the role of international communism in the muslim world and in egypt and the sudan

British Society for Middle Eastern Studies

The Role of International Communism in the Muslim World and in Egypt and the SudanAuthor(s): Mohammed Nuri El-AminSource: British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 23, No. 1 (May, 1996), pp. 29-53Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/195818 .

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British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies (1996), 23(1), 29-53

The Role of International

Communism in the Muslim World

and in Egypt and the Sudan

MOHAMMED NURI EL-AMIN*

Introduction

A central plank in the platform of the Intelligence Department of the Sudan Government in the mid-1920s had always been the insistence that International Communism was doing its utmost to rid the Muslim world of the control of the imperialist European countries, foremost amongst which was Great Britain. Thus in one of its reports it typically emphasized that Bolshevism

has as its objective the destruction of the capitalist empires of Great Britain and France over Mohammedan countries in the hope of afterwards setting up a Bolshevist regime on the ruins.1

A special place was reserved for Egypt and the Sudan, which witnessed two anti-British uprisings in 1919 and 1924 respectively-two events that showed a positive means of dealing Britain a severe blow, and which offered International Communism a chance to try to weaken the British not only in that part of the world but also in all other British colonies.

One method by which the Intelligence Department tried to realise that objective was to accuse the Egyptian nationalist parties-the Wafd and the Watanist-of entering into an alliance with International Communism for the explicit purpose of loosening the British grip over both Egypt and the Sudan as a first step towards ultimately getting rid of it altogether. In two previous papers I tried to show that such accusations were totally baseless and that they merely reflected the eagerness on the part of the Sudan Government to rid itself of the Egyptian menace in the Sudan, which was theoretically and legally ruled jointly by Britain and Egypt but which was in practice under the control of Britain, whose interests the Sudan Government saw itself as primarily serving.2

In those two articles I discussed whether there had been any communist influences on the Sudan in the 1920s-and especially during the 1924 uprising-

* Department of Politics, University of Khartoum. Security Intelligence Report (SIR), No. 1,26 June 1926, in File No. 7/1/2, National Archives, Sudan (hereafter

NAS), p. 4. 2 See the author's 'International Communism, the Egyptian Wafd Part and the Sudan', British SocietyforMiddle

Eastern Studies Bulletin, 16: 1 (1989), pp. 27-48, and 'Was There an Alliance Between the Watanist (Nationalist)

1353-0194/96/010029-25 ? 1996 British Society for Middle Eastern Studies



MOHAMMED NURI EL-AMIN

by considering the attitudes of the Egyptian nationalist parties and those of the 1924 agitators towards communism. In this article, I approach the question from a different angle, by attempting to show whether International Communism had in point of fact been interested-and if so, to what extent-at that early stage in introducing communism into Egypt and the Sudan with a view to influencing the 1919 and 1924 uprisings in those two countries. This will necessarily entail at the outset a discussion of the extent to which International Communism had been interested in making itself felt in the Muslim world at large.

Russia's Interest in the Peoples of the East

If the Intelligence authorities only meant to say that Russia had started from a very early period following the outbreak of the October Revolution to cast an eye on the Middle East including Egypt and the Sudan, there would be no reason to disagree with them. Indeed, it could not be expected of a revolution which took place in what had basically been one of the least congenial environments to go on upholding the Eurocentrism of the Marxians without forfeiting a sympathetic reception from people of contiguous lands.3 But these authorities seem to have been saying much more than that. They implied that Russia had decided to fix its gaze on that part of the world with the explicit purpose of indoctrinating it. They drew a picture of Russians excessively preoccupied with Egypt and the Sudan and trying their best from Jiddah-which is claimed to have been their springboard into other countries of the Arab world-as well as from Syria and Lebanon, to infiltrate Egypt and the Sudan. 'It is now reported', a security report asserts:

that the Soviet Agent at Jaddah is the principal agent on the Russian side in the attempt to co-ordinate the activities of the Third International with those of the extreme nationalists of Egypt.4

It is true that from the very early days of the Revolution the significance of the Muslim East had been realized and appreciated by the Russians. 'Muslims

2 continued

Party, International Communism and the White Flag League in the Sudan?', British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 19: 2 (1992), pp. 177-85.

3 Both Marx and Engels spoke favourably of the universalizing role of Western civilization and of capitalism. Up to a point, they were considered by them to be necessary prerequisites for world revolution. As they envisaged that such a revolution was bound to take place first in the civilized and industrially advanced capitalist countries of western Europe, they were not against those countries extending their influence over the whole globe so as, in the first place, to enable the objective conditions for the revolution to mature inside those countries; and, in the second place, to endow the 'backward' and non-industrialized countries with the necessary attributes that were bound to lead them, with time, along the same path of ultimate revolution. Thus the West was not for Marx and Engels-as it was later to become for Lenin and Stalin-an anathema and a dangerous foe that should be destroyed at all cost. For the views of Marx on this matter as applied to British hegemony over India, see 'The Future Results of British Rule in India', in Marx and Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 12 (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1917), pp. 217-8. For a similar view by Engels, as applied to the French campaign against the Bedouins, see The Chartist Northern Star, 22 January 1848 (as quoted in Ian Cummins, Marx, Engels and National Movements (London: Croom Helm, 1980), p. 54.

4 SIR, No. 2, 17 March 1926, in File No. Security 7/1/2, NAS, p. 6.

30



THE ROLE OF INTERNATIONAL COMMUNISM

of the East! Persians, Turks, Arabs, and Hindus...', the cry went out as early as December 1917,

It is not from Russia and its revolutionary government that you have to fear enslavement, but from the European imperialist robbers, from those who laid waste your native lands and converted them into their colonies. Overthrow those robbers and enslavers of your country.5

In order to prove that the Revolution was genuine and sincere, they rejected the agreement made by Britain and France with the Tsar concerning Constantinople and decided that 'it must remain in the hands of the Muslims'.6 Moreover, to both the Persians and the Turks they declared the agreement over the partition of the Ottoman Empire null and void. Both peoples were promised the right to determine their own destinies.7 And, as with almost all other spheres of revolutionary thought and practice, the conceptual framework was put forward by Lenin. 'At the time when the revolutionary movement is rising in Europe', he wrote in December 1918 in the official organ of the Commissariat of Nationality Affairs which was set up in November 1917 under the chairmanship of Stalin:

...the eyes of all are naturally turned to the West...At such a moment one 'involuntarily' tends to lose sight of, to forget, the far-off East, with its hundreds of millions of inhabitants enslaved by imperialism. Yet the East should not be forgotten for a single moment, if only because it represents the 'inexhaustible' reserve and 'most reliable' rear of world imperialism...For the truth must be grasped once and for all that whoever desires the triumph of socialism must not forget the East.8

