Quick Review: Marina and David Ottaway

ETHIOPIA, Empire In Revolution
By Marina and David Ottaway, Africana Publishing Company/Holmes & Meier, hardcover 1978, 250pp.

I had the pleasure of reading a recent essay by Professor John Markakis entitled “The Revolution and the Scholars,” in the 2016 issue of Northeast African Studies journal. In the essay Markakis, co-author of the landmark Class and Revolution in Ethiopia, surveys from today’s decades-later vantage point some of the volumes written during the Derg period which have become standard reference works on the revolution. These include René Lefort’s Ethiopia, An Heretical Revolution; Halliday and Molyneux's The Ethiopian Revolution, and Marina and David Ottaway’s Ethiopia, Empire in Revolution, among others. I am pleased to report that Markakis’s judgment of the Ottaways’ book can be quoted to neatly summarize my own view of the Ottaways’ work:

“Having failed to to draw the political implications of class and ethnic contradictions, the Ottaways are unable to account for the popular upheaval that irrupted in 1974. Instead, they go to some lengths to discount the contribution of the social groups involved in it.” (NEAS 16:1, p. 92)

The Ottaways were based in Addis Ababa during the early years of the revolution. She was an academic, he a journalist, both presenting leftish views in the fashion of the post-Vietnam era. Though they describe having to ship their primary resources, research notes and draft writings out of the country just ahead of being expelled from Ethiopia in mid-1977 during the Red Terror, their book seems to have become an edifice of pro-Derg Western leftist apologia writing. The book is quite full of detailed information, including some garnered from behind the scenes via interviews and the period of massive public debate in the first two years of the revolution. It reproduces a number of Derg proclamations in full as appendices, and as such is certainly a valuable historical record.

The book was written in mid-1977, after Mengistu’s seizure of power in February 1977, but before his decisive elimination of potential counter-leadership within the Derg in the Fall of the same year. But the fact that this book is a dated or incomplete picture of the revolution is not really the problem with it.

The Ottaways wind up legitimizing the Derg’s claim to the mantle of socialism by sneering at the social forces outside the military.

“The EPRP [Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Party] conceived of revolution in terms of a mass movement from the bottom up. No such movement ever existed in Ethiopia, however, and the EPRP implicitly recognized this historical fact in drafting its plans for a people's government. Its proposed alliance of workers, peasants, progressive intellectuals, and progressive elements of the petty bourgeoisie was to be implemented through direct interest-group representation.” (p. 119)

And yet, it is this “non-existent” movement that actually manifested the 1974 revolution and the massive political turmoil of the following two years. They note that the EPRP proclaimed itself in 1975, while casting doubts that the EPRP’s claim to existence as a pre-party tendency in the period before 1975 was in any way significant. In fact my research leads me to see how the revolutionaries that revealed themselves in 1975 on both sides of the pro/anti military divide had been carefully preparing for the possibility of revolution for years, in fact in ways remarkably similar to the Russian revolutionaries before 1917.

Elsewhere the Ottaways seem fixated on the small size of the Ethiopian working class, and take a sneering attitude toward the Ethiopian labor movement as it attempted to find its voice and exercise its power in the aftermath of February 1974. They seem disdainful of Ethiopian working class activists, suggesting that they should have just lined up behind the provisional military government.

“The position of the CELU [Confederation of Ethiopian Labour Unions] during this transitional period was obviously confused. Despite its lack of a coherent vision, the confederation assumed it would continue as an autonomous organization, and even enjoy the protection of the government against management. But since the government had now become the largest employer in the country, CELU's hopes were quite naive.”  (p. 107)

While the Ottaways attempt to document the conflict between the Ethiopian civilian left and the Derg and its leftist allies, they completely wave away the principles behind that conflict.

“...The inability of like-minded politicians to compromise or cooperate remained a constant impediment to the revolution. It gave rise to the civilian left's bitter hatred for the military left; it spawned some half-dozen splinter leftist civilian groups with practically identical ideological platforms....This attitude caused the...[EPRP] to reject all cooperation with the military even though there was little difference between its program and that of the Derg.” (p. 101)

Somehow the Ottaways fail to understand that the EPRP’s demand for a people’s provisional government free of the military was one of two centrally defining factors not only to their program but to their growing base of support. (The other was the EPRP’s approach to the national question). It wasn't just a “little difference” and it wasn't just banal infighting: these were thought-out matters of principle about the nature of the revolution itself. Again and again throughout the course of the period when leadership of the revolution was under contention, it was this difference of mass democracy versus military control that virtually defined the dynamic of the period. Perhaps now, long after the defeat of all the players of the 1970s, it’s possible to see how the untried path charted by the EPRP offered more than the unfolding of history actually delivered.

