Symbolic Confusion: More Hammers & Sickles

1975 Amharic edition of the EPRP Program

I'm pleased to present another gallery of images from the Ethiopian Revolution featuring the use of the iconic Hammer and Sickle by competing sides in the revolution. Other galleries of images and some explanation of the politics behind these images can be found by clicking the “Symbolic Confusion” label at right. If you click on the images you can see them larger.

Above are the front and back covers from the Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Party program, as issued in Amharic on the public announcement of the party’s existence in 1975. The full document can be read in Amharic only on the Ya Tewlid website. Click around for the link to a PDF. This cover bears a grid where someone has used an old-fashioned analog trick for enlarging art for a poster or banner.

EPRP logo from “Abyot”

Pro-EPRP poster, probably USA ca 1975–76

“Long live the worker peasant alliance!” reads the solidarity poster at right.

Back cover of POMOA’s “Abyotawit Ityopya”

POMOA was the “Provisional Office for Mass Organizational Affairs,” the Derg’s office for building support, one might say for co-opting, support among Ethiopia's left organizations. POMOA established EMALEDH, the Union of Ethiopian Marx-Leninist Organizations, in what proved to be a futile attempt at “partybuilding.” EPRP rejected participation in both POMOA and EMALEDH. Meison, Waz League, Echat, and Malerid joined with the military party Abyotawit Seded, though all were eventually serially purged from EMALEDH during the “Red Terror” except Seded. Abyotawit Ityopya was the journal published by POMOA, and this version of hammer and sickle was the one used by EMALEDH.

An Amharic edition of EMALEDH's
“Yehibret Demtse”

An EMALEDH sign featured on an issue
of “Abyotawit Ityopya”

Two more items from EMALEDH: An Amharic issue of their journal (I've previously featured an English language cover of one), and EMALEDH supporters holding up a sign at a rally featured on a cover of Abyotawit Ityopya from 1977.

Below are some further uses of the hammer and sickle. First is an illustration symbolizing unity of worker and peasant, but from the Derg’s perspective, again an issue of POMOA’s Abyotawit Ityopya. The worker and peasant are rather gruesomely using the hammer and sickle to dangle three symbolic corpses, which makes sense since this is from the height of the Red Terror. After that are several militia-themed items from the Derg. First, “Revolutionary Unity Through Struggle” with a fairly modernist design. Followed by a cover of Milisya, the Derg’s militia publication, showing the militia logo incorporating a hammer and sickle. Finally, a photo showing an Ethiopian woman passing under a poster of a worker and soldier bearing a hammer and sickle flag, date unknown. The military mobilizations against the Somali invasion of 1977-1978, and subsequently against Eritrean rebels, proved to be an effective tool for undercutting the civilian left.

With the abandonment of EMALEDH and POMOA and the establishment of the “Committee to Organize the Party of the Working People of Ethiopia” and the eventual founding of the “Workers Party of Ethiopia” by Mengistu in the 1980s, a version of the hammer and sickle went on to become an enshrouded national emblem.

A cover of “Abyotawit Ityopya” from 1976

“Revolutionary Victory Through Struggle”

A cover of “Milisya” from 1979.

I'd like to express my thanks to donors of graphic material.

Research Materials Wanted!

EPRP members and flags captured during the “Red Terror”

A number of important materials have so far eluded my research. The following is a partial list of materials I am looking for. I am interested in originals, photocopies, scans or PDFs. I will consider donations, purchase (I'm on a limited budget) or loans. If you have leads on any of these materials, please comment on this thread with your contact information. Label your comment "Not for Publication" and I will keep your comment private and respond to you personally. Thank you!

Original Materials, preferably in English

• “On the Mass Line” by Berhane Meskel  Amharic original OBTAINED! Anybody want to translate it?
• “Self Criticism” by Meison Amharic original OBTAINED! Anybody want to translate it?
• Ethiopian Marxist Review, from the EPRP European Office OBTAINED!
• Abyot, from the EPRP European Office (I have about five issues, looking especially for 1976 & 1977 issues)
• Forward, from the WWFES (published in Madison, WI, USA or London; I have a half dozen issues)
• Zena, from ESUNA
• Combat, from ESUNA (I have a few issues)
• Any local materials from EPRP, Meison, Emaledh, WazLeague, English especially but interested in Amharic as well. 
• Eritreans for Liberation in North America, Eritrea: Revolution or Capitulation?, 1978
• Any pamphlets or articles from EPLF or TPLF polemicizing against EPRP, 1975-1979
• Any English translations of Democracia
• New Ethiopia, journal of Meison's foreign section in Europe. I have one issue in French, looking for any in English.

