Revolutionary Agitation Inside the Ethiopian Air Force, 1975

EPRP: Provisional People's Government Through Armed Struggle

I am pleased to post an extraordinary document below. It is the text of a long leaflet written by revolutionary soldiers within the Ethiopian Air Force in late 1975, as translated from Amharic and published by the Ethiopian Peoples' Revolutionary Party's foreign section in the journal Abyot in 1976. In the tradition of the Russian Bolsheviks, whose agitation among disaffected rank-and-file Russian soldiers in the waning days of the First World War was a crucial part of the revolutionary effort, the EPRP here addresses soldiers with high-level political arguments reflecting the remarkable tenor of the times.

I have included the original introduction and clarifying edits from the Abyot staff below. I have retyped this from the published manuscript, and with a couple minor exceptions, not attempted to add any of my own editing or corrections.

Following the original text, reproduced here in full, I will add some reference notes on unfamiliar terms and names, and offer a few thoughts of my own analysis. —ish

——

“Voice of the Air Force” and the Struggle of Democratic Soldiers.

From ABYOT, Vol. 1, No. 2, January 30, 1976

The struggle of rank and file soldiers and progressive officers played a significant part in the February revolution. Even though, this movement has been recuperated there are still persistent indications that the struggle is continuing within the armed forces for a democratic and socialist society. The number of progressive officers from the Engineering Unit, Army Aviation, Body Guard, etc executed by the Derg testify to this. Truly, the democratic current within the soldiers has a long way to go; but there is no denying that the continuing mass struggle is accentuating the polarisation within the armed forces itself. Beyond and above the rumors of coup attempts and internal power struggle within the Derg, there is an agitation, weak but persistent, within the armed forces for the same demand as the popular masses. Despite the bloody purges the soldiers and democratic officers have made their opposition heard. Such is the case of the anti-junta leaflet distributed by members of the Army Division fighting in Eritrea, in which they expose and oppose the junta's war there. Below, we present a translation of the leaflet distributed clandestinely by by the democratic elements within the Ethiopian Air Force. Though much of the biting irony and forceful tone of the document is lost inevitably through translation, ABYOT believes that it will give a good insight of the developing current within many units of the Armed Forces and show the isolation of the junta.

“VOICE OF THE AIR FORCE”

ONE CAN’T REPEATEDLY CHEAT THE AIR FORCE

The member of the Air Force, united with the oppressed Ethiopian masses (the proletariat, peasantry, progressive students and teachers, oppressed soldiers) has played a significant role in the popular revolution that has been going on since February 1974. The Air Force still struggles and will continue to do so.

During this time [February - ABYOT] the Air Force, along with the struggling comrades, demanded — long before the Derg proclaimed its government — major rights including:
1. democratic liberties to the oppressed masses;
2. the establishment of a revolutionary provisional government.

However, since the Derg was obsessed with power it swore that "the military will return to the barracks as soon as the people are organised and we hand them power". The Derg also started to propagate that to allow democratic liberties will give the reactionaries the chance to dupe the people. This propaganda of the Derg was able to dupe for a short period of time. Meanwhile, the Ethiopian masses, who had understood the necessity of democratic rights in order to organise the people, strengthened their struggle demanding full democratic rights (free speech, press, freedom to organise, assemble) for the oppressed, and dictatorship over oppressors; the people struggled to be organised by intellectuals who come from their midst (who have the masses' confidence) and to take over power. The Air Force, on its part, demanded the adoption of socialist democracy.

However, the Derg, though it still continued to trumpet that "we will go back to the barracks as soon as the people get organised to take power",

1. proclaimed anti-democratic, anti-organisation and counter-revolutionary laws that denied the basic rights that are crucial for organisation;
2. based on these proclamations it massacred many progressives and arrested countless others;
3. instead of organising the unorganised, it dissolved existing mass organisations (CELU, Teachers' Association, students unions, peasant associations), arrested or killed their leaders
4. within the Air .Force it· (Derg) arrested the progressives like Yigezu;
5. it killed progressive students and Zematchoch whom it villified as "reactionaries"; it arrested them en masse;
6. ignoring the opposition of the Air Force, it went ahead to squander money on a square [the "Revolution Square" which was built by the junta at huge cost —ABYOT] while the masses suffered from the famine; it, again ignoring the opposition of the Air Force, spent money on new uniforms for soldiers in an effort to buy their allegiance;
7. it has unleashed its security agents over the masses and imposed on them a fascist regime like Franco of Spain and Salazzar of Portugal.

Understanding this, refusing to be a colonialist over one's own peoples, affirming its oneness with the masses, the Air Force has said NO to the junta's rule. However, the Derg believing wrongly that the Air Force will not bother about the masses once its interests are kept, considering us as mercenaries, as people who do not care about the masses, it (Derg) tries to allege, that the opposition of the Air Force is motivated by “the internal disagreements between ·officers and others”. And with an underestimation of the Air Force, the Derg speaks separately to officers and others [in the A.F. — ABYOT] acting as "a mediator between husband and wife. All this is to cheat us like innocent children the Air Force that has fully opposed their (the Derg’s) rule.

Hence, from now on, as we have fully understood the situation and as we love our country and class comrades more than. any stage character (clown) we affirm that the Air Force will never be tricked by the sweet words and fake smiles of a hundred actors of the likes of Major Sisaye [he is a top member of the Derg and a former Air Force officer known for his ultra-fascist tendencies — ABYOT].

We shall deal below with the reasons for the present attempt (by the Derg) to divert our attention from national issues to inter Air Force ones·by analysing the origin, nature and solutions for the contradictions·in our midst. At present, while we have risen up to oppose the fascist proclamations made, in the name of the ·revolution, against the masses and the Air Force, Major Sisaye and likes are flocking here [to the Air Force base at Bishoftu —ABYOT] uttering one nonesense after another in the belief that the maintenance of the internal contradictions in the Air Force will be advantageous to them.

TPLF/EPRDF rebels capture Bishoftu Airforce Base in 1991

This means that they intend to practice their divide and rule techniques by making sure that the internal problems keep us from following the crimes they commit at the national level and push us to concentrate on battling within ourselves. Now that we have rise up understanding the suffering and injustice prevailing in the country and realised that the oppression and injustice we suffer inside (the Air Force) is just a part, and a small one at that, of the overall fascist oppression existing in the country, and now that we have up together with our class comrades — workers, peasants, progressive intellectuals and students — they (the Derg) want to separate us from our class brothers, to make us "reconciled" even for a short time and to make us continue to bomb and support their fascist massacres (of the masses) by making us believe that the other sections of the oppressed masses are as “free” as we in the Air Force. This attempt reminds us of the attempt made by General Mulugeta [Chairman of the High/Military/Security Commission, a reactionary organisation set-up by the then prime minister Endalkatchew Makonen to control the soldiers' movement —AB] to push us to sacrifice ourselves and the people in defence of a monarchy that the masses hated and wanted removed. Similarly, the Derg at present is trying to make us support it while the masses want it removed and hate it (the Derg). We have fully realised that this attempt is a trap to make us act against the masses!!