Without getting into an extended discussion of the EPRP's ideological foundation in Marxism-Leninism or compassing its exact location in the ideological debates on the left, it is often presumed by observers that intense struggle within the left is a matter of mindless, self-defeating infighting. But any student of actual revolutionary leaders like Lenin and Mao — neither of whom could be accused of being wedded to comfy armchairs by a perverse love of internecine conflict — quickly comes to the conclusion that revolutionary struggle is marked by fierce competition between contending lines of politics and leadership just as much as it is marked by the combat in the streets between opposing class or societal forces. So the Ottaways’ insistence that the differences between EPRP and Meison were trivial, or that CELU was just naive and stubborn reflects something important about the Ottaways’ views about the issues themselves.

The Ottaways recognize that at the time of their writing, things are unsettled. But in this volume and its follow-up, 1981’s Afrocommunism, they express a surprisingly willingness to give the Derg the benefit of the doubt. The cheerleaders of the Derg among the world left, chiefly those in the orbit of the Soviet bloc, would build on the Ottaways’ arguments.

Ethiopia, Empire in Revolution is out of print but seems to be readily available.

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.

From EPRP’s Democracia: “A Revolution Is Not A Straight Line”

Clandestine printshop in revolutionary Ethiopia.

The following is an English translation of a special issue of the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Party’s underground newspaper, “Democracia.” Archives of much of “Democracia” are available on the web, but very little of its content has been translated into English. This one issue makes me hungry for more. I found this translation at the website Ya Tewlid, The Generation, an excellent repository of information mostly in Amharinya on the EPRP and the years of the “Red Terror.” It was retrieved from the US Library of Congress’s Thomas L. Kane collection, and is probably one of Kane’s own translations. He seems to have been an American diplomat with a keen interest in Ethiopia. This is described as the “Special Issue” from Feb. or Mar. 1976, presumably the Ethiopian month of Megabit. I have retyped the document from PDF.

The subject of this document is largely the national question. It’s safe to say that the 25 years since the Derg’s fall have borne the truth to Democracia’s predictions, as the national question continues to bubble over in today's reorganized Ethiopia. 

THE FASCIST DECLARATION—

TO MASSACRE THE PEOPLE

A revolution is not a straight line — it is zigzag. Although it will be late, the victory will belong to the people. The aim of the fascists and reactionaries to confuse the people by creating temporary problems will not save them from the destiny of history.

When the government of the "elite" is pressured by peoples struggle, it concedes and makes certain proclamations. But, wen the peoples struggle cools, the government tries to sabotage the struggle anew. It has massacred those people who have promoted the revolution. Many people have been massacred in Eritrea, Gojjam, Afar, Gujji, Wollo and Kaffa. In Awash the Government has killed many workers. Whenever the Government finds any threat to its power, it begins killing people. It is not enough for them to take weapons, which should have been used against anti-revolutionaries, and use them against revolutionaries. It is not enough for them to massacre the people. They are now trying to make the people cut their fingers by the fingers, in other words; in other words, they are trying to turn the people against the people.

An issue of Democracia from
about the time of this article.

The government of the “elite military officers” secretly gathered peasants from Begemdir, Tigre, Wollo and Gojjam. For example three people from each woreda, 84 in all, were called and stayed at “Kottebe” from Begemdir. While the peasants of Begemdir and Tigre were sent back, others stayed here. This was in the beginning of Megabit. Later in Megabit an emergency decree was issued in Begemdir and Tigre. This decree was to encourage and empowerof the people of Eritrea and Northern Ethiopia to kill. The fascist action will create a great danger to the Ethiopian revolution and is a sign of revisionism. It did this because its previous fascist actions did not succeed.

One of the main issues of the Ethiopian revolution is the question of nationalities, i.e. the right of nations for self-determination. But, instead of solving the Eritrean problem, it tried to crush the movement by force. It spread a false national feeling through the mass media, but this propaganda was not accepted by the people.

There are no principal contradictions between people of different nations. Therefore, Ethiopian people will not go and fight the Eritrean people. The enemies of the people are feudalism, imperialism, bureaucratic capitalism; and the fascist government that is the puppet of the above three in practice.