Books

• Ethiopia Red Terror Documentation & Research Center, Documenting the Red Terror: Bearing Witness to Ethiopia's Lost Generation (Ottawa 2012)
• Ayelew Yimam, Yankee Go Home, Signature Book Printing

Miscellany

• Photos of EPRP activities in Ethiopia
• English translation of interrogation transcripts of Haile Fida, Tito Hiruy, and Berhane Meskel (I have Amharic PDFs)
• Materials/articles/pamphlets from US left organizations on Ethiopia ca. 1972-1978, especially Communist Labor Party, People’s Tribune. 

UPDATED July 20, 2016; August 6, 2016

Symbolic Confusion 2 - Hammers and Sickles

From Abyot, 1978. EPRP, EPRA, EPRYL, ELAMA logos.

The hammer and sickle icon was developed in Russia during its 1917 revolution. The hammer symbolizes the proletariat, and the sickle the peasantry. Like Ethiopia, Russia was a country with vast social forces outside the urban working class, and the Bolsheviks wisely sought ways to symbolically reflect this necessary alliance of power and unity against oppression and exploitation. The hammer and sickle became the symbol of communism, wielded proudly by socialist revolutionaries of every imaginable ideological stripe around the world, and wielded menacingly by anti-communist reaction as proof of communism's authoritarian violence.

While the hammer and sickle was replaced by various socialist movements, especially in developing countries seeking to suggest independence from the Soviet Union, it seems to have become the absolute symbol of the Ethiopian revolution's socialist ambitions.

It was adopted by the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party, despite the EPRP's general animosity to the modern revisionist Soviet leadership, and used by their mass organizations like the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Army (EPRA), the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Youth League, and the EPRP's revolutionary trade union ELAMA.

But in altered form, the hammer and sickle was also used by the All-Ethiopia Socialist Movement (Meison), EPRP's main leftist competitor, and by EMALEDH, the Union of Ethiopian Marxist-Leninist Organizations that was an abortive attempt to unite Ethiopia's civilian left behind the Derg. And of course the hammer and sickle was adopted by the Derg itself, as a symbol of its eventual governing face the Workers Party of Ethiopia, and of Ethiopia's general allegiance to the socialist camp.

Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Army logo (EPRA)

EPRP logo per Wikipedia

Meison journal cover, from Red Terror museum

Meison logo per Wikipedia France

Meison logo per Wikipedia

EMALEDH's Yehibret Demts, Feb 1979

EMALEDH float? Pro-Derg rally.

Derg banners and billboards, Addis Ababa

From the Ethiopian Student Movement

FORWARD! Newsletter of WWFES, Feb 1977

Before 1974, the worldwide Ethiopian Student movement was home to a vital and extremely political community of young people. Especially in Europe and North America, Ethiopian students debated, and ultimately planned, revolution in their homeland. Exposed to the ideas of Marxism-Leninism, then wildly popular on college campuses, especially in its “New Communist Movement” or Maoist, form, the publications of this movement took on the language of the revolution in earnest. Both EPRP and Meison — as well as figures like Senay Likke — seem to have come out of this movement. When the revolution began, many of these students went home, where they became the leaders of living revolutionary movements. Those who remained behind transformed their organizations into support vehicles for the revolution: The majority of these student groups after 1974 clearly lined up behind EPRP. Here are a number of the publications of these groups.

The “Handbook on Elementary Notes on Revolution and Organization” came out in 1972, published by the Ethiopian Student Union in North America (ESUNA). It's a manual for clandestine revolutionary organizing, then under the rule of Haile Selassie but soon to be put to good use under the military regime.

The World Wide Federation of Ethiopian Students (WWFES) was quick to support the EPRP, and quick to warn of the impending violence against young Ethiopian revolutionaries by the Derg. This small pamphlet was produced in 1976.

Forward! was the mostly English-language journal of WWFES. It featured lots of news of events in Ethiopia, and sharply-worded Marxist-Leninist analysis of what was happening.

While WWFES was not formally a youth organization of EPRP, it clearly aligned itself with EPRP, witness the ad box on the back cover of this issue of Forward!. Actually at some point chapters of WWFES like ESUNA developed differences of political line with EPRP, especially over divisive but crucial questions like Eritrea and the nature of the Soviet Union.

ESUNA's own publication was Combat, published in out of Madison, Wisconsin. ESUNA was definitely a battleground for various US Marxist-Leninist tendencies. The climax of the revolution, 1976-1977, was a period of foment after Mao Zedong's death and a leadership coup in China brought about the end of the Cultural Revolution and a strong realignment of Chinese policy toward world revolution. The unsettled ideology of this period in what would eventually divide into Maoist, Hoxhaist and Dengist factions of the world left movement was quite evident.

