Contribution: “An injustice towards those who died for democracy and socialism”

Poster for a pro-EPRP solidarity event in Amsterdam, 1978,
protesting Soviet intervention on the side of the military regime.

I am very pleased to present an original contribution to this blog from a long-time veteran of the Ethiopian revolutionary struggle. A few words about how this contribution came to be.

I have been using social media like this blog and Facebook in conjunction with my book project as a resource to  promote my work, to meet and engage with people who can share their perspective and experiences, and to discuss some of the history and ideas confronted by my studies. I have met some amazing people, several of whom have helped my work out in significant ways. I'm very grateful to everyone who has communicated with me in the course of my research. The discussions that have been joined have helped me identify and formulate responses to some of the controversial and complicated political and ideological questions raised by my study of the Ethiopian left and its revolution.

Anyway, I shared some information and a photo on one aspect of my research, and it sparked a lengthy, and at times heated, conversation about the misguided role of much of the American left in supporting the Derg against the Ethiopian civilian left during the period of military rule in the 1970s. I provoked the discussion by stating,“The Workers World Party, with which the PSL shares political lineage, enthusiastically and uncritically supported the military regime that murdered an entire generation of Ethiopian leftists.” I backed this up with a 1970s-quote from the WWP, illustrating their endorsement of the vicious terror which took the lives of so many leftists: “Red terror was launched just a few months ago against these enemies of the revolution, and many have been killed or captured so that today things are quiet in Addis.” To my surprise, the discussion was joined by a WWP supporter who defended their abhorrent record. A number of other leftists and activists also engaged the conversation — including those with a long record of solidarity work — which focused in large part on how Cuba and the Soviet Union also supported the Mengistu regime against the EPRP.

The WWP apologist on this Facebook thread said drily “sometimes too much blood flows.” It really struck me that historical apologists seem to think it’s easy to wave away real-world horror with abstraction and rationalization; I have come to the conclusion it’s crucial to understand the humanity — or absence of humanity — behind the events we study. When we say the Derg regime eliminated the civilian left, that is an inadequate description of how that was really experienced. There was no button to be pressed to make thousands of EPRP members “disappear.” What there were, were mass shootings, mass torture, midnight raids, neighborhood dragnets. There was mass rape, there was unspeakable tortures involving male and female body parts and fire, iron, and leather. There were hot pincers. There were bodies bent in ways they shouldn't be bent. There were bullets fired into crowds of children. There were years of prison with no charges, often ending in a shot. There were parents asked to pay for the bullets that killed their children. There were piles of bodies left on streetcorners pasted with threatening signs. There were people killed for possessing leaflets and leftist papers, just like the kind most of us have lying around the house. Those who love and serve the people don't revel in such things; monsters do.

Sometime after this conversation, I received the following contribution in response to my post and the commentary afterwards. I am thrilled to be able to share it here; the author is known to me and published here in the tradition of most Ethiopian revolutionary writings under his nom de guerre. As a matter of record, his point of view is solely his own. —ISH

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By KASSAHUN

Sometime ago I read in one of your postings some comments made by others as regards Cuba's stand on Ethiopia and the rehashing of the Soviet camp stand on the EPRP. I will like to register some views as a founding member of the revolutionary party, the first political party in Ethiopia, the EPRP.

Fidel Castro was very much a demagogue and he did blunder big time when he declared “Mengistu is a genuine revolutionary” and supported him to the hilt. No matter if Mengistu, a military butcher, was trying to wipe out progressives who emulated Che Guevara and Ho Chi Minh. The Cuban negativity to the Ethiopian revolutionaries had a history. It was clear that Cuba did not take a stand that in any way did not tag along with the Soviet stand.

The contact with what was to become the EPRP and Cuba tool place in Algiers, Boumedienne's Algeria the early 1970s. The Ethiopians who were to establish the EPRP were looking for passports to use for travel outside of Algiers and asked Cuba for one single passport as an initial aid. Cuba, which gave Miriam Makeba a diplomatic passport she did not need, refused to help. Not only that it did not need any relations with the EPRP. When the EPRP held its founding congress it resolved that it did not go along with Soviet line and policy but will keep this position to itself and will not take any part in the Sino-Soviet dispute in any way. This was a position forced upon it by the concrete situation it had to face, to work under. Obviously this was not a position appreciated by the Soviet bloc.

Fidel Castro with Mengistu Haile Mariam in Addis Ababa

Castro's endorsement of Mengistu the butcher as a revolutionary was stupid demagogy and a damage to the Ethiopian Revolution. No one can deny this especially after all these years.