The prominent fascist leader, Hitler, during the Second World War, said that the enemies of the Germans are Jews. He then proceeded to have millions of Jews massacred. The American imperialists in Cambodia, Vietnam, etc. tried to make the people of one nation fight each other, but their attempts were in vain.

In our country, too, Menelik did the same thing, when he was expanding his reign southward. The notorious feudal Dejazmatch Gebre Huywot, did the same thing with the Tigre rebellions and caused much damage. The present fascist government is trying to do the same thing.

What will be the effect of the proclamation? It will create civil war. The ongoing revolution will be reversed. Instead of class struggle, the people will be concentrating on a secondary question. This will weaken the peasants associations and strengthen the reactionary elements. It will improve the situation for those reactionaries, like Nega Tegegne and his followers, who are trying to revise the revolution. It will widen the gap between nations. The previous government used national chauvinism in order to stay in power. In all gathering places, it instigated tribal disputes. But the present government has taken an even worse step which will make people of different national groups fight each other and fight those who are residing in cities.

— The manpower and finances that could have been used to promote revolutionary progress is tobe used for revising the revolution.

— It encourages feudalism, which has been outlawed, at least on a proclamation basis.

— It encourages looting which was prevalent during the reign of Nobility.

— When the peasants are busy fighting, the danger of starvation will be intensified.

PEOPLE OF NORTHERN ETHIOPIA! To hinder the revolution, they have tried to weaken your associations. They have forced the Zemacha to desert you. They have opposed your attempts to disarm by sending troops to kill you. They are training an army called “Nebelbal” by Israelis. All these steps are still not enough. They are even instigating you to fight your own Eritrean brothers. Take care and do not be deceived by the fascists. As they had you fight the Eritrean people, they will send others to fight you when you proceed with your revolution. They will make Christians fight Moslems, Northerners fight Southerners, etc. You must realize that “Tomorrow it will be me”.

Proletariats, Students, Zemechas, Teachers, and Progressives — wherever you are. Expose the attempts of the fascists to revise the revolution. The differences between the Eritrean and the Ethiopian people is not primary. The solution to the Eritrean problem is Democracy.

“DOWN WITH FASCISM. THE PEOPLE WILL WIN.”

___

Notes: Zemecha refers to the national development campaign launched at the end of 1974 when thousands of students and teachers were sent to the countryside. The campaign backfired on the Derg, as the mobilized and empowered young people proved to be a fruitful site of recruitment for the EPRP. 

By “fascists” Democracia is referring to the ruling military junta or Derg.—ish

Derg Slanders EPRP, continued

Last month I quoted a number of Derg sources on the EPRP, and noted a US Embassy cable describing an anti-EPRP demonstration in 1976 with picket signs accusing the EPRP of CIA connections. I ran across video footage from that demonstration: The pictures above are screen shots from very low resolution video, so apologies for the quality. It's Reuters footage, and the clip can be seen at ITN Source.

Both pictures show English-language signs distorting the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party (EPRP). The top one shows a sign reading, “Down With Ethiopian Princes Restoration Party.” The second, riffing off the name of the clandestine EPRP newspaper Democracia, reads “Death to DemocraCIA.” These are, of course, shop-worn slanders, rationales for dehumanizing EPRP members who were soon to be rounded up, imprisoned, tortured and killed, in their thousands.

Quick Review: Blair Thomson & Ryszard Kapuscinski

The Emperor Haile Selassie arrested in 1974, escorted to a VW Bug

A pivotal event in the Ethiopian Revolution was of course the arrest of Ethiopia's monarch, the Emperor Haile Selassie, in September of 1974. It must be acknowledged that this was a very long time ago, and the forty-two years that have followed have certainly left many Ethiopians weary of politics and struggle. The nostalgia for better, more peaceful and certain days seems to manifest itself — at least judging from the internet — as nostalgia for the Emperor himself. Everyone loves a legend: certainly Haile Selassie himself knew this, for he carefully cultivated his own legend as the freedom fighter against fascism, the founder of the Organization of African Unity, and the heir to the rich historical legacy of the centuries-old Ethiopian monarchy. Indeed in the West Indies he is even worshiped as a divinity. It's no surprise that this image of Haile Selassie is the one remembered by those looking to recall greatness in the Ethiopian, especially the Amhara, past. Seemingly forgotten in the horrors that followed were the horrors of his last years when he ordered guns turned on unarmed students and turned a blind eye to thousands dying in a famine while his pets dined richly on fresh meat.

