Books, Books, Books

I have been alerted to a relevant new memoir by Tadelech Hailemikael, the wife and partner of the late Berhane Meskel Redda, a founder of the EPRP murdered by the Derg during the so-called Red Terror. She was imprisoned by the Derg in her own right, and in the post-Derg regime served as Minister of Women's Affairs. It seems to be published only in Amharic right now, which frustrates an illiterate like me to no end, but it looks fascinating and informative. See news about this book at Tadelech’s website, which is maintained by her daughter. I wish the book well!

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coming soon from Palgrave

The second edition of the Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism, edited by Immanuel Ness and Zak Cope, is currently available for pre-order. While it’s a pricey volume from Palgrave/Macmillan for the academic market, it contains a wealth of information on anti-imperialist struggles around the world. It will be available in both digital and physical media formats.

I am excited to announce that this second edition contains an essay commissioned by Palgrave from me on imperialism in Ethiopia, entitled “Ethiopia, Revolution, and Soviet Social Imperialism.” It extends the discussion of Soviet involvement in Ethiopia beyond the way the topic is introduced in my own new book; as is my style it presents a bunch of period documents and sources to make its case.

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Finally just another pitch for my own new book Like Ho Chi Minh! Like Che Guevara! The Revolutionary Left in Ethiopia, 1969-1979, by Ian Scott Horst, soon to be published by Foreign Languages Press in Paris. It’s shown here with another book being released the same day, part of FLP’s ground-breaking New Roads series: Critiquing Brahmanism is an important new study by Comrade Ajith, a leader of the Indian Maoist movement. These two books will be available for order soon!

I’m featured on Cosmonaut!

I’m excited to report that the independent leftist website "Cosmonaut" has commissioned and published an article by me on the Ethiopian revolution. Of course it's shorter and more superficial than my book, but it's a rough outline of my book's perspective, minus the hundreds of original extended citations that make up my manuscript. I've framed the discussion of the Ethiopian revolution as a discussion about solidarity and internationalism, timely for this era of global protest.

The article is entitled "Which Side Are You On: The Challenge of the 1974 Ethiopian Revolution," and the full article can be accessed for free at the Cosmonaut website. Eventually I will repost the entire article here; for now, here is one of the introductory paragraphs:

“The phrase “Solidarity Forever” may have originated in radical trade unionism, but it was a damned effective compass for orienting one’s place in a combative world divided into potential comrades and bloodthirsty enemies. As leftist watchwords, the phrase reinforces an intuitive impulse growing out of the human experience of living and working together in a class-divided world, and neatly reinforces the deeper ideological explorations of theoreticians in the Marxist tradition. As a concept it rightfully suggests a deep connection between the daily struggles to survive, as experienced by the unpropertied classes and the political prescriptions of communist ideology. So why does it seem that so many of today’s heirs to Marxist tradition have discarded this time-proven compass when it comes to orienting themselves in today’s world of struggle? How did it happen that the first impulse of wide swathes of the Marxist left is to oppose the masses turning out into the world’s streets and avenues?”

Read the whole article and let me know what you think.

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.

How the EPRP Spiked U.S. Imperialism from the Ethiopian Labor Movement

I ran across a series of remarkable documents on Wikileaks that reveal a fascinating moment when both the Derg and US imperialism were taking action to suppress the radicalization of Ethiopian workers.

CELU Logo

An early June, 1975, cable from an Addis Ababa diplomat back to his boss in the State Department, reveals a US Charge d’Affaires Parker Wyman positively freaking out about developments within CELU, the Confederation of Ethiopian Labour Unions. In following a chain of self-referenced cables on Wikileaks, an incredible story is revealed which I haven’t actually read in this amount of detail anywhere else.

CELU was founded in 1962, assisted by pro-imperialist forces in world labor (aka the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations, AFL-CIO) hoping to create a captive, docile labor organization with whom the “business community” could cooperate to forestall more militant working class organizing while claiming to promote the free organization of labor. Of course Ethiopian law forbade strikes, and it wasn’t CELU’s original intention to challenge that. It’s not for nothing that the AFL-CIO is jokingly referred to worldwide as the “AFL-CIA.”