The contradictions that exist within the Air Force are, at present, as follows:

1. between officers and others;
2. between soldiers (officers included) and civilian employees of the Air Force;
3. between the Air Police and Airmen, between technicians and cadets.

Of all these, the first one is primary and antagonistic. And this is because the officers and the others stand for quite different and contradictory interests. If one satisfies his interest it will inevitably be at the expense of the others.

The officers, with the exception of a few progressive ones, consider the other soldiers as human animals (beasts) employed to carry out their orders. They consider them ignorant, stupid, incapable of thinking or giving opinions. On the other hand, the officers consider themselves as angels, as learned (philosophers), as those whose orders should always be obeyed because all that they say and do are at all times and places correct, as those whose words are always to be believed as they never "lie"!! If an officer eats with other lower-rank soldiers in one mess hall, if he sleeps with them in one compound... he considers himself degraded/profaned. If soldiers with lower ranks enter the officers' mess hall the officer considers himself and the mess hall profaned. Such is the Air Force officer, the human angel living separately in a special compound. This is the reality that no amount of denial can hide or wish away.

In a society divided into classes, the ruling and oppressed classes have their own distinct outlooks (ideologies). While the ruling class in our Force considers us, the oppressed, in the manner described above, we the oppressed have also our own outlooks on the rulers/officers. We say the officers are human, we say that they (despite their decorations and baseless self-aggrandisement) are in many cases inferior to lower rank soldiers, be it in work or knowledge. We say that the lower-rank soldiers are as human as any other. With the exception of a few paid agents and reactionaries, we all believe this to be true. In fact, officers are reactionary and contra change. As such, lower-rank soldiers oppose the divine respect accorded to these reactionaries and demand the abrogation of the special privileges accorded (hospital, lodging, assignment, gasoline) to these anti-change officers. The soldiers say that to obey anti-revolution officers is to be counterrevolutionary oneself. This is correct. Hence, the lower-rank soldiers (NCOs) say: “let the angels who do want to bear our hardships and who do not want to eat on the same table with us return to the country of the angels”!! They say: “let us administer ourselves by electing for ourselves and by ourselves those who have the capability, the dedication and the knowledge to lead us”.

This contradiction cannot be solved separately from the objective situation that exists in Ethiopia. It can only be solved, and to forget this is foolish/utopian, when a genuine socialist revolution is made in Ethiopia and only when the present army (structure/set up, etc) is destroyed and a new one built. Aside from the contradictions with the officers all the other contradictions within us are now antagonistic, they can be solved in a democratic way.

With the exception of a few reactionaries, all of us NCOs, civil employees and progressive officers within the Air Force demand the implementation of the following demands so that we can solve our own minor differences and struggle together with our class comrades for liberty, equality and a scientific socialist revolution:

1. Demissew and his likes (officers) who say that they have gone to the Soviet Union to learn how to form a political party should stop declaring that "democratic liberties should not be accorded to the masses during revolutionary times." They should stop their deceitful actions because we know fully that they want to cling to power under the pretext that the "masses are not still organised."

We know (and we did not have to voyage to the Soviet Union to know this) that "a revolution without an organisation and an organisation without democratic liberties" cannot just come about. "Revolution is a festival of the oppressed", and we know quite clearly that popular democracy is necessary (crucial) during the time of revolution. HENCE WE DEMAND THAT DEMOCRATIC LIBERTIES BE ACCORDED TO THE OPPRESSED MASSES: (emph. added)

2. We have heard that these persons taking courses in the Soviet Union have erased from Marxist books what Marx and Marxists have said on (a) the need to destroy the army set-up by the oppressing classes and build a new (people's) army and (b) the incapability of soldiers to lead the socialist revolution. Our intelligent·philosophers (!) have made this revision on the ground that ''Ethiopia's revolution is different from all other revolutions"! Bravo socialists!! But this is not socialism.

WE HAVE REALISED THAT THE DERG'S REGIME IS NOT SOCIALIST BUT FASCIST. If it was not so how does one account for, at least, the problems caused by the reactionary officers within the Air Force? The workers, peasants, progressive students and intellectuals as well as oppressed soldiers are struggling to recuperate the rights that the Derg forcefully deprived them. The masses are struggling in an organised manner. Hence, the Derg should immediately stop its attempts to make us believe that the soldiers are the vanguard of the socialist revolution, and it should cease its attacks against the struggling masses whom it accuse of "greedily vying for power" or “of sabotaging the revolution". It is the Derg that is greedily vying for power, it is the Derg that is sabotaging/reversing the revolution. Power, belongs to the masses and it is the masses who are demanding to have power, to have what is justly theirs. It is the Derg that is vying for power and to deny this or blame the people instead of the Derg is like blaming the mother for the father's mistakes.

3. The Derg should stop telling us to obey "our superiors" by claiming that "popular discipline should exist" or that "in the Soviet Union also there are those who are superior and those who obey orders". The Derg dries for discipline, while it assigns to high positions for reactionaries like Demissew, officers who were arrested during the February Revolution, anti-revolution officers like the Air Force general and the agents of the C.I.A. Popular discipline can exist and popular decisions passed in a democratic way can be put in practice only when our superiors are officers who are progressive, who-are elected democratically and whose interests are not contradictory to ours. Otherwise, we say NO. We refuse to conspire and act against the revolution and the revolutionaries by allying with counter-revolutionaries!!

4. WE DEMAND THE REJECTION OF EXPANSIONISM THAT THE DERG TRUMPETS and all such blatant declarations. Major Sisaye's statement that "the Derg is not opposed to Djibouti's independence but will not allow it to be member of the Arab League" is an expression of such expansionism. By independence we understand the right of the people to decide its destiny freely, and thus Sisaye's statement not only manifests expansionism but also a contempt for (underestimation of) intelligence/understanding.

5. To proclaim one fascist law after another over the people and to slaughter individuals.who present revolutionary ideas/options and at the same time to declare "tell us your problems, ask us questions” is no more than an invitation to present ourselves (sheepishly) for sacrifice. Hence, if democratic discussions are really desired, all the present anti-democratic, anti-people and anti-organisation proclamations must be repealed/revoked. Prisoners like Yigezu Benti (Air Force), the labour union leaders, the teachers' association leaders and progressive zematch students should be immediately released.

6. PEASANTS AND WORKERS SHOULD BE ARMED so that the revolution can be victorious, so that they can control their localities and so that they can put an end to the activities of feudal bandits. LANDLORDS SHOULD BE DISARMED. The Derg should stop asking us to bomb whole villages on the grounds that there are bandits.

7. WE DEMAND THE IMMEDIATE DISSOLUTION OF THE DERG AND THE FORMATION OF A REVOLUTIONARY POPULAR PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT MADE UP OF EXISTING POLITICAL PARTIES, LABOUR UNIONS, PEASANT ASSOCIATION, TEACHERS' UNIONS, STUDENTS UNIONS AND OPPRESSED SOLDIERS.