It is also true that the Russians never missed a chance to bring together the Muslims, both inside and outside Russia, in the hope, on the one hand, of persuading them to take kindly to communism, and, on the other, of inciting them to stand up against the designs of the imperialist powers. The high watermark in this respect was the Baku Congress of the Peoples of the East9 5 'Appeal of the Council of People's Commissars to the Muslims of Russia and the East', in Jane Degras, Soviet

Documents on Foreign Policy, Vol. 1, 1917-1924 (New York: Octagon Books, 1978), pp. 16-17. In the course of a comment on the victory of the Chinese Revolution, Lenin made the following highly significant remark (note the sharp contrast between him and both Marx and Engels over the significance that should be accorded the West as against the East in the bringing about of world revolution):

This means that the East has finally taken the road of the West, that fresh hundreds and hundreds of millions of human beings will henceforth take part in the struggle for the ideas to which the West has attained by its labours. The Western bourgeoisie is rotten, and is already confronted by its gravedigger-the proletariat. But in Asia there is still a bourgeoisie capable of standing for sincere, energetic, consistent democracy, a worthy comrade of the great teachers and great revolutionaries of the end of the eighteenth century in France.

Quoted in E. H. Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution (1917-1923), Vol. III (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1966), pp. 232-3.

Ibid., p. 16. 7 Ibid., p. 16. 8 Branko Lazitch and Milorad M. Drachkovitch, Lenin and the Comintern, Vol. 1 (Hoover Institute Press, 1972),

p. 373-4. In the invitations that went out to the peoples of the East published in Izvestia (3 July 1920), the Arab people

were addressed in the following terms:

Peasants of Syria and Arabia: the English and French have promised you independence, but today their armies

31




which was held in Baku in September 1920 at the initiative of the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI), and attended by 1891 persons representing thirty-two nationalities.10 Radek, the secretary of the ECCI, in his address to the delegates, left no doubt as to the real aims of the Russians behind the convening of the congress. 'Nothing', he assured the delegates:

can stay the torrent of the workers and peasants of Russia, Turkey, India, if they unite with Soviet Russia...Soviet Russia can produce arms and arm not only its own workers and peasants, but also the peasants of India, Persia, Anatolia, all the oppressed, and lead them in a common struggle and a common victory...The Eastern policy of the Soviet government is thus no diplomatic manoeuvre, no pushing forward of the people of the East into the firing line in order, by betraying them, to win advantages for the Soviet Republic. We are bound to you by a common destiny: either we unite with the peoples of the East and hasten the victory of the European proletariat, or we shall perish and you will be slaves."

Among the achievements of the Baku Congress were the establishment of the Institute of Oriental Studies (to replace the Oriental Seminar) in Moscow in 1920, and the Communist University of Toilers of the East in 1921. Both institutions were instrumental in the collection and dissemination of knowledge concerning the East, as well as in training the cadre that was to be entrusted with carrying out the policy of the Comintern in the different parts of the East.

However, neither the fact that the Russians had from the start realized the significance of the East, nor that they had exerted every effort to influence and organize its peoples by means such as the Baku Congress, should be taken without some qualifications.

Taking first the point that they had realized the significance of the East, it should be pointed out that once the revolution had succeeded, the Bolsheviks were forced to set up a state that was bound to find itself unable to afford the idealistic and romantic luxuries and fantasies of pre-revolutionary days. The Eastern communists were left under no doubt whatsoever regarding those hard facts when Russia decided to befriend the new government of Reza Shah, which

9 continued

have occupied your country, they are dictating their laws to you, and you, after liberation from the Turkish Sultan and his government, have now been made slaves of the governments of Paris and London, which differ from the Sultan's only in that they held you down more firmly and plunder you more severely.

Quoted in Brian Pearce (ed.), Baku Congress of the Peoples of the East, New York, New Park Publications, 1977, p. 3. 10 This information was given to the ECCI in the Report delivered by Zinoviev, its president, at its meeting of 20 September 1920. See Jane Degras (editor), The Communist International Documents (1919-1943), Vol. 1, 1919-1922 (Oxford University Press, 1956), p. 105. Ivory Spector in his The Soviet Union and the Muslim World (1917-1953) (University of Washington Press, 1959), p. 52, basing himself on more direct Russian sources (though he does not believe that they were necessarily correct), gives a breakdown of those who attended as follows:

1273 were said to be communists, 266 non-Party, 100 failed to indicate their affiliation, and 55 were women....In addition to the Turks (235 delegates), Persians (192), and Armenians (157), specifically summoned by the Third International, there were Chinese (8), Kurds (8), and Arabs (3) as well as Georgians. In Jane Degras, The Communist International Documents, Vol. 1, p. 105.

32




had succeeded in occupying Tehran in February 1921, although it was most unfriendly towards the Persian communists; indeed, only a year previously the Russians had accused it of being forced on the Persians by the British.12 Even more strikingly, Russia went out of its way to maintain cordial relations with the revolutionary government of Mustafa Kemal to the extent of signing the Soviet- Turkish Treaty of 16 March 1921. This was despite the fact that as recently as January 1921 that same government was believed by the Russians to be guilty of exterminating all the leaders of the communist movement who had been nurtured in Russia since 1918 for the day of revolutionary reckoning in Turkey. The Russians even went so far as to recognize the artificial communist movement which Kemal had set up and which he insisted was the only organ in Turkey authorized to work for the propagation of communism in that country. The same conciliatory posture was adopted by the Russians towards the government of Chiang Kai Shek, as well as towards that of King Amanullah of Afghanistan:

who quickly revealed himself...unswervingly opposed to anything that smacked of socialism or communism and a relentless persecutor of local communists.'3

Yet on 28 February 1921, the Russians signed with the Afghans the Soviet- Afghan Treaty.14

Furthermore, in those early days, and in spite of the rhetoric about the East and its pivotal position in the world revolution, it seems that in practice matters relating to the East were not placed at the top of the agenda by the Russians. If the urgency and importance assigned to any function or activity is measured, as is inevitably the case in any country with a totalitarian system of government, by the appearance of the head of state in that function or activity, then the fact that Lenin did not attend a single session of what was generally regarded as the first ever congress of the Communist Organisations of Eastern Peoples (held in Moscow between 4 and 12 November 1918), cannot be easily brushed aside as of no significance in showing where his interest lay. In fact, far from troubling himself unduly with the East and its problems:

in those days Lenin was entirely preoccupied with his hope of an outbreak of revolution in Germany and Austria-Hungary.15

12 They had this to say about Persia in the Manifesto of the Baku Congress:

Peoples of the East! What had Britain done to Persia? After crushing a peasants' revolt against the Shah and the landlords shooting or hanging thousands of Persian peasants, the British capitalists have restored the overthrown rule of the Shah and the landlords, taken from the peasants the landlords' land they had seized and thrust the peasants back into serfdom.