However, bad timing for the AFL-CIO in Ethiopia: The development of an organized urban working class in Ethiopia coincided with revolutionary times, and Ethiopian leftists quickly identified CELU as a valuable conduit for expanding their influence among workers. CELU seems to have been beset by factionalism between its original leaders and younger revolutionaries, but joined EPRP May Day activities out in the streets in 1975. Shortly afterwards the Derg closed it down, and arrested a handful of its leaders. But by the end of May, the Derg relented and allowed CELU to continue to function. The younger generation seized the moment to win leadership of CELU.

Kiflu Tadesse, in the first volume of his landmark The Generation history of EPRP, tells the story in more detail of how the leftists, mainly from EPRP but also from Meison and Senay Likke's WazLeague, gained control of CELU from its old guard. But he doesn’t tell a key part of the story of what was actually an impressive, albeit temporary, EPRP success. Let's piece it together.

Here are excerpts from the cable, which reveals palpable panic over sudden communist subversion of CELU:

"IN SESSIONS JUNE 2 AND 3 NEW CELU PROVISIONAL EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE BEGAN CONSIDERATION OF NUMEROUS PROPOSED CHANGES. FIRST ACTION TO BE TAKEN WAS VOTE TO SUSPEND OLD CELU CONSTITUTION.... FIVE POINT RESOLUTION NEXT CONSIDERED.... DEBATE INCLUDED EXTENSIVE CRITIQUE OF AMERICAN LABOR RELATIONS WITH "SOCIALIST COUNTRIES" GOING BACK AS FAR AS BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION. AFL-CIO ESPECIALLY CONDEMNED FOR ALLEGED ANTI-SOCIALIST ACTIONS IN CHILE IN RECENT YEARS. PRESENTATION WAS IN SUCH GREAT DETAIL THAT IT WENT FAR BEYOND KNOWLEDGE OF LABOR GROUP PARTICIPATING IN DEBATE. CONCLUSION PROBABLY THAT MATERIAL WAS FED IN EITHER BY CELU STAFFERS GIRMACHEW LEMMA...AND/OR KIFLU, WHO SPENT SEVERAL YEARS STUDYING JOURNALISM IN RUSSIA. IN ANY CASE, THIS WAS FIRST SPECIFIC APPEARANCE OF COMMUNIST LINE AND CONTENT WAS DISTINCTLY RUSSIAN."

Germatchew (Girmachew) Lemma, EPRP labor leader

Germatchew Lemma and Kiflu (Tadesse), were two former student activists who had become leaders in the Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Party. At this point in 1975 EPRP was largely underground, and while its “Democrasia” paper was widely circulated, the name “EPRP” was not yet publicized until later that year.

Germatchew was a respected activist. In his memoir Wore Negare, former EPRP activist Mohamed Yimam recounts, “He was an electrifying speaker who mesmerized the audience. Charismatic and towering, he had a commanding presence that that eclipsed anyone who stood near him.... In Girmachew I saw a leader that I was instantly attracted to and seemed capable of leading people to do anything that he wanted them to.”

Kiflu is of course the author of the definitive Generation books we’ve just cited. While he did go to university in the Soviet Union, to attribute his intervention here to Soviet subversion shows how clueless the US embassy was about the dynamics on the ground. While the USSR was not yet in 1975 fully the patron of the Derg, it was then — and ultimately — completely disinterested in the civilian left, and in the end backed the Derg’s state-controlled labor federation.

Back to the cable, again full of insinuations that a dark communist conspiracy is at hand:

MARKOS HAGOS, NEW CHAIRMAN, WAS NOTIFIED LATE JUNE 2 THAT HE APPOINTEDORER DELEGATE TO ILO GENEVA CONFERENCE. FACT THAT HE COULD COMPLETE HEALTH, PASSPORT, TAX AND ALL OTHER FORMALITIES TO ENABLE HIM TO DEPART NEXT DAY SUGGESTS HE MUST HAVE BEEN PREPARED WELL IN ADVANCE....IT IS BECOMING MORE APPARENT THAT STRATEGY OF MAY 31-JUNE 1 MEETING WAS CAREFULLY PRE-PLANNED. SEVERAL INFORMANTS, RELIABLE IN PAST, BELIEVE THAT PRIME MOVERS WERE GIRMACHEW LEMMA OF CELU STAFF AND GETACHEW AMARE WHO SUPPOSEDLY OBTAINED SUPPORT OF LT. COL. ATNAFU ABATE, 2ND VICE CHAIRMAN OF PMAC, AND LEFT-WING GROUP IN DIRG. FORMER OPPOSITION LEADERS, MAINLY FROM SMALL UNIONS, ARE SAID TO HAVE JOINED IN ENTHUSIASTICALLY AND WERE REWARDED WITH SEATS ON PROVISIONAL EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE.