The struggle of the Oppressed Soldiers and the Broad Masses will be Victorious!!!
(NB — the above document was distributed at the end of NOV/75)

— end of original document —

EXPLANATIONS:
Derg — a committee of military officers that seized government during the course of 1974. At this time Ethiopia was administered by a junta, the PMAC or Provisional Military Administrative Council, run by two Derg officers as vice chairs (Mengistu Hailemariam and Atnafu Abate) and a non Derg member as head of state, General Teferi Bente.

Zematch, Zematchoch — The Zematch was a national development campaign begun at the very end of 1974 where thousands of urban teachers and students were sent to the countryside to uplift the peasants as the Derg rolled out its reforms. The Zematch students proved to be unruly, and a fertile breeding ground for revolutionary opposition. The Derg attempted to abort the Zematch, executing hundreds of students. Returned campaigners became a mainstay of the EPRP's Youth League, EPRYL.

Major Sisay Habte was a member of the Derg. He was executed along with several other officers in mid-1976 after what the Derg claimed was a coup attempt. It's not clear to me if there were substantial policy differences between Sisay and the rest of PMAC.

CELU was the Confederation of Ethiopian Labour Unions, a major force during the revolutionary year of 1974; by the time of this writing it was in the process of being effectively dominated by the EPRP.

Demissew — I think this refers to Derg member Lt. Demissew Kassaye, who was tried by the Meles government after the fall of Mengistu for crimes committed during the Red Terror. Despite the officially allied relationship between “Socialist” Ethiopia and the United States at this time, hundreds of members of the military including the dwindling numbers of Derg cadre were sent to the Soviet Union for political training starting in 1975.

Djibouti is of course the former French Somaliland; the last colonial holding of France on the African continent. A strategic port claimed variously by both Ethiopia and the Republic of Somalia, at the time of this writing it was slated for independence, which was finally achieved in1977.

SOME ANALYSIS FROM ISH:
I was really excited to read this document. It is important evidence of several things: first, the high political sophistication of participants in the Ethiopian revolution, especially of course, the EPRP which produced it. Critics have derided the EPRP as nothing but the children of the upper classes running amok in a situation above their heads: but clearly their involvement in the ranks of the military and the labor movement belies that view.

The writing is matter of fact, clear and patient; it's also notably better than the cliched triumphalist left-speak that often crept into later writings of the EPRP diaspora, heavily influenced by the sects of the North American New Communist Movement.

Like the EPRP, the Russian Bolsheviks
addressed class conscious soldiers but
they did not use the army of the old state
as a vehicle for seizing power.
Flyer from 1917.

Second, the EPRP actually had a consistent and revolutionary point of view in advocating mass democracy through a civilian government as a path to transforming the democratic revolution into a socialist revolution. The critique leveled against the Derg and its supporters herein is solid, well based in Marxism-Leninism, and convincing in opposition to the self-serving cynicism and rationalizations of the Derg and its Soviet and civilian left advisors. It is extraordinary to me that the EPRP's call — perfectly clear here — for revolutionary socialist democracy was overlooked by most of the world left, who passed it over in favor of claiming revolutionary precedent in the actions of a military junta which had set itself on top of the unfolding popular uprising. This leaflet's derision of the Derg's cynicism is biting and, I think, correct. It makes me shake my head that there are left tendencies that today, decades later, continue to uphold the Derg; the Derg which would began to bloodily uproot the EPRP from Ethiopian society just a few months after this revolutionary leaflet was circulated.

My research into the EPRP's activities in the labor movement has showed me something similar to this leaflet's perspective: how different the EPRP's orientation was to that of the Derg and by extension, the Ethiopian left who attached themselves to the Derg looking for leverage over the revolutionary process. The EPRP's class orientation within the military is as clear as it was in the labor movement: the EPRP is appealing in this case not to the officer corps but to “oppressed soldiers” to join the mass movement. The EPRP actually expresses faith in the organizing potential of the popular masses rather than in attempting to create state institutions to control and steer them. For this they earned the reputation of being “anarchists,” an insult which ought, from my point of view, to make suspect the ideological revisionism of the Soviets and the Derg supporters who rushed in to give provide ideological backing for the Derg's close grip on state power. It seems absolutely true that the revisionists were terrified of the people in revolutionary motion, and could think only of creating institutions of control over the mass movements.

One of the more controversial positions of the EPRP here is that the Derg was not only undemocratic but “fascist.” In a country that was actually occupied by the Italian fascists before World War Two, I think it would be useful before dismissing the EPRP's line here as utterly fantastic, to consider what this word means in the Ethiopian context. And it really should be noted that the Derg was very quick to solve issues of political conflict with the brute finality of simple violence, state repression, and execution. I would like to delve further into the EPRP's analysis here in the future, as some critics have made appropriate observations about the ramifications of calling the Derg “fascist” in the coming showdown between the Party and the government.

It's hard to avoid seeing that the then-Marxist-Leninist EPRP correctly and presciently diagnosed the key challenges for a revolutionary Ethiopia: both of those — popular democracy and the national question — proved to be the undoing of the Derg's regime in the 1991 civil war that finally removed Mengistu from power. They're arguably the key issues in post-Derg Ethiopia today as well.

The EPRP produced a number of clandestine journals and leaflets: eventually possession of these materials was often an instant death sentence from the “Red Terror” death squads. I'm deeply grateful that Abyot preserved and translated this one.

How the Derg Slandered the Left

Mengistu Hailemariam announcing the “Red Terror” with a bottle of blood, 1977

The Derg, and the forces behind it, waged an open campaign against its civilian left opponents. Initially, the pro-Derg POMOA (Provisional Office of Mass Organization Affairs) seems to have handled not only the propaganda war against the EPRP, but also some of the initial repression. This meant that Meison and Waz League, for instance, were not only arguing in public with the EPRP during the period of relative press freedom in 1975-1976, and were shaping the arguments on behalf of the initially much-less-ideologically-astute Derg, but through their role in the Derg's mass organizations were active participants, indeed leaders, of armed action against EPRP.

Indeed it was this muddying of the difference between certain groups and the state that set off the violent, if defensive, urban guerrilla campaign of the EPRP. Sadly for the Derg's initial allies, the military regime eventually treated groups like Meison and Waz League just like the EPRP, rounding up and imprisoning or shooting their membership. In any case, given the fact that the Derg officers largely lacked leftwing bonafides before seizing power, it’s pretty clear that the Derg’s ideological assault originated with its leftist advisors.

Let me repeat a crucially insightful quote from Kiflu Tadesse: “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.” (The Generation, vol. 1) The founders of EPRP, Meison, and Waz League had a long history together in the Ethiopian student movement; differences that seemed abstract in the diaspora or on university campuses exploded into matters of life-or-death importance after the 1974 revolution.