Pearce, op. cit., p. 167. 13 Carr, op. cit, pp. 298-9. 14 Ibid., p. 293. 15 On 27 November 1919, when Afghanistan had just achieved its independence, Lenin sent a letter to Amanullah in which he stated that

at present flourishing Afghanistan is the only independent Moslem state in the world, and fate sends the Afghan people the great historic task of uniting about itself all enslaved Mohammedan peoples and leading them on the road to freedom and independence.

Louis Fisher, The Soviet in World Affairs, New York, 1957, p. 201.

33




Finally, it can be claimed that not only was the East not a priority of the Russians; to all intents and purposes, it had always been a mere reflection of their internal, as well as of their West European, policies. In a sense, the two sets of policies were in Soviet theory and practice not as disparate as they appeared at first glance. In order to have a stable and strong domestic front, the Russians had, among other things, to try to appease their Muslim population. But they were also aware that stability and strength could not be assured unless their revolution was reinforced by a series of revolutions in Western Europe.16 It was here that they felt the need to use the Muslim weapon against the European powers-Britain, in particular-whose might lay in no small degree in their colonial possessions in which the Muslims formed the largest group as well as the most prone towards revolts. Their call in this respect was loudest at the second congress of the Comintern (July 1920), which marked the high tide of their revolutionary zeal, as evidenced by the twenty-one stringent conditions it stipulated as the necessary prerequisites for admission into its membership.17 The Baku Congress followed two months later and was designed for the purpose of applying the general outline of revolutionary plans to the particular conditions and circumstances of the Muslim world.

However, the Russians were forced by their external economic problems, their defeat in Poland in August 1920 and the failure of the revolution to erupt anywhere in Europe, to relent in their iron resolve to export revolutions outside Russia. All this found expression in the New Economic Policy (NEP), launched in the spring of 1921 to provide a more relaxed economic atmosphere that would encourage production and help create wealth. As a corollary of the NEP, changes were also made in their posture towards western Europe which found expression in the Anglo-Soviet Treaty of March 1921 and in treaties with other Western powers.18 As early as March 1920, when preparations were afoot for the second congress of the Comintern, Russia was already toying with the idea of reaching a compromise with the West. Radek, in terms that look like a prophecy of the Peaceful Coexistence strategy of decades later, put the whole matter succinctly:

If our capitalist partners abstained from counter-revolutionary activities in Russia, the Soviet Government will abstain from carrying out revolutionary activities in capitalist countries. There was a time when a feudal state existed alongside capitalist states. In those days liberal England did not fight continuously against serf-owning Russia. We think that now capitalist countries can exist alongside a proletarian state. We consider that the interests of both parties lie in concluding peace with every country which up to the present has fought against us, but in future is prepared to give us in exchange for our raw materials and grain, locomotives and machinery. The guarantees which our enemies are demanding from us lie in the interests of both parties.'9

16 Lazitch and Drachkovitch, op. cit., p. 373. See also E. H. Carr, op. cit., p. 176, and pp. 180-2. 17 For a list of those conditions, see Degras, The Communist International Documents, pp. 168-72. 18 For the negotiations and the agreements with other Western powers, see Alfred L. P. Dennis, The Foreign Policies of Soviet Russia (London, 1924), pp. 423-86. 19 Ibid., pp. 358-9-from Wireless News, Moscow (3 March 1920).

34




When, shortly before the convening of the Conference, certain European communist circles began to accuse the Russians of selling out the proletariat, Radek, with a visible loss of nerve, laboured to explain the inevitability of the Russian tactic. In the process he laid the blame on those sceptical European communists themselves for having left Russia in the cold by their failure to stage revolutions in their own homelands:

The Soviet Government knows that the first wave of world revolution has subsided and the next will mount only slowly. It knows that the Russian economy cannot be restored without the help of European workers who would supply the Russian workers with machines and the Russian peasants with ploughs. But the European workers are not yet masters in their own house. Therefore, the Soviet Government declared: we need world capital and therefore we must give it profits. Fools, who call themselves communists and even left communists, have accused us on this account of treachery to the proletariat. We answer: 'Then show us another way'...20

It was left to Lenin, the real father of the NEP, to set the seal on the whole matter, and to see to it that his child was accepted as a legitimate son of a Marxist Revolution. Setting the stage for the unsuccessful Genoa Conference of March 1922, in which Russia sat side by side with the major European powers of the day, he reminded his countrymen that:

We go to Genoa not as communists but as merchants. We must trade and they must trade. Actual competition is being established now between capitalistic methods and our own.21

Even after the Conference had proved a failure the Russian delegates showed that they still upheld the new policy when in Berlin they:

issued a definite interview [sic] in which they welcomed private foreign capital on the basis of Soviet laws and in spite of the fact that they were communists.22

In the face of this non-revolutionary policy (however transitional or tactical), it was only natural that the Comintern should start to feel uneasy. But it was helpless, since almost from its inception it had been under the tight control of the Russians. Although it tried to keep up its revolutionary agitation, at least as far as the East was concerned, even here, like everywhere else, it found that:

it must take into consideration the special circumstances of the time, must not oppose the foreign policies of the Soviet Government, and must further the alleged impression in foreign countries of the independence of the Soviet Foreign Office from the propaganda section of the third International (Comintern).23

Even before the NEP was fully discussed, a number of reservations against unconditional agitation in the East had managed to creep into the theses of Lenin

20 Degras, The Communist International Documents, Vol. 1, pp. 342-3.

21 From his address to the Eleventh Congress of the Russian Communist party, in March 1922, as reported by Pravda, 22 March 1922 (in Dennis, op. cit., p. 425). 22 Ibid., p. 438 (quoted from New York Times, 25 May 1922). 23

Ibid., p. 368.

35




which were adopted by the second congress. Thus the Comintern was led to observe that:

It is necessary to struggle against the Pan-Islamic and Pan-Asiatic movements and similar tendencies, which are trying to combine the liberation struggle against European and American Imperialism with the strengthening of the power of Turkish and Japanese imperialism and of the nobility, the large landlords, the priests, etc....24

If we now move to the other point-that of the attempt by the Russians to influence and organize the people of the East-we may begin by noticing that it was the Muslims inside Russia who had actually started the process of organizing themselves even before the Bolsheviks came to power. Between April 1917 and the outbreak of the Revolution, the Russian Muslims managed to convene a number of congresses in which they discussed the best ways and means to adopt in order to organize themselves, and what methods they should follow in order to bring about their cultural and political autonomy vis-a-vis the rest of Russia.25 Of special significance in this respect was the great Pan-Russian Congress of Muslims held in May 1917, which was attended by representatives from every shade of Muslim opinion in Russia in an unmistakable attempt at a show of solidarity and of political muscle. As the prevailing feeling was that more revolutionary upheavals were imminent, the Congress spent a long time discussing the form the relationship between the Russian Muslims and any future Russian state should take. In the end

the delegates expressed near unanimity on the fundamental concern of all factions-that the destiny of the Muslim people must be made separate and distinct from that of the Russians.26

In other words, the Bolsheviks not only found the Russian Muslims at the outbreak of the Russian Revolution at a well advanced stage of organization, but they also found them imbued with no small degree of scepticism, to put it mildly, about the real motives of the Russians in wanting to see them organized. As we shall see, those Pan-Islamic tendencies were later to be given such sharp ideological teeth, that the Bolsheviks only managed to extract them at considerable pains to themselves.