Following the Soviet interest in the region, those parties following its diktat also fulminated against the EPRP. It is surprising that the American pro-Soviet parties still peddle the Soviet anti-EPRP attack and propaganda against the party which upheld an anti-feudal and anti-imperialist stand as its guideline. The organization was attacked by both Western imperialism and the Soviets because it championed sovereignty and refused to the Soviet bloc diktat. Workers World and others are but their Master' s voice.

The EPRP was formed on one part to fight against imperialism and did fight against it with persistence until today. That is why recycling the lies of the defunct pro-Soviet regime is of no value whatsoever. Those who besmirch the organization's name commit an injustice towards those who died for democracy and socialism (as opposed to real socialism). The EPRP fought for people's democracy and is still fighting for people's government and democracy. The reality on the ground imposes upon it the need to reduce the enemy opposed to it. The EPRP was strongly independent, did not bow to pressures (from China and South Yemen for example), kept its revolutionary line intact an paid high cost for that (expulsion from Aden, break with China, hostility from the Arabs especially from Sudan and Somalia).

To try to allege that the EPRP was with imperialism is to ridicule oneself to no end. The attempt by one poster that the fact that EPRP now stands for social democracy and market economy proves its pro-imperialism stance is pathetic to say the least. Thanks to the Soviet-supported Derg, socialism is now in Ethiopia a hated word and choice.

Secondly, given the actual world reality and the encirclement of Ethiopia by reactionary and pro-imperialist forces the party has to move carefully. In the past it rejected the so called non-capitalist path of the Soviets and the Third World theory of the Chinese and the whole Maoist line. As I said the cost was high. The demands raised by the EPRP resounded with the people and that was why people rallied to it. The demands then presented (democracy, people's government, sovereignty, the rule of law, real multi-party system etc.) have not been properly addressed up to now and that is why the struggle still continues.

One of the people who posted on your line sounded like an Eritrean groupie. The groupies did much damage then. So called progressives and leftists who adopted so called liberation Fronts and became unabashed god fathers of petty bourgeois movements should now regret their nefarious role. They should regret their support to the now ruling Tigrean and Eritrean fronts and their condemnation of the EPRP for advancing class struggle over ethnic championing.

If your interlocutors want to discuss more and have the determination to go above their defunct partisanship and echoing of outdated dogmas I am ready to engage with them to make them aware of the truth.

Research Update; Faces of History

Dr. Nigist Adane, date unknown

The central premise of the book I'm working on is that the Ethiopian revolution may have ultimately been hijacked by the military and become the story of a military regime, but it didn't start out that way. It was actually a much more complicated story than most histories acknowledge. I'm trying in part to humanize the generation of leftists who, while they were ultimately defeated, shared a dream of a liberated, socialist, and democratic Ethiopia.

I've been fascinated by many of the individuals who lost their lives during the revolution and during the period of military consolidation. It's one thing to read about the loss of nameless thousands, it's another to learn the details of the individual lives lost. Somehow finding photographs of the people one reads about adds a whole other dimension to understanding that history is not just dry words in books but the story of multi-dimensional real human beings meeting real-world challenges and suffering real-world loss. Photos humanize even the people who made terrible mistakes.

The photo above is a picture of one such tragic figure. Dr. Nigist Adane was a pediatrician educated in the Soviet Union, not uncommon for radical Ethiopian students under Haile Selassie. Initially in the orbit of the EPRP, she and her husband shifted and became leaders of the All Ethiopian Socialist Movement or Meison, a group which wound up supporting the military and shares responsibility for the military's bloody vendetta against the EPRP wing of the civilian left. She was active in building the women's movement during the revolutionary period ca. 1975-1976. In mid-1977 her group broke with the military regime and went underground, becoming targets of the same repression they had helped instigate. She was captured with most of the other leadership of the group. The story goes that these high-level leftist prisoners were strangled during a graduation ceremony of security forces cadets. She was killed in 1978. She is just one of the figures who as characters in my book, even small players, have drawn me into the human story of the Ethiopian revolution.

My book project is proceeding nicely. I'm following leads on additional research details and still attempting to acquire original materials. I'm still in need of various translation help. But my writing is really coming together; I'm approximately 2/3 done with a first draft. Finishing a first draft will only be a kind of new beginning: there will be an editing process I expect to be painstaking and frustrating; there are details and sources to add and probably some to delete. I will want to make sure the narrative is understandable, compelling, comprehensive and enjoyable. And I will need to make sure the overall political and historical content is accurate and what I want to communicate. I will soon be approaching a carefully chosen list of book publishers.  

Thank you for visiting my research blog and taking an interest in my project.