Which is why these two slim volumes were a timely read, splashing cold water on the selective memory that holds Haile Selassie in glowing and soft-focused fond regard.

ETHIOPIA, The Country That Cut Off Its Head: A Diary of the Revolution
By Blair Thomson
Robson Books Limited (London), 1975 paperback, 160pp.

Blair Thomson was a BBC correspondent in Addis Ababa. He witnessed the revolutionary events of 1974 from his reporter’s perch, and was more or less forced to abandon his post in early 1975 by the military government. This book, long unavailable, seems to have been rushed into print to capitalize on unfolding events, probably the Emperor's death, and while it is riddled with careless production (so many typos!), it’s actually an exciting week-by-week account of that first revolutionary year as it happened. Thomson was not any kind of insider: his reportage and insights are the sort one would read in a good newspaper or magazine. He had access to government press conferences and seems to have been a sound reporter with certain connections, but this is not a behind-the-scenes exposé. Indeed some of the most interesting things here are the musings of the conventional wisdom of the time about the social forces involved.

“Had Haile Selassie been a man of unshakable integrity, he might have been able to keep the system free of graft. But he himself used either force, or more usually, bribery — in the form of cash, lands or positions — to get what he wanted, and many of the men around him took their cue from the top. Thus over the years vice and corruption in top places became the rule rather than the exception.” (pp. 20-21)

Thomson chronicles some of Haile Selassie's more egregious acts, like the time he sold some of his extensive financial holdings to the state and then continued to collect profits. He presents an aristocracy isolated and out of touch with an advancing society. The Emperor tries to make limited reforms, but only if there seems to be profit in them for himself. And so Thomson paints a picture of Haile Selassie's last year; watching the Emperor acquiesce to the gathering revolution, futilely making changes to government while trying surprisingly passively to preserve the ancien regime by pretending nothing was happening. Haile Selassie gradually loses all of his intangible moral or regal authority and is soon openly challenged and disrespected in public. In the aftermath of the February revolution, the military committee known as the Derg gradually seizes the reigns of government leading up to the coup of September 1974 and the violence of November 1974, the Emperor's presence seems to shrink.

Thomson doesn't really have time to investigate the revolutionaries. He notes student radicalization, the new confidence of the Ethiopian labor movement under CELU, the waves of leaflets and open debate in the press.

“The combined effect of the Yekatit Riots [February revolution] and the army pay mutinies gave the country's radicals an opportunity to take the initiative. It also opened the way, for the first tie since the 1960 coup attempt, for those deliberately created divisions in the aristocracy and military to come to the surface. And it forced the Emperor to appear at least to be giving up his almost god-like hold over the nation.” (p. 46)

Interestingly, Thomson presumes that it is Chinese communists, not Soviets, who are behind the radicalization of the military by the end of 1974. And he (like the US embassy reported here before) calls Atnafu Abate, not Mengistu Hailemariam, the key leftist in the Derg: “...Major Atnafu was believed to be the real ‘brains’ behind the socialist — now increasingly Communist — programme.” (p.142)

It’s worth quoting from the almost hilarious promotional copy on the back cover of this paperback: “Here, revealed for the first time, are the incredible plots and counter-plots in the struggle for control of a country in the grip of a multi-sided tug of war between Peking, Moscow, Washington and the Arab world, and of a people so politically unsophisticated that their language has no word for ‘socialism’.” While long out of print, and despite this bit of condescending sensationalism, I'm really happy I tracked this book down.

THE EMPEROR, Downfall of an Autocrat
By Ryszard Kapuscinski
Vintage International, 1989 paperback, (Original 1978/1983)
165pp.

Kapuscinski’s book is beautifully written. While the Polish journalist spent the tumultuous year of 1974 in Ethiopia, the book roughly covers the period from the abortive 1960 coup up until Haile Selassie’s arrest and deposition in September 1974. He intersperses his own experiences of life in Ethiopia with what one assumes are heavily embellished post-deposition interviews with former members of the royal staff, from courtiers and aristocrats to servants. These interviews drip with bitterness and sarcasm.

In stunning prose he weaves a picture of life at the court in Addis Ababa. It's a picture of a man in absolute control of his country who cannily if ruthlessly exercises all of his survival skills to remain in power and control amidst unimaginable luxury in one of the poorest countries of the world.