Although the Baku Congress represented the apex of the efforts of the Bolsheviks at organizing the Muslims both inside and outside Russia, it was never as frictionless or as fruitful as it was made out to be in the ringing words used both in the summons to the Congress and in the manifesto which it issued. To start with, the idea of holding such a congress was not a Russian innovation, but one that the Russian police had managed to stumble upon in 1908 in Cairo where:

24 Degras, The Communist International Documents, Vol. 1, p. 148.

25 Spector, op. cit., p. 36.

26 Alexander A. Bennigsen and S. Enders Wimbush, Muslim National Communism in the Soviet Union: A Revolutionary Strategy for the Colonial World (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1979), p. 20.

36




a prominent Crimean Tartar by the name of Ismail Gabinsky conceived the idea of holding an all-Muslim Congress in Egypt to consider the ills that beset the people of the Muslim world, to exchange ideas, and to propose remedies to ensure the progress and welfare of Muslims everywhere.27

Although the invitations to such a gathering had actually gone out, the Congress was not destined to take place. The idea was transmitted to Moscow, however, where it lay dormant until the outbreak of the October Revolution, when several congresses were convened by the Bolsheviks as a vehicle for the Bolshevization of the Muslim peoples.

It was moreover in the Baku Congress that the Russians faced the serious and divisive ideas of the Muslim National Communists as formulated by Sultan Galiev28 and his comrades. The main tenets of National Communism are well summarized in what is perhaps the best work in English on the subject:

National Communism was foremost a blue-print for national liberation. Its proponents, in fact, ignored most of the formulas of Orthodox Marxism-the class struggle, the supremacy of the industrial proletariat, and internationalism-and focused instead on its essence: that the time was at hand when the oppressed nations of the world would rise up and cast off their oppressors, surround them, or subordinate them to a new revolutionary dynamic....To be oppressed was to be proletarian, they concluded, and their theory of 'proletarian nations' underlies all else. Marxism must be rooted in individual nations for it to be meaningful, they argued, and a national revolution must precede the social revolution and class struggle. The latter, in fact, was to be postponed indefinitely. Peasants and bourgeois rather than the industrial proletariat were the people of the revolution, the logical environment for struggle could be the countryside rather than the city. Finally, the Muslim national communists believed that Islamic culture and way of life and Marxism are not by definition incompatible ideologies. On the contrary, they could co-exist and even complement one another.29

In other words, the national communists wanted to steal the show from the Russian Bolsheviks and take upon themselves the Bolshevization of the Muslim East in a manner which they thought only they were capable of. It was they who called for incessant revolutionary action against the colonial powers without regard to the adverse effects of this excessive missionary zeal on the security of the budding Russian state. It was they who stood against the policy of co-operation between the communists and the national bourgeoisie in the colonies in a united front against the colonial powers, and opted instead for a

27 Ibid., p. 26. 28 Mir-Said Sultan Galiev, a Tartar born in 1880, started his active life as a liberal-radical nationalist journalist. He participated in the first all-Muslim Congress of May 1917 in Kazan, and in July became one of the leaders of the Muslim Socialist Committee of Kazan. Immediately following the Revolution of May 1917 in Kazan, he became a member of the Russian Communist Party and soon came to be regarded as the most senior Muslim amongst its leaders. This enabled him to sit on almost all the committees that were set up to look after the Russian Muslims. Following his arrest in 1923, he was branded a 'nationalist deviant' and was dismissed from the party. After enjoying a brief spell of freedom, he was arrested again in 1928, brought to trial and sentenced to ten years hard labour. Nothing was ever heard of him after the late 1930s. For more on Sultan Galiev see Maxim Rodinson, Marxism and the Muslim World, London, Zed Press, 1979, pp. 133-40. 29 Bennigsen and Wimbush, op. cit., p. xx.

37




purely communist struggle. It was also they who, immediately after the Baku Congress, made it clear that they believed that both the Russian Communist Party and the Comintern were no different in their outlook towards the East from the previous Tsars, and that neither were ever likely to look at the East from a purely Eastern vantage-point.30 The Bolsheviks at first ignored these constant attacks, hoping they would be able to use National Communism for the absorption of the Russian, as well as the non-Russian, Muslims. But when they realized that left alone these Muslim national communists could damage rather than enhance their image in the East, they decided to clamp down on them with such severity that by the 1930s almost all of the leading figures of National Communism had either been expelled from the party or liquidated. The confron- tation with, and the eventual annihilation of, these Muslim national communists furnishes us with further proof that for the Russians the Muslim East had never been a primary concern. It cannot be accepted that the Muslim national communists were liquidated essentially because of doctrinal heresies on their part since that was not the standard reaction towards doctrinal heretics. They met their fate because their Eastern outlook was never to the Russian taste, as it would give the East more significance than the Russians were willing to concede.

In terms of achievements, the Baku Congress (symbolic and propaganda aspects aside) was far from successful. With the exception of the two resolutions pertaining to the setting up of the University of the Toilers of the East and the Institute of Oriental Studies, almost nothing resulted from its other resolutions. No other congress of a similar nature ever took place as had been planned. The Council for Propaganda and Action which had been set up was soon abandoned. More important, so far as the policy of making use of Islam to rally the Muslims behind Russia was concerned, the Baku Congress actually backfired on the Russians. The cry at Baku was of a 'holy war', with a nobler aim and a higher purpose than any other preceding holy war. Moscow boasted of having become the 'Mecca and Medina' of the Muslims.3' Observe, for instance, the stark neglect of Muslim sensitivities reflected by the following remark in the Mani- festo of the Congress:

Peoples of the East! You have often heard the call to holy war from your governments, you have marched under the green banner of the prophet, but all those holy wars were

fraudulent, serving only the interest of your self-seeking rulers, and you, the peasants and workers, remained in slavery and want after these wars. You conquered the good things in life for others, but yourselves never enjoyed any of them.32

30 Ibid., p. 57. 31 The ECCI, in its Appeal on the Forthcoming Congress of the Eastern Peoples at Baku, addressed the peoples of the East in the following terms:

...Spare no effort to come to Baku on 1 September in as large numbers as possible. Every year you make a pilgrimage across deserts to the Holy Places. Now make your way across desert and mountain and river to meet together, to deliberate together, how you can free yourselves from the chains of servitude, how you can join in brotherly union and live as free and equal men.