The Derg’s running propaganda war had several patterns. The first was to paint its opposition as “anarchist,” “Maoist” or “Trotskyite.” It was an unoriginal line of argument commonly used by pro-Soviet socialists against opponents deemed to be to their left. The second line of argument was to blur the distinction between the regime’s left and right oppositions, thus suggesting that the EPRP was aligned, objectively if not actually, to the monarchist Ethiopian Democratic Union (EDU). The final line of argument was that its opponents were engaged in subversion of the nation of Ethiopia to the benefit, if not at the agency of, reactionary separatists, western imperialism, or imperialism’s local allies like the suddenly US-backed regime of Mohammad Siad Barre in neighboring Somalia. This included the occasional accusation that the civilian left groups were creatures of the CIA. The war with Somalia that exploded in 1977–78 was in fact quite successfully exploited to consolidate political authority around the Derg. The military seems to have done so without the aid of left surrogates as the civilian left became tenuous and the presence of Soviet (and Cuban) advisors more ubiquitous.

So with that as context, here are some extended passages from English-language Derg propaganda about its efforts to extinguish domestic opposition to its rule. (By way of contrast, I have previously posted an example of an EPRP polemic against Meison.) Although I’m going to refrain from editorializing, or a point-by-point refutation of the Derg’s attacks, let me just say up front that I find the arguments here self-serving, remarkably hypocritical and cynical, generally unconvincing based on my research, and full of outright lies and distortions. When you consider that these arguments were being used to physically eliminate thousands of leftwing activists—many many of them teenagers—it becomes hard not to see the rhetorical flourishes as obscene rationalizations for murder.

(A note on the first entry below, Dr. Senay Likke was a significant figure in the student diaspora who returned to Ethiopia to become an advisor to the Derg. He founded the Waz League, and died the same day as Mengistu’s February 1977 coup against Teferi Bente. I'm preparing a much more detailed article on Dr. Senay's fascinating and troubling role to be published at a later date. The final two entries below, while not from official Derg publication, are from an official Soviet publication and a Cuban publication respectively, and can safely be presumed to be something approaching the official “party line.”)

From THE ETHIOPIAN REVOLUTION (Tasks, Achievements, Problems and Prospects)
by Comrade Senay Likke
no date or publisher noted, probably 1976 Addis Ababa

“When there is revolution, there is counter-revolution. Where there is success, there is failure and where there are achievements, there are problems. This is the inexorable law of Dialectics. The Ethiopian revolution is no exception ad it has its problems....

Imperialism and reactionary feudo-bourgeois states have not only limited themselves to help organize this union of Aristocrats —the E.D.U. They also serve as the mainstay of other reactionary feudo-bourgeois forces like the so-called Eritrean Liberation Front, so-called Tigrain Liberation Front, the so-called Oromo liberation front and the so-called Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Party (E.P.R.P.). The main difference between the E.P.R.P. and the other forces of counter-revolution is that the E.P.R.P. has tried to wear a Marxist garb. It is notoriously known for its revolutionary phrase flaunting — a basic characteristic of Trotskyites. The E.P.R.P. engaged in individual assassinations and lumpen-type gangster terrorism — a characteristic of Anarchists.”

From ETHIOPIA IN REVOLUTION
by the Ethiopian Revolution Information Center, Addis Ababa, 1977

“As the history of all revolutions, particularly that of the Russian, Chinese, Albanian, Korean, Vietnamese and Cuban peoples revolutions amply show that whenever oppressed classes attempt to overthrow an oppressive and exploitative socio-economic order, and begin to build a new, dynamic and revolutionary social system, representatives of the overthrown oppressive and exploitative system, attempt to place political, economic and military barriers on the path of the new social system. The Ethiopian peoples revolution has not been an exception to this dialectical law of revolutionary history....

Ever since the beginning phase of the Ethiopian peoples’ revolution, elements of the overthrown feudo-bourgeois order, agents of imperialism, particularly U.S. imperialism, such as the comprador and the bureaucratic bourgeoisie, the reactionary ruling classes of neighbouring countries, (like that of the Sudan, reactionary Arab states, such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, North Yemen, etc) seccessionists in the northern region of Ethiopia and the so-called Ethiopian Peoples' Revolutionary Party, EPRP the right wing section of the Ethiopian pettybourgeoisie, have been engaged in numerous counterrevolutionary political, economic and military sabotages in order to foil the oppressed masses revolution. All these counter-revolutionary forces, controlled and guided by their patron, U.S. imperialism, ever since, February, 1974 have been making frantic attempts in every corner of the country with the aim of destroying the revolutionary gains of the oppressed masses of Ethiopia and restoring the defunct feudo-bourgeois order in the country.”


From FOURTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE ETHIOPIAN REVOLUTION
Speech delivered by Lt. Colonel Mengistu Haile-Mariam, Chairman of the PMAC (Derg)
September 12, 1978, Addis Ababa [with Fidel Castro in attendance]
Published by the Ministry of Information and National Guidance

“It can be recalled that imperialism for its anti-revolutionary activities recruited and organized feudalists, the petty-bourgeoisie and the lumpen elements. It deployed the so-called Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Party (EPRP), a Trotskyite group, carrying an apparently radical slogan. In unity with the feudalists, this organization established a network of country-revolutionary bases throughout the country. Using the youth and the lumpen, as murderers and assassins, it destroyed the lives of radical intellectuals, many workers, peasants and leaders of urban dwellers associations.... The activities of EPRP such as the burning of crops, the sabotaging of factories, the campaign among workers to decrease production and among peasants not to bring their crops to the urvab areas and the preventing of students from going to school can never be forgotten. On several occasions, it has tried to deprive the mass movement of revolutionary leadership by trying to hatch a right-wing coup d’etat. It has openly supported the Somali invaders and the secessionists in Eritrea.....

This was a time when the country was in a great difficulty and when counter-revolution seemed certain. It also was during this time that the right-roader, the All Ethiopia Socialist Movement (MEISON) betrayed the revolution and fled away from the revolutionary camp. This was also a time when imperialism and other reactionary forces made a major propaganda campaign to distort the image of the Ethiopian revolution....

In this connection we have been observing patiently and calmly...the Chinese situation, whose reactionary stance has become more and more evident. The Communist Party of China which has been degenerating from time to time.... has been a matter of concern among the progressives of the world. Revolutionary Ethiopia has been expressing her concern on this daily worsening reactionary tendency to members of China's Communist Party and to Chinese diplomats who have been to our country on different occasions.... If we consider China's stand regarding the Ethiopian Revolution, when she posed as a supporter at the initial stage and wanted to give some petty assistance, we expressed our goodwill and friendly feelings believe that it was done in a revolutionary spirit. True to the adage, with a handful of grain, approach the full sack, China continued to undermine us internally and divide Ethiopian revolutionaries. Nor did she stop there. By arming the so-called EPRP and separatists in collusion with the CIA, China had also become instrumental for the massacre of any oppressed Ethiopians.”

From THE MEN IN UNIFORM OF THE ETHIOPIAN REVOLUTION
by the Propaganda and Information Committee, Addis Ababa, 1978

“Ethiopia’s men in uniform....have waged a sustained political, ideological and military struggle against the so-called Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Party (EPRP), which conducted an all-out campaign to subvert the Ethiopian Revolution. During the white terror launched by the reactionary EPRP, the men-in-uniform have sacrificed a great many lives. By smashing the white terror of EPRP, they have been able to free Ethiopia's youth who were victimized by the EPRP and have enabled it to join the camp of the revolution.... In collaboration with Ethiopia's progressive forces, the men-in-uniform have played an important role in disseminating the ideas of scientific socialism among the laboring masses of Ethiopia, within their own ranks, and with the peoples militia. They are still continuing to do this. They have foiled EPRP's plan of capturing state power via a short cut before the masses were politically conscious, organized and armed....