“It was a small dog, a Japanese breed. His name was Lulu. He was allowed to sleep in the Emperor's great bed. During various ceremonies, he would run away from the Emperor's lap and pee on dignitaries' shoes. The august gentlemen were not allowed to flinch or make the slightest gesture when they felt their feet getting wet. I had to walk among the dignitaries and wipe the urine from their shoes with a satin cloth. This was my job for ten years.” (p. 5)

The Emperor turns out to have been a micromanager, personally engaged in decisions both great and small. One former Palace staffer describes how late in his reign, Haile Selassie replaced his staff with people with shorter memories and less experience:

“They had no past, had never taken part in conspiracies...indeed they didn't even know anything about conspiracies, and how were they going to find out about them if His Noble Majesty had forbidden the history of Ethiopia to be written?... They could not know...that in the face of Italian invasion he had sworn publicly to spill his blood for Ethiopia and then, when the invaders marched in, had gone by boat to England and spent the war in the quiet little town of Bath....” (p. 80)

As with Blair Thomson’s book, the description here of the Emperor’s last year is riveting, and Kapuscinski successfully and vividly contextualizes the almost languorous decline inside the palace with the turmoil, upheaval and gunfire out in the streets.

The Emperor is still in print. Together these two books have provided a really extraordinary portrait of the world in which the revolution was happening.

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

Quick Review: Makonen Getu

The Undreamt: An Ethiopian Transformation
by Makonen Getu
Christian Transformation Resource Center (Philippines), 2004
188pp., paperback

This short but engaging memoir is another by a survivor of the Red Terror period, a member of that generation which went from studying at university to making revolution. What makes this memoir particularly interesting is that the author, Makonen Getu, today a development engineer with worldwide Christian NGOs, was in his youth a president of the Union of Ethiopian Students in Europe, and if I'm reading correctly, for a time a member of Meison's Central Committee during the period it went underground at the height of the “Red Terror.” Makonen's memoir is thus the first English-language account I've discovered from a Meison, rather than an EPRP, point of view.

Makonen tells the story of growing up in hardscrabble rural Wollo province. He becomes adept at herding his family's cattle as a small child. Eventually he is lucky enough to be sent to a school to which he must walk two hours each morning. Schooling awakens ambition in young Makonen, and dedicating himself to his studies he eventually finds himself attending university in Sweden at the height of the Ethiopian student movement in the early 1970s. Sweden seems to be the base of the Meison (the All-Ethiopian Socialist Movement) wing of the student movement, and Makonen is radicalized along with his peers, soon studying Marxism-Leninism along with his professional studies. His youthful poverty means he has a clear picture of the injustice and inequality of pre-revolution Ethiopia and he is highly motivated. He joins ESUE, and eventually becomes its president.

But Makonen does not return to live in Ethiopia until late 1977, after Meison breaks with the Derg and returns to the underground. The Derg's death squads are quickly effective in unearthing much of Meison's leadership, and so Meison asks Makonen to return home to help rebuild the underground apparatus and formulate new strategies for guerrilla resistance and the longterm survival of his organization. The central portion of his memoir, entitled “My Communist Years,” is therefore the most relevant to our studies here.

Makonen arrives home with a bag of books on guerrilla warfare, and makes contact with the underground. He doesn't describe the underground Meison in very much detail, nor does he get into many of the political and ideological details which framed the position in which Meison found itself in late 1977, but his account is still a fascinating read. He spends time dodging former acquaintances, watching friends get arrested or disappear, and using his PhD studies as a cover for his covert organizing. Eventually he seems to realize that Meison is losing its battle against its former allies in the Derg, and he manages to escape the country, flying out of Addis Ababa in 1978 on the same day Fidel Castro was arriving for revolution anniversary celebrations.

Makonen returns to Europe, makes contact with Meison in Paris and Stockholm, but in the process of returning to his studies, converts to pentacostal Christianity and leaves the revolution behind for the world of Christian relief and development agencies.

Makonen comes across as a genuinely decent person. While he abandons his Marxism-Leninism, he continues a dedication to social justice and quality of human life. While the more evangelical portions of the book may distract the historical reader, they're brief, and Makonen doesn't waste time with vitriolic anti-communist denunciations. For a member of Meison, he also doesn't spend much time attacking EPRP. He describes being roughed up in Europe once by members of the opposing student faction, but he doesn't get into the bloodletting between EPRP and Meison after the latter ingratiated itself into the lower levels of the Derg's state apparatus. This might be somewhat self-serving, but it is of course ironic that Meison succumbed to the same state violence it had once fostered.