Degras, The Communist International Documents, Vol. 1, p. 109. 32 Pearce, op. cit., p. 173.

38




Certainly in the Muslim world there are people with a nostalgia for the 'glorious days of Islam' (when rulers were believed not to have pursued their own selfish interests); but even to these people remarks such as the above could be construed as nothing but a direct affront to their deeply-felt religious convictions. As if to add insult to injury, Zinoviev in his address to the Congress in its first session (1 September 1920), which he promised would be 'a frank statement and not in the style of a diplomat',33 disclosed to the delegates that:

we respect the religious feelings of the masses and we know how to re-educate the masses. This requires many years' work. We approach with caution the religious beliefs of the working masses of the East and of other countries.34

However, in the same vein he went on to warn them against looking with favour at Kemal's policy of supporting the Sultan:

It is your duty to tell this congress: what Kemal's government is now doing in Turkey supporting the powers of the Sultans, you ought not to do, even if this line be dictated by religious considerations. You must go forward and not let yourselves be dragged back.35

Thus, not only did Zinoviev show no appreciation of the religious and Pan- Islamic significance of the Sultan; he also, in effect, invited the Muslims to follow his advice even if it was contrary to the dictates of their religion.

That careless-one is tempted to say antagonistic-attitude towards Islam was one of the legacies of the second congress of the Comintern, of which the Baku Congress had been a mere reflection in the field of the colonies. However, it was to take the Russians until the fourth congress of the Comintern (July 1922) to realize the extent of the damage that had already been done. Tan Malaka, who represented Java at that congress and who was once the leader of the Indonesian Communist Party, explained to his fellow-delegates how 'the hostility to Pan- Islam expressed by the second congress had damaged the position of the communists',36 and how it had cost them the good-will and co-operation of a major Muslim organization in Java which had previously been willing to join forces with the communists. But the die had already been cast, and it was not possible to undo what had been done. The peoples of the East were thus taught to take communist pan-Islamic flirtations with a grain of salt.

Russia's Interest in the Muslim Arabs

If we must take into account a number of qualifications with regard to the Russian stand on the peoples of the East generally, this is even more the case with the Muslim Arab countries.

33 Ibid., p. 34. 34 Ibid., p. 32. 35 Ibid., p. 32. 36 Degrass, The Communist International Documents, Vol. 1, p. 382. See also Arnold Brackman, Indonesian Communism: A History (New York, 1963), p. 27. Brackman wrongly maintains that Malaka's remarks were given at the third Comintern Congress.

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To begin with, the Russians were not in the habit of including the Arab countries in what they vaguely termed the Near East,37 and which they some- times organizationally took as part of Europe. Thus, in a meeting of the representatives of its Western European Propaganda Secretariat which took place near Bremen in December 1920, the Cominter decided to divide Europe into six main operational districts, instead of five as had been the case previously. The sixth district was called

the near East, with a centre at Adrianople, or in Bulgaria, which later might be shifted to Constantinople, including European Turkey, Bulgaria, Albania, Greece and the remainder of Rumania.38

At other times, the term 'Near East' was applied to Asian countries, as in 1922 when the Russians set up a State Political Administration to work along the same lines as, though separately from, the Comintern in order to further Russian political interests the world over. As far as the Near East was concerned, the local headquarters was situated in Tashkent, and was made responsible for

Afghanistan, Persia, India, the Dutch East Indies and Indo-China. No single Arab country was represented.39

Secondly, and more significantly, the Russians never envisaged the Arab countries as comprising a single whole. Of course those were still early days for any Arab nationalist movement to help forge a clear-cut entity, but it is nevertheless most surprising to find in the summons to the Baku Congress only the names of Syria and Arabia, to the exclusion of all others, including Egypt. And although in the Manifesto which was issued by the Congress at the end of its deliberations the names of Mesopotamia, Palestine and Egypt were added to the list, those countries, on the one hand, were represented by three members the identity of at least two of whom was never revealed; and, on the other, they were never mentioned together, or in such a way as to imply that the Russians might have considered them as forming a common front. Part of the reason for this could well be the influence of Stalin, who a few years earlier had argued that since the Eastern countries-both Arab and non-Arab-were fast becoming heterogeneous, it would not be 'scientific' to lump them together.40 Equally, it

37 For an interesting discussion of how the terms 'Middle East', 'Islam' and the 'Orient' could help, or otherwise, in the demarcation of the border-lines of this region, see the chapter by Leonard Binder entitled 'Area Studies, A Critical Reassessment', in Leonard Binder (ed.), The Study of the Middle East (New York: Wiley, 1976), p.9-12.

Dennis, op. cit., p. 364. 39 Ibid., p. 366. 40 Stalin maintained that:

The distinctive feature of the colonies and dependent countries at the present time is that there no longer exists a single and all-embracing Colonial East. Formerly the Colonial East was pictured as a homogeneous whole. Today, the picture no longer corresponds to the truth. We have now at least three categories of colonial and dependent countries. Firstly, countries like Morocco, which have little or no proletariat and are industrially quite underdeveloped. Secondly, countries like China and Egypt, which are underdeveloped industrially, and have a relatively small proletariat. Thirdly, countries like India, which are capitalistically more or less developed and have a more or less numerous national proletariat.

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could well be that the Russians had been ignorant, or oblivious, of the factors that could work to unite those countries; for, as E. H. Carr observed,

it was a fact that the Arabic-speaking countries of the Middle East attracted compara- tively little attention in Moscow in the nineteen-twenties.41

Thirdly, Russia was certainly not endearing itself to the Arabs by its friendly relations with Turkey whose yoke in many parts of the Arab world had just been thrown off. Although the Russians had their reasons for desiring the victory of Turkey over the Western countries (and in particular Britain, which was supporting Greece in its war against Turkey),42 and although the Russians had long made it clear that Kemal's Turkey was not their ideal of a neighbour,43 Russia's support for Turkey was bound to prevent the Arab countries from providing fertile soil for her ideological seeds. One wonders whether there was actually a single Arab communist in the Arab world at the time that the ECCI was setting the stage for the Baku Congress. This doubt springs from the fact that one of the three men who were supposed to have represented the Arabs at that Congress was Enver Pasha, the controversial Turkish personality, who was an enigma not only to his own country, but also to the Congress, which could not be brought round to the idea of accepting his presence in its sessions.