Since a class shift occurs in all revolutions, the Ethiopian revolution has also witnessed the emergence of rightist tendencies. There is for example the case of the right opportunist All Ethiopia Socialist Movement, (MEISONE), which deserted the revolution at a very critical moment. Ethiopia's men-in-uniform are currently waging a struggle against this rightists MEISONE, just as they struggled against the EPRP....

While the broad masses of Ethiopia were this preparing for the defense of their country, the feudal remnants and the right wing petty-bourgeois groups such as EPRP, EDU the Eritrean secessionists and the right-roader MEISONE infiltrated the Tatek Military Camp and carried out a systematic sabotage to obstruct the training of the militia. They left no stone unturned in their attempt to hinder the recruitment and raising of the militia and to render its rank and rile nonchalant to the call of the motherland....

The struggle against the counterrevolutionaries and all enemies of the revolution started right at the training centre. By exposing each and every one who was engaged in anti-revolutionary activities, the militia soon cleared its own training center of reactionary elements.”

From ETHIOPIA: Years of Revolution
by Valentin Korovikov [Pravda correspondent]
Novosti Press Agency, Moscow, 1979

“Facts have come to light showing that certain diplomatic and some other representatives of the imperialist powers financed terrorist bands and supported the enemies of the Ethiopian revolution. Nor was the CIA idle.

But the forces of reaction pinned their greatest hopes on the petty-bourgeois anarchist leftist group that called itself The Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party (EPRP). It had been formed before the revolution from various student groups and led by Ethiopians who had returned from abroad, also for the most part students. The Eritrean separatists who had a wide network of agents in Addis Ababa also played an important part of this subversive organisation. They believed that their plans for separation could be furthered if the central authorities were weakened and disorganised, and if there was chaos, constant conflict and strife in the country. It was no accident that the EPRP practically always supported the demand for Eritrea's separation from Ethiopia.

The absence of  political revolutionary party in the country, ideological and practical inexperience of the Ethiopian youth, the dizzy successes of the first stages of the revolution, the leftist slogans of rebellion and anarchy, youthful impatience, under the impact of Maoist literature, to achieve socialism at one fell swoop and certain other factors were responsible for the EPRP acquiring some influence in the capital and other towns. This was also promoted by the fact that the EPRP used Marxist terminology which it applied very arbitrarily to Ethiopian realities.

For instance, the EPRP insisted that, since the army was the product of the Ethiopian monarchy, it could not lead the revolution and, consequently, power should be handed over to some sort of people’s government. This demand was put forward practically on the very next day after the overthrow of Haile Selassie. Ultra-revolutionary popular slogans were also used as a smokescreen for attacks on the Dergue and the army, which in the Ethiopian conditions was the sole force capable of completely wiping out feudalism, breaking the old state machinery, defending the country’s territorial integrity and crushing the armed resistance of the reactionaries.”

From ETHIOPIA’S REVOLUTION
by Raúl Valdés Vivó, International Publishers (CPUSA), 1978
translated from the Cuban original, Etiopia, la revolución desconocida, 1977

“It should also be noted that a great many students have adopted an entrenched antimilitarist stance, one that could only be justified if the armed forces had taken the side of the oppressors: in effect, because of this, many students have themselves ended up on the side of the oppressors, whether or not they want to admit it. The so-called Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Party (EPRP), that engages in counterrevolutionary terrorism in the cities, originally drew its ranks from the students. As was only to be expected, they had a source of inspiration in Maoism. For fear of joining the military, who only yesterday were at the service of reaction, and failing to understand that the army today serves the Revolution, these former students have fallen into the hands of the ousted landowners and into the network of plots engineered against the Ethiopian Revolution by international imperialism and Arab reaction. Of course, also present is the petty bourgeoisie's loathing of discipline, organization and giving way to the masses—even though it invokes their name at all times as the principal driving force in history.”

___

FURTHER READING: For an excellent account of how Meison and the Derg fell out with each other, see Dawit Shifaw's memoir, The Diary of Terror. For accounts of how the Derg's words translated into the terror against EPRP, Babile Tola’s To Kill a Generation is recommended, as is the second volume of Kiflu Tadesse's The Generation.

Regarding the Derg’s occasional accusations that the EPRP was backed by the CIA, there is an interesting account in the Wikileaks cables from the US embassy in Addis Ababa in the aftermath of the EPRP’s 1976 assassination attempt on Mengistu. (Herein, “EPMG” means Ethiopian Provisional Military Government, the PMAC or Derg.) The Embassy is upset that the false charges that the US/CIA is complicit with EPRP will reflect badly on the US, which was still aiding the Ethiopian government.