Markos Hagos, leader of CELU in 1975.

Markos Hagos, the new leader of CELU, was in fact an EPRP member. He was not a former student leader, but came out of the rank and file of insurance company workers. CELU staffer Getachew Amare seems to have also been EPRP, at least he was accused of being so when he was put on a Derg deathlist in 1977 (Kiflu, v1, p.144). Atnafu Abate was one of the three leaders of the Derg in 1975. The reference here is curious: while Atnafu seems to have often disagreed with eventual Derg sole leader Mengistu — indeed he was eliminated by Mengistu in late 1977 — but I have yet to see a source corroborating communication between EPRP and Atnafu at this time, only later after Mengistu's first, early 1977 purge.

The cable goes on to urge its distribution to US agents attending the upcoming ILO conference to be on the lookout for CELU radicals.

FOR GENEVA: PLEASE PASS FOREGOING INFORMATION TO PAT O'FARRELL AND JERRY FUNK OF AALC ATTENDING ILO CONFERENCE.

AALC is the acronym for “African American Labor Center.” Here’s a brief background on AALC from Beth Sims’ Workers of the World Undermined: “The African-American Labor Center (AALC), founded in 1964, is active in some 31 countries ranging from Angola to Zimbabwe. Its founder and first director was longtime labor activist and CIA operative Irving Brown.' He molded the institute into an anticommunist organization that spread the doctrine of labor-business harmony and bread-and-butter unionism to its African beneficiaries. Under Brown, the AALC became a vehicle for funneling U.S. aid to procapitalist, economistic African trade unions, a role which it continues to play today.”

The US embassy was so clearly concerned about the presence of revolutionaries within CELU, it wanted to keep an eye on the CELU organizer during his trip abroad. And so the relationship between the US government and advocates of labor peace is exposed.

As mentioned,  it wasn’t just the US embassy that was worried about CELU and worker radicalization. The U.S. Embassy was watching the Derg’s repressive moves against CELU with optimistic caution. A previous cable is fascinating. From May 1975:

6. COMMENT: IF CAUSE OF RUCKUS IS -- AS ASSERTED -- SIMPLE EXASPERATION WITHIN DIRG WITH CELU IN-FIGHTING AND MOVE TRIGGERS REASONABLY STRAIGHTFORWARD ELECTIONS, LABOR MOVEMENT COULD CONCEIVABLY EMERGE STRENGTHENED FROM THIS EPISODE. HOWEVER, IF RADICALS HAVE THEIR WAY, THE STRENGTH TO OVERRIDE OPPOSITION IN AT LEAST SOME UNIONS, AND THE MOMENTUM TO PRESS AHEAD WITH ATTEMPT FOIST MORE PLIANT LEADERSHIP ON CELU IN PREPARATION FOR ITS TRANSFORMATION, DIFFICULT DAYS COULD LIE AHEAD.

That May, Derg representatives went to workplaces where the workers were represented by CELU to justify trying to shut down the confederation. Another cable discusses a confrontation between EAL workers (Ethiopian Airlines, organized by CELU) and the Derg:

DIRG CAPTAIN THEN TOOK FLOOR AND WENT THROUGH EXPLANATION ON REASONS FOR CELU HEADQUARTERS.... CAPTAIN PLACED EMPHASIS ON "CAPITALIST ORIGINS" OF AND SUPPORT FOR CELU. HE NOTED THAT SUCH A CELU HAD NO PLACE IN SOCIALIST ETHIOPIA. THIS ELICITED IMMEDIATE REJOINDER FROM SEVERAL EAL EMPLOYEES WHO NOTED THAT CELU HAD BEEN IMPORTANT TO THEM; ASKED BY WHAT AUTHORITY DIRG HAD CLOSED IT; AND DEMANDED TO KNOW WHAT DIRG PROPOSED PUT IN ITS PLACE. "WE HAVE SUPPORTED CELU WITH OUR VOTES AND OUR MONEY* WHAT ARE YOU DOING FOR US?" OTHER EMPLOYEES THEN REPORTEDLY SPOKE UP TO SAY THAT DIRG HAD DISSOLVED STUDENT ORGANIZATIONS WHICH HAD SUPPORTED ITS RISE TO POWER AND TO NOTE THAT DIRG NOW SEEMED BENT ON DOING SAME TO UNIONS. DIRG SPOKESMAN REJOINED THAT "CIA" HAD FINANCED CELU AND IT OBVIOUS THIS COULD NOT CONTINUE. SEVERAL EMPLOYEES THEREUPON IMMEDIATELY RESPONDED THAT DIRG WAS FINE ONE TO TALK ABOUT AMERICAN SUPPORT. IT WAS BEING SUPPORTED BY AMERICAN FUNDS AND AMERICAN SUPPORT FOR ETHIOPIA WAS SURELY NOTHING NEW. DIRG MEMBERS THEREUPON WITHDREW. NEW EAL GENERAL MANAGER TRIED CONCLUDE SESSION ON PATRIOTIC NOTE EMPHASIZING NEED FOR DISCIPLINE. EMPLOYEES TOLD HIM THAT EAL WAS DISCIPLINED ORGANIZATION, BUT THAT DID NOT MEAN EMPLOYEES UNPREPARED SPEAK THEIR MIND TO HIM OR TO DIRG.

And so the Derg’s attempt to use a left-wing posture to justify its repression of CELU was rebuffed, and as noted, the Derg at least temporarily relented.

Yet here is the meat of the US concern, and actually the Derg’s concern as well. In the resolution at that June meeting, the workers of CELU under their new, revolutionary leadership, actually did the right thing and formally renounced ties with the AFL-CIO. This gets at the heart of the competing socialist strategies in the Ethiopian revolution: the Derg attempted to impose its will, the EPRP went to the people. The text of this amazing resolution is reported in another cable:

WHAT IS AFL-CIO?
1. THIS ORGANIZATION SHOWED ITS TRUE REACTIONARY NATURE BY SEVERING ITS RELATIONS FROM THE WORLD WIDE LABOR UNION WHICH WAS LED BY PROGRESSIVES AND FROM THE SOCIALIST RUSSIAN LABOR UNIONS ESTABLISHED IN THE EARLY 20TH CENTURY. 2. THIS ORGANIZATION WAS ANTI-BOLSHEVIK AND WORKED AGAINST THE ANTI-REACTIONARY CAMPAIGN WHICH WAS CARRIED OUT IN THE WEST WHEN THE GREAT BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION CRUSHED THE REACTIONARY ELEMENTS. 3. THIS IMPERIALIST ORGANIZATION REFUSED TO RECOGNIZE THE RUSSIAN PROGRESSIVE GOVERNMENT EVEN AFTER PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT TRIED TO ESTABLISH RELATIONS WITH THE NEW REVOLUTIONARY GOVERNMENT OF RUSSIA. 4. FROM EARLIEST TIMES, WHEN AMERICA DECLARED WAR AGAINST SPAIN THE MADE THE PHILIPPINES ITS COLONY, THIS ORGANIZATION SUPPORTED THE INVASION IN THE NAME OF THE WORKING CLASS AND IS THEREFORE ANTI-WORKING CLASS. 5. THIS ORGANIZATION SUPPORTED THE AMERICAN INVASION OF VIETNAM, WHICH CAUSED THE DEATH OF OVER TWO MILLION PEOPLE. 6. THIS ORGANIZATION HAS SOUGHT TO RULE OVER THE THIRD WORLD AND HAS BEEN A SABOTEUR ESPECIALLY IN AFRICA, THROUGH SUCH ORGANIZATIONS AS THE AALC. 7. THIS ORGANIZATION SUPPORTED THE PREVIOUS LEADERSHIP OF CELU AND CHANNELED ALL ITS MONEY TO REACTIONARY ELEMENTS. THEREFORE, CELU HAS SEVERED ITS TIES WITH THE AFL-CIO AND IS READY TO FACE ANY HARDSHIPS WHICH IT MAY ENCOUNTER AS A CONSEQUENCE.