Fourthly, beyond trying to make the most of the hostilities between the Arabs on the one hand, and Britain and France on the other, Russia did not have any clear idea what it wanted from the Arab world. In fact the distinctive mark of Russian foreign policy-or of communist propaganda for that matter-with regard to this part of the world was the lack of a coherent, systematic and consistent policy. The ambivalent and confused posture assumed towards Zagh- lul and the Egyptian national revolutionary movement in general offers a

40 continued Clearly all these countries cannot be possibly put on a par with one another.

From a speech delivered at a meeting of students of the Communist University of the Toilers of the East on 18 May 1925, and reproduced in his book entitled Marxism and the National-Colonial Question (San Francisco, Proletarian Publishers, 1979), p. 316. 41 E. H. Carr, A History of Soviet Russia (Socialism in One Country), Vol. III, Part II, Macmillan, 1964, p. 649. 42 In October 1922, Radek gave the reasons why Russia supported Turkey against Greece as, firstly,

everything that strengthens the Eastern peoples oppressed and exploited by International imperialism, also strengthens Soviet Russia, and, secondly, because Russia was deeply interested in ensuring that ships carrying grain to Russia...and oil from Russia should not be held up by orders from the British Admiralty.

Degras, The Communist International Documents, Vol. 1, p. 368. 43 In the ECCI Manifesto on Turkey (25 September 1922), they made their policy towards Turkey very clear:

The Turkish Government is not a government of workers and peasants, it is a government of the officer class, a government of intellectuals, a government which certainly does not correspond to our ideals. There is, therefore, no doubt that as Turkey develops economically, the Turkish working class will have to fight against the government. But the Turkish workers understand that whatever their attitude to this government, Turkey's fight is the fight of a poor peasant people against enslavement by international capital, and the international proletariat must in its own interest and regardless of its attitude to the Turkish government, do everything it can to prevent Entente imperialism from taking up arms again against Turkey and from shedding the blood of the European proletariat once more in the interests of English world domination.

Ibid., p. 370.

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perfect instance of this. First, neither the Russian Government nor the Comintern were ever able to come to an agreed assessment of the role that Zaghlul was playing in the Egyptian nationalist movement. Some members of the Comintern, such as the Indian communist Roy and a few other British communists, came down very strongly against Zaghlul and his policies in Egypt.44 Stalin, on the other hand (most probably with an eye to the interests of the Russian Govern- ment rather than those of the Comintern), did not share their views.45 Second, even the Comintern itself, for all the hostility of some of its members towards Zaghlul, failed at more than one congress to reach any decision on the stand to be adopted towards Zaghlul and his Wafd party. On the few occasions when the ECCI was emboldened to comment on an event on which there had been no agreement inside the Comintern as a whole-as when in 1924 it bitterly attacked Zaghlul for his persecution of the Egyptian communists,46 thereby implying that the communists in Egypt were right in having ceased to have anything to do with him-Stalin completely ignored the position of the ECCI and stuck to his sympathetic assessment of Zaghlul's nationalist movement. If anything, Stalin was trying to counter the ECCI's diagnosis of the Egyptian situation, and offered in the process an altogether different prescription from that offered by that committee. Not only did he acquit Zaghlul of the charge of being an imperialist 'hireling' and 'agent', but he also pointedly advised the Egyptian communists to co-operate with the movement the Egyptian leader had set in motion.47 However, 44 M. N. Roy was certainly expressing the views of many of his colleagues when he wrote an article entitled 'The Political Coup in Egypt' in the official organ of the Comintern, International Press Correspondence, on 21 January 1923 in which he made it crystal clear how he viewed Zaghlul and his role in Egyptian politics. To him Zaghlul was, at best, a mere representative of the progressive elements within the ranks of the landowners and the bourgeoisie; as such, his struggle against the British was bound to stop once the demands of those elements had been answered. Roy, further, contended that Zaghlul had let down his people by his inability to lead their revolutionary struggle upon his return from his abortive mission in London in 1920-a factor which, to Roy, lent more support to the long-held notion that the bourgeoisie in the colonies was not capable of realizing the aims of the people, and that it was, consequently, most likely to play into the hands of the colonial powers. 45 'The revolutionary character of a national movement under the conditions of imperialism aggression', Stalin wrote,

does not necessarily presuppose the existence of proletarian elements in the movement, the existence of a revolutionary or a republican programme of the movement, the existence of a democratic basis of the movement...The struggle that the Egyptian merchants and bourgeois intellectuals are waging for the independence of Egypt is objectively a revolutionary struggle despite the bourgeois origin and bourgeois title of the leaders of the Egyptian national movement, despite the fact that they are opposed to socialism.

From his lecture entitled 'The National Question' (part of a series of lectures under the general title of 'The foundations of Leninism') delivered in April 1924 at the Sverdlov University. In Joseph Stalin, op. cit., pp. 287-8. 46 According to the ECCI, the Government of Zaghlul 'in no way falls short of its predecessors, the direct hirelings and agents of British imperialism, in its incessant reprisals'. International Press Correspondence, No. 137, 21 October 1924. 47 'In countries like Egypt and China', Stalin wrote,

where the national bourgeoisie has already split up into a revolutionary party and a compromising party, but where the compromising section of the bourgeoisie is not yet able to join up with imperialism, the communists can no longer set themselves the aim of forming a united national front against imperialism. In such countries the communists must pass from the policy of a united national front to the policy of a revolutionary block of the workers and the petty bourgeoisie. In such countries that block can assume the form of a single party, a workers' and a peasants' party, provided, however, that this distinctive party actually represents a block of two forces-the communist party and the party of the revolutionary petty bourgeoisie.

'The Tasks of the Communist University of the Toilers of the East', in Stalin, op. cit., p. 317.

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even the sympathies shown by Stalin were not enough to shake off Russia's apathy and inaction towards Egypt, for in part the Egyptian Communist Party (ECP) itself, until the fourth congress of the Comintern, was considered by the Russians as being too weak, and its record too dubious, for the Comintern to bestow on its representatives anything more than mere consultative status at the congress.48

Finally, it is essential to remind ourselves that the sympathies of Stalin referred to above should in no way be taken as aimed at, or instrumental in, causing the Russians to become more interested in Egypt or in the Arab world. For the Arab world, excluding Egypt, the Comintern did not go beyond the call for the need to unite it in order to enable it to rebel against its European oppressors. Thus the Comintern addressed the people of North Africa and of Syria and urged them to get rid of French colonialism. Even the Syrian revolt of 1925 does not appear to have stirred the Russians to give any physical support to the Syrians in their struggle against the French. In fact, although the Syrian Communist Party's illegal foundation dated back to 1925, it was not represented in the Comintern before the latter's sixth congress in 1928. And although it is true that the Comintern in the opening years of the 1920s had shown a remarkable degree of sympathy towards the Arabs in Palestine, and strongly condemned Zionism since it was being used by imperialism to further its own ends, it is evident that such a stand was largely motivated by the strong traditional anti-Zionist feelings in Russian social democracy49 and not by any great enthusiasm on the part of the Russians for the cause of the Palestinian Arabs. Russia even pursued the British in one of their most secure corners in the Arab world, the Hijaz. The Russians seized on the opportunity of the victory of Ibn SaCid over Hussain, King of the Hijaz, in 1924-25. By 1926 the Russians had recognized the new king and hailed him as a symbol of progress and liberation for his people.50