It's really a shame that there is so little English-language literature from the Meison side of the intra-revolutionary conflict. Andargetchew Assegid has written a history of Meison but it is untranslated from Amharinya. Negede Gobeze's memoir is similarly untranslated. I know there is a document called “Meison's Self-Criticism,” but I have yet to discover whether this is available in translation. And Meison founder Haile Fida's prison testimony before his execution is also available, but again only in the original Amharinya manuscript.

One of the more interesting things I got out of this memoir were some hints that the ideological positioning of the Ethiopian left is more complicated than many observers would have it. EPRP is often called Maoist, and while its diaspora supporters inhabited the Maoist milieu, the label seems inaccurate and superficial. Makonen calls himself and Meison Maoist more than once, reminding us that after Mao's death (1976), the halting of the cultural revolution in China, the coup by Deng Xiaoping's faction, and worsening relations between China and the Soviet Union, that ideological silos were in a moment of flux. Perhaps English-translations of Meison materials will surface shedding more light on its political subleties.

The Undreamt is a worthwhile and quick read. Its descriptions of the author's rural childhood and in the dangerous terrain of the revolutionary underground are vivid and engaging.



.

The Derg “Organizes” Workers

I’ve been spending a lot of time reading through the amazing cache of diplomatic cables from the US embassy in Addis Ababa in Ethiopia in the 1970s at Wikileaks. I found this in a cable from January, 1978. As a reminder, the Confederation of Ethiopian Labour Unions was founded in the 1960s, the Derg forced it to disband in 1976, replacing it with the “All Ethiopia Trade Union.” CELU had come under EPRP control; AETU initially was controlled by Meison. It's pretty clear that AETU was not actually an attempt to empower the working class, but to control it. This quick analysis from the US Embassy staff says it all:

3. COMMENT: ALMOST SINCE ITS INCEPTION AETU HAS LIMITED ITS ACTIVITIES, EITHER FORCIBLY OR BY CHOICE, TO POLITICIZATION OF WORKERS AND NON-WAGE DEMANDS. BECAUSE OF THE FLUID POLITICAL SITUATION AMONG THE CIVILIANS, AETU HAS BEEN INDOCTRINATING, AETU HAS MOVED FROM ONE PMAC-SANCTIONED MARXIST-LENINIST FACTION TO ANOTHER WITHOUT MAINTAINING ANY REAL INDEPENDENCE. RATHER THAN BE AN ADVOCATE OF WORKER DEMANDS, AETU HAS BECOME A POLITICAL AND SOMETIMES SECURITY TOOL OF THE PMAC. IT APPEARS THAT PMAC WILL USE AETU TO FILL GAPES IN CADRE FORMATION PROGRAM LEFT SINCE JULY '77 BY DECLINE OF ALL ETHIOPIAN SOCIALIST MOVEMENT (AESM OR ME'I SONE). HOEVER, AETU'S LACK OF TRAINED IDEOLOGUES AND HIGHLY EDUCATED MANAGERS WILL ONLY CONTRIBUTE TO ITS DEPENDNCE ON PMAC FOR ITS CONTINUED SURVIVAL. AS A CIVILIAN ARM OF THE PMAC, ALL AETU LEADERS ARE PROSPECTIVE ASSASSINATION TARGETS. MATHERON (January 13, 1978, source)

Also fascinating is a later cable. A few months later, AETU is reorganized, and another cable details how Meison has been forced out, with a tragically hilarious description of democratic rights.

