to examine what happened there. The Ethiopian Revolution strikes me as nothing less significant than the Russian Revolution of the early 20th-century, with many of the historical events unfolding in remarkably patterned ways. The experience of the EPRP in struggling to combat the military's hijacking of the revolution should be studied and examined by anyone interested in drawing lessons from the generations of failure of African socialism and the all-too-common phenomenon of military despotism across that continent.

One of the central tragedies of the Ethiopian revolution, of course, is the sectarianism within the civilian left, especially that between EPRP and MEISON, the All-Ethiopian Socialist Movement of Haile Fida et al. This sectarianism is all too often unfairly blamed on the EPRP, and leads to the argument, incorrect in my opinion, that the EPRP was in fact responsible for provoking the "Red Terror." I wanted to share a brief and central insight from Kiflu Tadesse that I find to be incredibly useful in understanding what happened. I have never seen this set to paper so clearly:

"Because of POMOA/MEISON's involvement [in the Derg government—ish], the main differences that separated radicals themselves became the concern of the state power and apparatus." (Kiflu, v2. p.69)

Wow.

Anyway, I hope to write more thorough reviews of the material I've been reading and to occasionally publish other revelatory excerpts. Stay with me. Your comments are appreciated.