SUMMARY: EPMG STAGED LARGE RALLY MORNING SEPT 26 OF WORKERS FROM PEASANT AND URBAN DWELLERS ASSOCIATIONS TO DEMONSTRATE SUPPORT FOR PMAC AND CONDEMNATION OF SEPT 23 ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT ON PMAC FIRST VICE CHAIRMAN MENGISTU HAILE MARIAM. DESPITE LARGE CROWDS, RALLY WAS ORDERLY AND PASSED OFF WITHOUT INCIDENT. NUMEROUS PLACARDS LINKING ANTI-REGIME EPRP WITH CIA WERE EVIDENT. THIS CABLE RECOMMENDS THAT NEW REPRESENTATIONS BE MADE TO EPMG IN THIS LATTER REGARD.... 1. AS MEANS OF COUNTERACTING POSSIBLE HARMFUL EFFECTS ON PUBLIC OPINION OF SEPT 23 AMBUSH AND WOUNDING OF MENGISTU, EPMG MARSHALLED ITS FAITHFUL LEGIONS OF PEASANT ASSOCIATIONS AND URBAN DWELLERS ASSOCIATION WORKERS FROM CITY AND NEIGHBORING AREAS TO CONVERGE ON REVOLUTION SQUARE FOR LARGE SUNDAY MORNING SOLIDARITY RALLY. ALTHOUGH STREETS WERE HEAVILY GUARDED BY ARMED TROOPS, FOUR-HOUR DEMONSTRATION WAS ORDERLY THROUGHOUT, AS MASSES PASSIVELY LISTENED TO HARANGUES OF ORGANIZATION LEADERS TO EFFECT THAT REVOLUTION WOULD GO ON, DESPITE DESPERATION EFFORTS OF ANARCHISTS AND IMPERIALISTS, SUCH AS ATTEMPT ON MENGISTU'S LIFE. 2. LARGE NUMBER OF PLACARDS WERE IN EVIDENCE. MOST OF THESE QUOTED MENGISTU TO EFFECT THAT "REVOLUTIONARIES MAY DIE OR BE KILLED, BUT THE REVOLUTION GOES ON." MORE DISTURBING, HOWEVER, WERE FREQUENT REFERENCES TO ALLEGED CIA INVOLVEMENT IN ETHIOPIAN ANTI-REGIME ACTIVITY. AMONG SUCH PLACARDS, WHICH WERE THEN GIVEN PROMINENT PLAY ON NEWS BROADCASTS THROUGHOUT DAY, WERE THE FOLLOWING: "EPRP IS CIA", "AWAY WITH CIA AGENTS, DESGUISED AS TOURISTS", YANKEES GO HOME", NO MORE CHILES AND CIA", PAID CIA AGENTS", "ANARCHISTS DRUNK WITH CIA MONEY". MENGISTU HIMSELF, TO BEST OF OUR KNOWLEDGE, IN HIS SPEECH ON OCCASION, (OR ANOTHER SEPARATE ADDRESS TO TEACHERS SAME DAY), DID NOT MENTION CIA, MAKING INSTEAD ONLY USUAL REFERENCES TO REACTIONARIES, ANARCHISTS, AND IMPERIALISTS. 
3. THIS LATEST OUTBURST OF ANTI-CIA PUBLICITY AFTER WEEK OF QUIET COULD ONLY HAVE TAKEN PLACE WITH EPMG APPROVAL (OR AT LEAST ACQUIESENCE) AND WOULD APPEAR TO NECESSITATE FOLLOW-UP....OUR ARGUMENT SHOULD BE THAT PLACARDS ARE GRAPHIC EVIDENCE OF CHARGE'S CONTENTION TO KIFLE THAT PMAC OFFICIAL STATEMENT OF SEPT 15, WHICH INCORRECTLY LINKED CIA TO ACTIVITIES OF ETHIOPIAN ANTI-REGIME ORGANIZATIONS, CAN ONLY SERVE TO HAVE HARMFUL EFFECT UPON PUBLIC OPINION AND ATTITUDES TOWARD USG AND ITS REPRESENTATIVES IN ETHIOPIA. HENCE, IT ALL THE MORE IMPORTANT THAT SOME MEANS BE FOUND, SUCH AS DISAVOWAL, TO COUNTERACT HARMFUL IMPRESSIONS CREATED BY PMAC STATEMENTS....

Ideological Combat

Mao’s works were distributed worldwide in inexpensive, accessible formats.

“[W]ithin EPRP at first there were not what one would term hardliners. For example, there were no Maoists among the nine members of the [original 1972] Central Committee. Amazingly, within the Algerian [exile] group, Gezahegn Endale was a Trotskyite. The others...had a critical outlook and did not espouse either the Moscow, or the Albanian or Peking line. It is possible that this was to be a problem when they later merged with the ‘Abyot’ group.... [In] ESUNA [the Ethiopian Student Union in North America], as time went on...it degenerated into a Maoist sect. As things worsened, ‘Bejing Review’ became the sole approved reading material. On the battlefield, fighting would break out among guerrillas  belonging to one or other school of thought. This proved to be a thorn in the side of the Foreign Relations Committee.’’ —Melaku Tegegn in Bahru Zewde, Documenting the Ethiopian Student Movement, pp. 148-151)

“[Originally] Chinese books on socialism flooded the streets with Mao's red books for everyone in the cities especially for those who could read English....[Eventually] the Soviets advised Mengistu to burn Chinese communist books and condemn Maoism. They also instructed cadres to burn valuable historical books on Ethiopia, published in the West....While playing a role of destroying Ethiopian and Chinese books in the country, the Soviets advised the cadres to observe Soviet holidays, such as Lenin's birthday, Soviet Armed Forces Day, and the Bolshevik Revolution Day.” —Dawit Shifaw, The Diary of Terror, p.110, 117

“Mao Tse Tung has said it is good when the enemy attack us, paints us black and accuses us wildly. The fascist junta [Derg], continues to wildly accuse and smear the name of the EPRP. It has called the EPRP ‘fascist,’ ‘feudal,’ ‘CIA agent,’ ‘anarchist,‘ etc. And now, as if it has found another food label, it has started to label the EPRP ‘anarchist and Trotskyite.’ That these two tendencies are not the same does not worry the junta. The EPRP, which is a Marxist-Leninist Party, had a clear stand on Trotskyism long before even the junta's top dogs heard the word ‘socialism.’ As a Marxist-Leninist Party opposed to all anti-Marxist trends (like Trotskyism, anarchism), the EPRP has emerged as the undisputed vanguard of the proletariat and no amount of vilification and name-calling is going to change this. We say with Enver Hoxha ‘The other truth has been proved right once again. They are enjoying empty phraseology, labeling us as Trotskyites. We tell them openly it is they who have fallen into the bog of Trotskyism.” — Study, Publication and Information Center of the EPRP Foreign Committee, in Abyot, Feb-March 1978

8 Study Questions on the Ethiopian Revolution

Popular demonstration during the February 1974 Ethiopian Revolution; photo from the Italian Communist newspaper L'Unita

I have finally immersed myself in enough readings to start identifying issues and asking questions. I thought it would be useful to organize my thoughts into the following “questions,” identifying themes and patterns for further reading, thought, analysis, and ultimately, writing. I am neither a trained historian nor academic, but as someone who has been a leftist activist for a large portion of my adult life I find a surprising depth of relevance in the story of the Ethiopian revolution to themes which continue to confront any movement for revolutionary change.

It's extraordinary to find this exciting, heartbreaking, fascinating history told not a century after the fact but with the immediacy of eyewitness observation from participants in living memory. And in a leftist culture dominated by Eurocentrism and the increasingly arcane minutiae of early 20th-century Europe, it's refreshing to find this relevance and inspiration hiding in plain sight in the relatively recent history of sub-Saharan Africa.

Some of these questions are intended to be provocative. As I have written before, I do not consider myself an impartial observer but a partisan of actual liberatory socialist revolution. After my initial research I find my initial loyalties to the EPRP “side” fundamentally unchallenged, but I think there are some hard issues that shouldn't be ignored. My investigation has definitely revealed some sad chapters and difficult questions that I think it would be dishonest not to address. Some of these questions I obviously have preliminary opinions on.

Read my original statement of intent about this blog here.
Follow my reading list here (A work in progress).
(A short key to abbreviations for the unfamiliar appears at the end of this document)

***

1. Ethiopia before and during its 1970s revolution bore a stark resemblance to a telescoped version of Tsarist Russia and the Russian revolution. Unlike the rest of Africa, the failure of colonialism to subjugate most of Ethiopia for an extended period left a highly organized indigenous feudal empire intact, containing the growing seeds of capitalist development in a starkly evident class society where both an urban proletariat and a rural peasantry were suddenly becoming self-aware. The revolution snowballed during the lives of one young generation, forcing that generation to invent political praxis for itself in a country with very little political tradition. Suddenly exposure to the global Marxist-Leninist left and the civil rights/Black power movements in the US blossomed into the need to make life-or-death strategical decisions. The EPRP, organized clandestinely and abroad in 1972 and formally revealed in 1975 is said to be Ethiopia's first political party of any sort. Ethiopian revolutionaries reached out to China, to the Palestinian resistance, to the socialist countries of the Soviet bloc, and to Arab nationalist regimes for assistance, receiving guns, training, books...and heavy introduction to the internal contradictions of the world's socialist movements. But in the Ethiopian February revolution, it was as though Kerensky himself remained at the helm, simultaneously hijacking and repressing the revolution to prevent an Ethiopian October. What does the ultimate failure of the revolution teach us about the application of lessons of classical Bolshevism and other communist trends? Was this the last possible revolution of this classical type?