SUMMARY: ETHIOPIAN TRADE UNION (AETU) "ELECTED" NEW 9-MEMBER EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE MAY 25 AFTER EMERGENCY MEETING DURING WHICH FORMER AETU LEADERS CONDEMNED AND DISMISSED. CHAGEOVER REPRESENTS FURTHER DECLINE OF CIVILIAN MARXIST-LENINIST GROUP, ALL ETHIOPIAN SOCIALIST MOVEMENT (AESM OR ME'I SONE), OF WHICH RECENTLY DEPARTED NEGEDE GOBEZIE WAS MAJOR FIGURE. SOVIET AND EAST GERMAN (GDR) INVOLVEMENT IS UNCLEAR AT THIS TIME. END SUMMARY. 1. IN CONTINUING EFFORT TO ELIMINATE ALL ETHIOPIAN SOCIALIST MOVEMENT (AESM OR ME'I SONE) FROM CIVILIAN POLITICAL COMPETITION, ON MAY 25 ALL ETHIOPIAN TRADE UNION (AETU) DISMISSED ALL FORMER OFFICE HOLDERS FROM AETU EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE AFTER 37-HOUR EMERGENCY MEETING AND REPLACED THEM WITH NEW NINE-MEMBER COMMITTEE. AMONG REASONS GIVEN FOR CHANGE WERE CORRUPTION, POLITICAL SABOTAGE, ABUSES OF AUTHORITY, ADVANCEMENT OF SELF-INTEREST, EXERCISE OF DICTATORIAL POWERS AND MISAPPROPRIATION OF FUNDS BY ME'I SONE-AFFILIATED LEADERS OF AETU. NEW EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE WAS ELECTED TO MEET CHALLENGE FACING AETU IN ITS ROLE FOR EVENTUAL ESTABLISHMENT OF PROLETARIAN PARTY. 2. AETU STATEMENT ANNOUNCING DISSOLUTION OF FORMER EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE WAS INTERESTING IN ITS FORTHRIGHT DENOUNCEMENT OF ME'I SONE AS A WHOLE, DROPPING PRETENSE OF ME'I SONE "RIGHT-ROADERS" AS ONLY ANTIREVOLUTIONARIES WITHIN ME'I SONE. SLOGAN PREVIOUSLY PROMULGATED BY ME'I SONE, "DEMOCRATIC RIGHTS FOR THE MASSES, NOW", WAS LABELLED SUBVERSIVE BECAUSE DEMOCRATIC RIGHTS CAN ONLY BE OBTAINED THROUGH STRUGGLE, NOT "DELIVERED ON SILVER PLATTER." AETU WAS ALLEGEDLY UNDER "IRON GRIP OF FEW AMBITIOUS PSEUDO-PROGRESSIVE INDIVIDUALS OPPOSED TO CONCEPT OF UNION OF ETHIOPIAN MARXIST-LENINIST ORGANIZATIONS (UEMLO)." THESE INDIVIDUALS FURTHER IDENTIFIED AS ME'I SONE AND CONDEMNED FOR CHANNELING FUNDS OBTAINED THROUGH AETU TO ME'I SONE GROUP, "WHICH HAD BETRAYED THE REVOLUTION."
(May 26, 1978, source)

EPRP Condemns EDU, 1977

In a previous post, we saw how the Derg government accused the EPRP of acting in concert with the Ethiopian Democratic Union (EDU). I thought it would be interesting to post a polemic from the EPRP side attacking the EDU. The EDU was formed by members of the Ethiopian aristocracy after the overthrow of Emperor Haile Selassie in 1974. Led by Leul Ras Mengesha Seyoum — who is still alive, living largely in exile in the United States — the EDU fielded an army in the northwest of the country, receiving some assistance and sanctuary from neighboring Sudan. It also clashed with the Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Party’s EPRA in the 1970s, although Solomon Gebreselassie reports in his history of the EPRP that the post-Marxist-Leninist EPRA did collaborate with the EDU for a period in the 1980s. After the fall of the Derg to the TPLF in 1991, the EDU became part of the legal opposition. (The no longer socialist EPRP remains outlawed.)

The following article was published, unsigned, in Forward, newsletter of the pro-EPRP World Wide Federation of Ethiopian Students out of Madison, Wisconsin, in its February 1977 issue (Vol. 1 No. 4). I have retyped and reproduced it here in full, without edits or corrections. Note: by “social fascist” the authors of the article below are referring to the civilian leftists like Meison and Waz League who were still working within the Derg regime when this article was published. I won’t comment on the points made by this article except to note that it's also a pretty good example of the determined, if unfortunately often misplaced, optimism about the state of the revolutionary struggle at the precise moment when the Derg was preparing lethal blows against the EPRP. —ish

UNMASKING EDU’S “ANTI-FASCIST” AND THE JUNTA’S “ANTI-FEUDAL” COVERS

Various forces are at work in Ethiopia today to “liquidate” the New Democratic Revolution being led by the EPRP. The foremost enemies of the Ethiopian people are the fascist military clique and its revisionist intellectual bootlickers currently serving the direct interests of feudalism, imperialism, and bureaucratic capitalism. The junta's active repression of the masses in general and democratic and revolutionary forces in particular has helped formerly disgraced and overthrown aristocratic and feudalist remnants to regroup in an attenpt to stage a come-back. One such organization is the self-styled “EDU” which operates from London.