As for Egypt, since like all the other Arab countries it did not border Russia, the Russians felt no need to go out of their way to fight imperialism there with more than verbal weapons. Thus we find that whatever role Russia played in the affairs of the Egyptian communists was only through the propaganda of the Comintern. But we have seen how little regard the Comintern had for Egyptian communism. As late as March 1922 Zinoviev, in spite of his boasting that the ECCI had succeeded in setting up communist parties in Japan, China, India, Turkey, Persia and Egypt, 'that is, in countries where even at the time of the third congress we only had weak circles of supporters',51 could not hide the fact that these parties were still weak in numbers.52 When the Egyptian Socialist (Communist) Party applied for membership of the Comintern, the most the

48 E. H. Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution, Vol. III, p. 473. 49 E. H. Carr, Socialism in One Country, p. 652. 50 Ibid., p. 655. 51

Degras, The Communist International Documents, Vol. 1, p. 326. 52 Ibid., p. 326.

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fourth congress could do was to refer the matter to a special committee. That committee advised that in order to gain full membership the ECP should first dismiss certain undesirable elements in its midst, convene a conference to which it should invite all communist elements inside Egypt who were prepared to accept the twenty-one conditions of the Comintern, and change its name from a 'socialist' party to a 'communist' one.53 Nothing was mentioned at this stage about any role which the Comintern was prepared to entrust to the Egyptian communists. In fact, so far as the former was concerned, Egypt, despite the facade of independence that Britain chose to grant her, was still very much under British control and should thus be assisted in her attempts to rid herself of the British menace. This probably explains why Stalin was adamant that the task of realizing full and true independence could only be effectively achieved by a broad bourgeois nationalist movement under the leadership of Zaghlul in spite of his hatred for both socialism and the Egyptian communists. This was almost certainly why the Comintern directed the CPGB-along with the other colonial European countries-to give succour to their respective communist parties in the colonies.54 The Comintern, it should be added, continued to be unimpressed by the performance of the Egyptian communists even as late as September 1928, when the sixth congress was held. In that congress the Comintern not only refrained from entrusting the Egyptian communists with any mission in the Sudan or anywhere else but, on the contrary, persistently hammered the point that these communists should concentrate all their efforts on putting their own house in order. 'Special attention', the Comintern advised after reviewing all the faults of the ECP, 'should be devoted to the building up of the party itself, which is still very weak'.5 Obviously, the image which the Comintern had constantly been giving of Egyptian communism was too bad to allow any assumption that the ECP could ever have been competent to carry the banner of revolution in Egypt itself or anywhere else.

The Real Purpose Behind the Claims That Communism was Introduced into the Sudan in the 1920s

If such were the nature and extent of Russian enthusiasm for spreading their gospel into the Muslim world, the Arab countries, and especially Egypt, how did it come about that the British intelligence authorities were so adamant in maintaining that the Russians and International Communism had left no stone unturned in their search for ways and means of trying to influence events in both Egypt and the Sudan? This question assumes an added significance because we are now in a better position to reject their evidence in this regard and to try, instead, to put it in its proper context. For instance, they referred to a circular which was believed to have emanated from the communist parties in Egypt,

53 International Press Correspondence, Vol. III, No. 2, January 1923, p. 21. 54 Degras, The Communist International Documents, Vol. 1, pp. 326-7. 55 'Thesis on the Revolutionary Movement in Colonial and Semi-Colonial Countries, adopted by the Sixth Comintern Congress', in Degras, The Communist International Documents, Vol. II, 1960, p. 545.

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Palestine, Syria and Lebanon, in which the Egyptians on the one hand, and the Syrians and Lebanese on the other, were incited to rise in rebellion against the British and the French respectively.56 It is significant that they did not address themselves to the question why-if their assertion that there had definitely been communist influences in the Sudan was to be credited-the Sudan was never mentioned in that circular. We can now see, however, that that circular was not in itself particularly significant. It was simply one in a series of barrages with which the Comintern, through its numerous agencies and front organizations, bombarded the British and the French and their presence in the Arab world.

British Intelligence also went on to give further evidence of the existence of communist activities in the Middle East. They revealed that their search for the centres of Bolshevik activity in the area had proved to them beyond any shadow of doubt that the major centre for that purpose was situated in Jiddah in the Hijaz.57 They then set out to list the staff of that Embassy as well as to give notes on the background of each of them. They never explained exactly how that Embassy went about performing its alleged role. Nor did they provide any clue as to whether it actually had any connections with Egypt and the Sudan. We may also, in addition, wonder if the Hijaz in the mid-1920s was a suitable place for a centre to propagate communism in the different parts of the Arab world. It should be recalled that in 1923-24 Ibn Sacud, the Sultan of Najd, managed to defeat Hussain, King of the Hijaz, and to proclaim himself king of a united kingdom of Hijaz and Najd. It was only

in February 1926 that an exchange of notes between the Soviet Government and Ibn SaCid provided for mutual diplomatic recognition.58

Britain was pinning her hopes on Hussain. The Russians, seeing British hopes dashed by the ascendancy of Ibn SaCud to the throne, hastened to do all they could to bolster the image of the new king by portraying him as the hope of his nation. Obviously, the primary objective of the Russians was to see that Britain was driven out of Arabia once and for all. Moreover, as the Islamic holy places were in Arabia, it was hoped that whatever fate Britain met here would be emulated one way or the other in other parts of the Muslim world. If the above assumption is sound, then we can assume that the Russians would not expect their tactics to bear fruit immediately. If they knew that they would have to wait for some time in order to achieve their purpose, we should not imagine them to be so foolish as to give the British a chance to cause them to fall permanently from the king's favour by using the Hijaz as a centre for communist propaganda. As we have already seen, their propaganda here was solely directed at weakening Britain's hold on the Arab world. Since they were fortunate enough to find

56 Intelligence Departments' Note on Communist-Wafd Activities (hereafter Note on Communist-Wafd

Activities), prepared by Mr. C. A. Willis, the Director of Intelligence, and enclosed in his letter No. D.I./X/34,234, dated 21 June 1925, in File No. Kordofan/1/14/70, NAS, p. 1. 57 See SIR, No. 5, dated 31 July 1926, p.b; SIR No. 6, dated 28 August, p. 5 and SIR No. 17, dated 1 October 1927, p. 6. 58 E. H. Carr, Socialism in One Country, Vol. II, p. 655.