2. The Western left’s not-yet-successful reliance on strategies for socialism involving the development of mass, essentially reformist workers parties has been historically counterposed in practice variously by those influenced by Maoism (in favor of people’s war and rural armed struggle); by those in a Soviet orbit (in favor of military bonapartism and ex post facto development of mass organizations); and by anarchists/autonomists (in favor of urban insurrection or autonomous parallel development). The EPRP —attacked as “anarchists” by their enemies, though adhering to Marxism-Leninism — found success as a mass, clandestine urban party, yet sought unsuccessfully to become a guerrilla movement. The EPRP deeply influenced mass organizations like trade unions (CELU, teachers), the Zemacha campaign (mass literacy movement), student groups (especially in the diaspora); organized clandestine fractions in the military (Oppressed Soldiers Organization), inside the Derg, inside Kebeles (formal community centers), inside the police, an underground revolutionary trade union (ELAMA), an underground youth organization (EPRYL), and urban and rural military units. It published several regular underground journals with mass national distribution and readership and participated where possible in public discussions in the legally sanctioned press. What does the EPRP’s experience of organizational models and strategies teach us?

3. Thousands and thousands of young revolutionaries died at the hands of the Derg regime and its leftist allies, and targeted assassinations by the EPRP took many lives. Did the EPRP's insistence on armed struggle provoke the “Red Terror” or was it the correct response to particularly vicious repression? The EPRP vacillated between calling the Derg and its civilian leftist allies “fascists” and pondering overtures of unity with those forces. Was there ever a basis for unity? Was the Derg “fascist”?  What is the verdict on the lethal sectarianism of the Ethiopian left: EPRP vs. Meison/POMOA, EPRP vs. anja (factions). What are the historical verdicts on the cases of Fikre Merid, Getachew Maru and Berhanemeskel Reda; Senay Likke and Haile Fida; Tesfaye Debessay?

4. The competitive EPRP and Meison originated organically in the Ethiopian left/student movement, especially in the diaspora, and found favor in segments of the urban proletariat and petit-bourgeoisie. Yet both were outflanked by Colonel Mengistu, who seems to have had no history on the left before the February 1974 revolution. Mass action drove the revolution while political power was confined to a relatively small collection of players inside the government and later the military. The relationships between (and inside) the Derg, the government, the military, and the civilian left were far more complex than revealed at first glance. How did the Derg successfully coopt the revolution and check the civilian left? Where did Mengistu's ideology come from? Mengistu seems to have followed scripts first from Meison/POMOA and later the Soviet bloc, launching legitimate (if incomplete) revolutionary reforms like literacy and land redistribution, while consolidating his personal power through repeated purges and coups inside the ruling body. LeFort says his mobilization of the lumpen and declassed peasantry was the key to his social base outside the military. The one reform he resisted, and what might be considered the primary demand of the EPRP, was popular democracy. In a country where most of the competitors for power claimed to be for socialism, what does this battle over democracy suggest? Here the Maoist doctrine of “New Democracy” found itself in direct contradiction to “National Democratic Revolution.” How was EPRP's call for revolutionary popular democracy against what it saw as the repeating phenomenon of the African military dictator different than counterrevolutionary democracy movements in other socialist countries? In an ongoing revolutionary situation, who or what is the State? How did the class struggle actually combine and unfold in the revolution? (Peasantry, Proletariat, Urban Petit-bourgeoisie, Rural landowning class, Feudal class/Royalty/Comprador Bourgeoisie, Lumpen Proletariat, National Bourgeoisie). (Side note: ponder Nicaragua where an assortment of civilian left groups maintained shifting levels of opposition and critical support to the post-revolutionary Sandinista regime in the 1980s).

5. If politics were underdeveloped in Ethiopia, nationalism was not. Ethiopia resisted Italian invasion twice, losing its self rule only for the period of 1936-1942. Ethiopia’s revolution was deeply connected to the struggles of national minorities. Like Russia, Ethiopia is a country of diverse national identities historically dominated by a single ethnic group. Rene LeFort calls Eritrea (and the relationship of Eritrea to Ethiopia is up for discussion) the “crucible” of the Ethiopian revolution, citing a more developed political tradition in colonial Eritrea and noting the dominance of ethnic Eritreans in the general Ethiopian radical milieu. Wallelign Mekonnen’s groundbreaking paper on the national question is virtually the founding document of the Ethiopian civilian left (and Wallelign's death in a 1972 airplane hijacking is a portent of future tragedy). EPRP attempted to negotiate this minefield, and yet ultimately found itself at odds with TPLF and EPLF, despite endorsing Eritrean independence. Today’s Ethiopian federalism, widely seen as the oppression of the whole nation by the Tigrayan minority ethnic group, makes nobody happy: unrest involving national minorities like the Oromo people is today again dominating headlines. Upon the overthrow of the Derg, newly independent Eritrea promptly found itself at war with its long-term allies in the former TPLF. What are the lessons here regarding self determination, multi-ethnic states, and the relationship of political to ethnic conflicts? Is there any conflict between the consciousness of national liberation and the consciousness of socialism?

6. Ironically, the avowedly socialist Derg remained military supplied by the United States for its first two years in power. After it eliminated the civilian left, the Derg thoroughly coopted socialism in a statist model a la Eastern Europe, only to abandon socialism as the Soviet Union floundered, on the eve of itself being displaced, in the very late 1980s. The Derg was overthrown by the TPLF, the core of which was the cadre of MLLT, which upon assuming power in turn abandoned Marxism-Leninism and allied with the United States. Though some argue little continuity with the classic EPRP suppressed by the Derg remains, today's EPRP factions have officially renounced socialism. EPLF-ruled independent Eritrea is ranked (at least by its enemies) as among the most repressive states on the planet. The “People's Republic” of China is developing a massively predatory relationship with Ethiopian industry and agriculture. What are the legacy and prospects of three failed attempts at socialist power for the liberatory project promised by socialism to the future of Ethiopia? By 1978, the two main wings of the civilian left now both in opposition to the Derg (as well as to each other), and the ruling Derg itself, all used the iconic hammer and sickle as their symbol. Addis Ababa's massive Lenin statue, built by a regime that arguably had little in common with Lenin's actual ideology, was pulled down by crowds in 1991 celebrating legitimate liberation from tyranny. Is the well poisoned?