Another issue of Combat. This one is full of statements of support to the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Army of EPRP.

Other publications of this student movement included Zena, Struggle and Challenge. I don't know what the publications of Ethiopian students in Europe were, organized as ESUE. Research update: I'm adding two important works about the role of the Ethiopian student movement in the revolution to my reading list.

Lapel Solidarity

Considering that EPRP was largely a clandestine organization in Ethiopia, this pinback badge or button was suitable for wearing only in Europe or North America, where it was produced by the WWFES, the Worldwide Federation of Ethiopian Students. It bears the EPRP's version of the hammer and sickle logo.

“Victory to Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party”

A Trip to the Library

Programme of EMALEDH, 1977

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Goh Magazine (Dawn)

Cover of GOH Magazine, Nehasse 1968 EC (1976 CE)

“In early 1976 EPRP and Meison engaged in a sizzling debate (without claiming authorship) in the government owned Amharic daily Addis Zemen — New Era — and Goh —Dawn — magazine over the kind of democracy needed at that particular point in time.” —Hiwot Teffera, Tower in the Sky, p.149

Cover of GOH Magazine, Miyazia 1968 EC (1976 CE)

EPRP's Democracia was widely circulated and influential, but it was an illegal, clandestine publication. Goh apparently skirted press restrictions and acted as a forum for left discussion and debate. Former EPRP member Mohamed Yimam, who was a staff writer at Goh, tells the story of the journal in his memoir Wore Negari. Here are a few excerpts:

“Goh came into being right after the February revolution. It was founded by two enterprising women, Sara and Mulu.... Goh became the magazine of choice for Zematcha students, teachers, and the most educated section of the population....

Goh had to pass government censorship to be published. While the situation was relatively liberal at this time, no one would write anything that was openly critical of the government. Goh, under the editorial guidance of Mezy, was pushing the envelope and testing the limits of the available freedom by writing more and more radical pieces that would have been unthinkable in previous periods....

[Later] the party had very much control of the magazine through the four of us. Neither Sara nor Mulu was ever bothered by what was now becoming an obvious association of the paper with EPRP, or if they did, they did not raise any objection.” —Wore Negari, pp. 75-80.

Cover of GOH Magazine, Sene 1968 EC (1976 CE)

I was blown away to discover an archive of Goh Magazine online at the website Yatewlid (The Generation), in downloadable PDFs. The covers shared here are from their archive. Even though I am only beginning to learn the Amharic alphabet, I've been excitedly rifling through these PDFs. I'm so happy these have been preserved!

Democracia

Democracia, vol. 5, 1970 Ethiopian Calendar (1978 CE)

Democracia was the underground newspaper of the EPRP, founded in 1974. An amazing near-complete archive of copies of this influential journal is hosted by the youth group of today's reorganized and no-longer Marxist-Leninist EPRP, in easily downloadable PDFs. Life goal: learn Amharic so I can read these!

More Abyot

Another cover of ABYOT from the EPRP's European section. This earlier version (1976) has the full EPRP logo, with the EPRP's program on the back. I would love to read/obtain other issues of this publication.

Symbolic Confusion 1

A set of postage stamps from Ethiopia in 1978 shows how thoroughly the Derg co-opted the visual language of the revolution. These stamps mark "The Call of the Motherland," part of a general mobilization and militarization of society as conflict intensified with Ethiopia's neighbors because of a combination of cold-war tensions and national liberation struggles.

Abyot

Cover of a 1978 issue of "Abyot," the information bulletin of the EPRP produced by the foreign committee, in Europe. Future posts will contain articles from this and other issues of this journal. It was a generic printed cover with a mimeographed interior; the volume information was added to the generic cover by hand.

‘Support the Revolutionary Struggle of the Ethiopian Youth’

Graphic from an issue of Abyot, 1978. Artist unknown.

Wielding a hammer and a banner of the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Youth League (EPRYL), a young militant strikes at a murderous fascist of the military regime and his civilian accomplice.

‘EPRP Marks 2nd Year of Declaration’

Poster issued by the EPRP Foreign Committee, artist unknown. "EPRP Is Our Fighting Party." "EPRP Celebrates 2nd Year Of Declaration of Armed Struggle." "Death to the Fascists and Traitors."

‘EPRP Is Our Party’

Graphic reproduced from an issue of Abyot, 1978. Artist unknown. "EPRP Is Our Party! EPRYL Is Our Revolutionary Organization."

The Revolutionary Artwork of Nadir Tharani

1979 poster for EPRP/EPRA

1978 cover for the journal Forward

More of the work of East African artist Nadir Tharani can be seen at his website. See especially his section of Pamphlets and Magazine Covers and Posters.