It’s a remarkable statement, clearly contextualizing AFL-CIA activity within the aggressive agenda of imperialism. Of course this is not an accident: it was written by the EPRP.

In yet another cable the embassy’s informants describe the authors of this resolution, again worriedly insinuating the authors are agents of the Soviet bloc. It’s clear the embassy is unaware of dynamics out on the street, highly confused about the nature of the opposition to the Derg. Their red-baiting is obvious, but their finger pointed at the Eastern bloc is laughable. It is again interesting that they tie the authors to Atnafu: One might note by implication that the embassy saw political stability in Mengistu’s wing of the Derg. Indeed in 1975 the Derg was still being armed by the United States. From the cable:

MESFIN GEBRE MIKAEL, ONE OF ORIGINAL FOUR FOUNDERS OF CELU, NOW WITH ILO, TOLD EMBOFF JUNE 7 THAT THE FOUR "TECHNICAL ADVISORS"LED BY KIFLU AND GIRMATCHEW WERE RESPONSIBLE FOR DRAFTING RESOLUTIONS PASSED BY CELU....HE ALSO BELIEVES THAT KIFLU, "THE BRAINS" OF THE GROUP, WHO HAS FOUR YEARS JOURNALISM EXPERIENCE IN RUSSIA, SECURED FINANCING FROM MOSCOW CHANNELED THROUGH HUNGARY AND BULGARIA AS WELL AS FROM "CHRISTIAN TRADE UNION GROUP-IN BRUSSELS TO PAY ORGANIZING EXPENSES.... PUBLISHED DOCUMENT IS ACTUALLY SECOND DRAFT. FIRST DRAFT WAS VERY RADICAL AND ANTI-DIRG.... GEBRE SELASSIE GEBRE-MARIAM, ANOTHER OF CELU'S FOUR ORIGINAL FOUNDERS AND NOW ADVISER TO MININT, AGREED THAT FIRST DRAFT WAS WRITTEN IN STRONG LANGUAGE AND ATTACKED DIRG.... HE IS FAIRLY CONFIDENT, HOWEVER, THAT ELECTION WAS CONTROLLED THROUGH ABOVE-CITED TECHNICAL ADVISERS WHO, HE ASSERTED, ARE IN TURN CONNECTED TO DIRG FACTION LED BY LT. COL. ATNAFU, PMAC SECOND VICE-CHAIRMAN.

Here is the coup de grace: This final cable, dated June 11, 1975, also recommends that AALC operations in Ethiopia be terminated because of CELU’s new, anti-imperialist position. And so, even in the face of suppression by the Derg military government, EPRP successfully drove US imperialism out of the Ethiopian trade union movement. Wow.

Unfortunately, CELU was finally banned by the Derg in September of 1975, leaving the newly radicalized CELU only a few months to organize. The Derg set up its own pro-government trade union association, the All Ethiopia Trade Union (AETU). A new labor code did not guarantee the right to strike. And so the “socialist” Derg continued the tradition of labor peace. The EPRP meanwhile continued to organize clandestinely in the working class, setting up an underground revolutionary union, the Ethiopian Workers Revolutionary Union, or ELAMA.

Markos Hagos went underground in 1976. Sources conflict on his fate: Kiflu says he was publicly executed as part of the first wave of the Derg’s “War of Annihilation” in 1977. The April-May 1977 issue of Forward, journal of the World Wide Federation of Ethiopian Students, says he was “killed on March 24 in a gun battle with fascists, who attempted to arrest him. In the fierce gun battle, the valiant revolutionary fighter had finished off well over 20 of the search squad soldiers before his death.”

Germatchew Lemma went underground with the rest of the EPRP leadership. Kiflu tells the story in vol. 2 of The Generation how Derg surveillance identified several EPRP safe houses in June of 1977. After a half-hour gunfight, Germatchew and a number of other party members escaped the initial raid. But Germatchew was killed attempting to reach a fallback safe house. Unbeknownst to him it had also been raided and Derg soldiers lay in wait. He “was killed on the spot.”

Atnafu Abate in 1975

Derg member Atnafu Abate, suspected by the embassy of being connected to the CELU rebels, was executed by Mengistu in November of 1977. Ironically Mengistu accusations against him included “consorting with CIA agents.”