Looking through their propaganda publications, the military junta and the EDU seem to be fundamentally opposed to one another. Like the thief crying stop thief, they hurl insults at one another in a vain attempt to hide their dirty schemes. Hence for the so-called EDU, the junta is “desecrating the Ethiopian character,” “too radical”, “anti-religion”, etc. Angry, it seems, by the stupidity of its class brothers for being feeble-minded enough to take it for its words, the junta occasionally calls them counter-revolutionaries, etc.

Beyond the level of appearance, however, the difference between the junta and the EDU is not one between two antagonistic classes, but a power struggle between ruling factions with tactical differences on how best to preserve the rule of feudalism, imperialism, and bureaucratic capitalism in Ethiopia. The so-called EDU is composed of former notorious big landlords and aristocrats who lost the control of the state apparatus to the bureaucratic bourgeois wing of the ruling classes as now represented by the junta and the social-fascist clique at its service. Hence if in pre-February 1974 Ethiopia state power was under the control of the aristocracy at the head of whom was autocrat Haile Selassie, it is now under the control of the bureaucratic bourgeoisie at the head of whom is the fascist military junta headed by the CIA-roomed and extravagantly demagogic Mengistu Haile Mariam. In the former as in the latter, the state serves the direct interests of feudalism, imperialism and bureaucratic capitalism, against which the New Democratic Revolution led by the EPRP is directed. And it is this revolution that both are working hard to counter.

Leul Ras Mengesha Seyoum, founder of the
royalist EDU, in a recent photo

A quick glance at the propaganda publications of the EDU indicates to us where their real difference with the military junta lies. Having in mind its age-old experience in intrigues and robbery, the EDU accuses the junta for not having the necessary experience in running the country, of lacking “management expertise”, etc. And as if the ruthless exploitation of workers and peasants under the junta is not evident enough, the EDU “accuses” the junta of encouraging “indiscipline, inefficiency and inattention in the factories and farms” and for not doing away with what they call the “time-wasting and indolent ways” of the masses (—referring of course to their way of life!). Of course, in order to baffle people they talk of their “concern” for the “democratic rights of the people” as if the Ethiopian people have not suffered enough under their dark rule for so long!

But for us as well as the downtrodden Ethiopian masses things must be clear. And they are. We are fighting under the leadership of the EPRP against the feudal, comprador and bureaucratic bourgeois classes who are tied to imperialism and who are our inseparable enemies.

Hence, neither the “socialist” mask of the junta nor the “democratic” mask of the EDU should fool us. They haven't and they wouldn't! The contradiction that exists between the two is only one within the enemy camp and hence only a temporary phenomenon.

This is precisely why the EPRP has in no uncertain terms pointed out that it “refuses to make a common front be it with fascists (who claim to be anti-feudal) or with feudalists (who claim to be anti-fascist.” (Abyot, #4, p.7)

As we have consistently pointed out in the pages of this Newsletter and elsewhere, it must be expected that as the revolution grows in strength the two would patch up their differences in order to “liquidate” the revolution. In fact there are recent indications that the two are making secret deals despite their respective rhetoric to the contrary.

US-led imperialism, in its desperate attempt to subvert the struggle of the people, also gives support not only to the junta but also to the EDU. This, of course, should not be surprising. Seeing the imminent downfall of the junta, imperialism is trying to use these feudal bandits in order to stage a come-back, if only under a different guise. In fact the recent news flurries in the various bourgeois press about the “successes” of these warlords in and around the Humera region is a clear indication of imperialist plans to use these forces for the criminal purpose of preserving its domination.

Whilst concentrating our attack against the fascist military junta and its intellectual mentors, we must continue our fight against these feudal bandits and their organization called the “EDU”.

It is also in this light that we view the recent propaganda war between the junta and certain bordering countries, the so-called “mini-summit” held in Khartoum where Numeiry, Sadat and Assad are reported to have discussed “the security of the Red Sea”, as well as the just completed shuffle of the U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Talcott Seelye, who secretly visited both Addis Ababa and Khartoum during this “mini-summit”. Not surprisingly, EDU's leading representatives were also reported to have been around at the same time.

The panic in the enemy camp, be it in the crisis within the junta that was temporarily resolved by chopping off a few heads within its own ranks or the propaganda skirmishes, summits and diplomatic shuffles, etc. are the result of, and only of, the successful struggle of the Ethiopian peoples and their vanguard, the EPRP. And so long as the revolutionary and democratic forces continue to forge their unity and persevere in their armed struggle, mai[n]ly relying on it, combating all manouveres and interference and always keeping the initiative in their own hands, victory will certainly be theirs.

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....