7. It wouldn’t be an overstatement to say that imperialism has wreaked havoc on the Horn of Africa for well over a century. Did Italian imperialism import class consciousness and post-feudal political consciousness via Eritrea? The Ethiopian royalty earned respect for its resistance to Italian imperialism in both the 1890s and the 1930s, and used that reputation to attempt to outflank “African socialism” as a pro-American pole in continental politics during the independence wave of the 1950s and 1960s. The royalty's domestic reputation began to fail only in the late 1960s, collapsing in the wake of famine in the early 1970s. US imperialism and the Soviet Union abruptly swapped sides between Ethiopia and Somalia in 1976-1977; and then the US switched sides again after the fall of both the Ethiopian and Somali regimes in the early 1990s, turning Somalia into a collection of failed states, ethnic enclaves, and bases for reactionary Islamic fundamentalists, and turning Ethiopia into a proxy for regional US military power. Chinese capital (imperialism?) appears a significant motor force in Ethiopia today. Cuba’s intervention in Ethiopia against Somali invasion was decisive, yet not extended to the Eritrean front, eventually resulting in Eritrean secession. Leftist opposition groups in Ethiopia in the 1970s found themselves in the middle of a hot battle in the Cold War, ideologically challenged by being targeted by both imperialism and the Soviet bloc. What are the prospects for independent national struggle in a world dominated by neocolonialism, imperialism, social imperialism, and neoliberalism?

8. Many people, unfortunately, in my opinion, including far too many leftists, view history as the progression of actions of great (or terrible) men. To look at the Ethiopian Revolution as merely the story of Mengistu Hailemariam is I think to make a serious misjudgment of how history happens, of how, in this case, the Ethiopian revolution unfolded. He was a key figure, for sure, and certainly for a moment triumphant, and more than a little villainous. But what Marxism teaches us about the people being the motor force of history, this is actually true: What the focus on Mengistu reveals to me, at least, are all the ideological weaknesses of what I would call revisionism (and let me say here clearly that I reject out of hand the term “Stalinist”): the post-war Soviet top-down method of socialism by directive, military force, and the willful wishful thinking of too small a political minority. This unfolded repeatedly (and ultimately unsuccessfully and often tragically) in the third world: South Yemen, Afghanistan, Benin, Burkina Faso, Madagascar, etc. It's true that 20th-century socialism was ultimately politically outgunned by Western imperialism, but I think that the broadly-defined pro-Soviet project of state socialism also collapsed worldwide under the weight of its own contradictions. (Ironically given what, in my opinion, is socialist Cuba's problematic role in Ethiopia, I think the survival of Cuban socialism into the 21st century is in fact a positive counter example of how important mass popular support for a revolution actually is). It seems that EPRP's leaders were too busy living their moment of history in a fiery flash to deliver ideological or theoretical innovation at their high watermark, at least from the perspective of my initial investigations, and without knowledge of Amharic. Few survived to have the benefit of hindsight. Survivors writing today have focused on righting the historical record, or apologizing for their actions, or preserving the memory of what was lost: most seem pretty adamant in their ideological renunciation of the old EPRP's values. So the final questions are left to us, observers from a geographic and historical distance: Is there an overarching lesson from the Ethiopian revolution for the revolutionary project as a whole? What would actual revolutionary democracy look like? How, next time, do the good guys win?

I would be interested to exchange ideas with anyone who has studied this revolution.

Notes:
EPRP: Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party
Meison: All-Ethiopian Socialist Movement
POMOA: Provisional Office of Mass Organization Affairs
TPLF: Tigray People's Liberation Front
EPLF: Eritrean People's Liberation Front
MLLT: Marxist-Leninist League of Tigray
CELU: Confederation of Ethiopian Labor Unions
Derg: Amharic for “committee,” a group of military officers who seized power in 1974

Statement of Intent

EPRP demonstration, probably Addis Ababa, 1975 or 1976. Scanned from an issue of Forward.

In 1976 I was eighteen years old and a university student in Chicago. My brief tenure in college was marked by my increasing radicalization, as I became involved with the American revolutionary left. I became a voracious consumer of worldwide revolutionary literature along with the classics of Marxist theory. I attended protests and forums, conferences and demonstrations, and, in those long-ago days, admired the organization and fortitude of leftist students from around the world from places like Iran, Ethiopia, Eritrea and elsewhere. I went to demonstrations where police or right-wingers were menacing and threatening, and certainly saw the potential of brutality. In my years as a radical I've witnessed hundreds of arrests and atrocious acts of police violence. But my life has rarely been in direct danger as a result of my political activities.

In 1976 a revolution in Ethiopia was experiencing a crucial shift, and I watched and studied these events as they happened. Military officers were consolidating their co-optation of a mass, popular uprising. Thousands of revolutionary students my very age were out in the streets fighting for that revolution and attempting to resist the hijacking of the revolution by the military. The students, along with workers and peasants, were organized under the red banners of the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party (EPRP), at the time a largely clandestine Marxist-Leninist formation. Very shortly the EPRP faced a massive, genocidal government campaign of violence and extermination. Dubbed "The Red Terror" by the military government, soon thousands of student revolutionaries my age were rounded up and murdered. The commitment of these young revolutionaries was inspirational to me, and gave me great pause to consider the contrasts and contradictions.

The EPRP, who widely used the communist hammer and sickle as a symbol, were engaged in a massive life-and-death struggle with a government that itself used the same communist symbolism. The EPRP was attacked for being "anarchist," "Maoist," or "terrorist," by a government that wielded the same Marxist language and terminology that the EPRP used. At the height of the cold war, the Ethiopian government was soon bolstered by the Soviet Union and revolutionary Cuba on one of the hot fronts of that war that swept across Africa in the 1970s and 1980s. The EPRP was ultimately defeated, and while it survives today as an opposition party in a new "democratic" Ethiopia, it jettisoned its Marxist-Leninist ideology long ago.

The period of "Red Terror" is justly remembered in Ethiopia as a nightmare; a time of mass murder foreshadowing the much more well-known Rwandan genocide some years later. There's a museum, there are scholarly investigations, there are memorials for the thousands of young martyrs. But in repudiating the period of military dictatorship that called itself the "Ethiopian Revolution," it appears to me that much of the actual Ethiopian revolution has also been repudiated. The surviving factions of the EPRP seem to me, a foreigner at a distance, very far removed from the EPRP that so inspired me as a young radical.

This blog is an investigation project.

What was the EPRP at the height of its power? What were the forces it was up against? What was the dynamic of the Ethiopian Revolution? Why did the EPRP lose?

I hope to excavate, if not rehabilitate, the historical reputation of the EPRP during its Marxist-Leninist period through a process of curation, collection, research and reportage. I will post articles, artwork and photos, book excerpts, reviews, and if I find them, reminiscences, about the Ethiopian revolution, primarily in the second half of the 1970s but extending through the 1980s.

And although the Ethiopian revolution was marred by extreme sectarianism, I will post information from other revolutionary currents in the Horn of Africa to provide historical context, even if they are from forces in contradiction with the EPRP.

I invite comment from survivors, veterans, witnesses and fellow students of this struggle.

I am not a neutral observer of revolution, but a partisan of it, and this blog will reflect that perspective.