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that this objective had already been realized in the Kingdom of Najd and Hijaz, it is hard to see what further objective their propaganda would have achieved for them. It would also have been naive on their part to assume that Ibn SaCud was so blinded by his ambitions as to ignore completely their propaganda activities in other Arab countries.

We are also given as a final piece of evidence what British Intelligence liked to call its greatest success in Khartoum, i.e. the programme of the Egyptian Communist Party which the authorities managed to seize there. The programme has been extensively quoted in order to prove that the Sudan had figured very high on the propagandizing agenda of International Communism. The aim here is obviously to make us ponder the particular part of the programme where it is mentioned that:

the Egyptian Communist Party thought it its duty...to assist actively in the formation of a Sudanese Party and, particularly, attention was to be paid to the relations of the more backward black tribes in the south and the more advanced Arabs in the Northern regions; if necessary, the party was to be confined to a mere elementary form, in order to ensure the inclusion of elements of the Southern tribes thus preventing any division in the workers' party between the Arab and the Southern tribes-a division which the British are already trying to foster.59

An interesting feature of the above quote is that by expressing the need to found a communist party, the programme was indirectly providing yet another proof that there was no communist movement in the Sudan in 1924. Although it was made clear in the reports of British Intelligence that the author of this programme was the British communist H. P. Rathbone, no attempt was ever made to discover why such a man should become so interested in Sudanese affairs as to equip himself with detailed knowledge about conditions there. Rather, it was taken for granted that both Rathbone and his programme gave irrefutable proof that International Communism was waging an ideological war on the Sudan from its northern flank, i.e. from Egypt. It can be said, in parenthesis, that every word in Rathbone's programme was meant to show the Egyptian communists what to do in the Sudan if and when they started the job of introducing communism into that country. Since no organization was ever set up as a result of that advice, we can hardly find substance for, or even reference to, the above conclusion. However, our main aim here is to show that Rathbone was actually acting in his capacity as a member of the CPGB, which along with other European communist parties in the imperialist countries had, as mentioned before, been entrusted with the attempt to implement the policies of the Comintern in their respective colonies. The advice which he was rendering the Egyptian communists was along the general lines of weakening British imperialism wherever it existed. Since Britain had by that time already intensified its moves to retain the Sudan for itself, Rathbone, beside calling for a federal union between Egypt and the Sudan, was also asking the Egyptian communists to make

59 Note on Communist-Wafd Activities, p. 3.

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it an article of faith to stand against the British who 'by every manner of means are endeavouring to make the Sudan economically independent of Egypt'.60 Since the British had started to regard the southern and negroid part of the Sudan as administratively separate from the predominantly Islamic Arab north-a policy which could have been designed eventually to include it with the other British colonies in East Africa from which the White Nile, part of the lifeblood of Egypt, originated-Rathbone did not forget to draw attention to the necessity of exerting all efforts to counter these British grand designs with respect to the Southern Sudan.

We may now return to our question of why the Intelligence authorities took it for granted that communism must have been involved with the Sudan in the mid-1920s. The answer to this question lies in the opposing strategies of Britain and the West and Russia with regard to the Muslim world, as well as in the rivalry between Britain and Egypt over the Sudan. From the outbreak of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, Britain, in line with other Western countries, had begun to see Russia in a new perspective. It was thought to be only a matter of time before the impending division of the world into two irreconcilable parts became a stark reality so long as the new regime remained in the saddle. They therefore tried to nip it in the bud by means such as economic blockades, the incitement of some of its peoples to cause trouble, and support for the White Russian opposition. The possibility that the new order, however, might survive all attempts to strangle it, and indeed try to protect itself by launching its own counter-attacks, had never been absent from the minds of people in the West. It is perhaps for this reason that hardly an Intelligence report was written without some mention of this dangerous threat.

However, the essence of the danger to Britain and to the West in general which the new regime posed was not what the daily, monthly or even annual Intelligence Reports were fond of portraying, even if at times they very lightly and briefly touched on it.61 Rather, it was strategic and economic. From the strategic point of view, both Russia and Britain were setting their eyes on the countries of the Muslim world. For Russia, the problem stemmed from the huge internal problems it faced from the outset in the shape of its own Muslim population, which assumed wider dimensions when the inevitable collision with the West took place. For Britain, this part of the world was the centre of gravity of her Empire, and any loss of it was tantamount to an eventual crumbling of the whole Empire. Each side, in addition, knew very well that by controlling this region it would be possible not only to achieve considerable hegemony, but also to deal the other side a severe blow. Consequently, the strategy of each side towards this area was to realize maximum influence for itself and at the same time to see that the other side enjoyed minimum influence. Each side was, further, quick to realize the common denominator which linked the otherwise heterogeneous peoples in the area, namely Islam. Hence each side was forced,

60 Ibid., p. 2.

61 SIR, No. 1, p. 4.

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whatever its antipathies, to adopt an accommodating posture towards it, and to try to use such accommodation to further its own purposes. There was, however, an irony of history in store for both sides in relation to Islam. As we have seen, the Russian Muslims not only grew sceptical about Russian objectives in their dealings with them, but it was also from among their ranks that the Muslim National Communists arose, claiming that they, and not the Russians, were alone capable of dealing with the Muslims as well as of striking the perfect balance between communism and Islam. The irony for Britain, we dare suggest, was that instead of the threat to her hegemony coming as anticipated from the Russian Bolsheviks, it was actually (and unexpectedly) to come from those very Muslim communists.

The British were convinced that in the Muslim world the Bolsheviks did not stand much chance. Even the Intelligence Department, with all its 'exaggeration and undue magnification of the Bolshevik threat in that area', had to admit when considering the possible impact of Bolshevism on the Sudan, for instance, that

Bolshevism as an economic and political doctrine can find no favour with the vast majority of the inhabitants of the country. The unacceptability of their doctrine to sincere Moslems is a fact which the Bolshevist leaders have learnt by experience, and their policy takes account of it.62

The brief honeymoon which Russia enjoyed with Turkey, Afghanistan, Persia, the Kingdom of Hijaz and Najd, etc. proved not that Russia could influence Muslim countries, but rather the contrary: that she was to a very large extent used by those countries in their own internal struggles for power and for thrones. Even if the Russians enjoyed the favour of a few rulers, Britain was sure that Russian atheistic inclinations were bound to cause them to fall from the favour of those rulers with the same speed they had won it.

However, this was not the case with the Muslim National Communists who, whatever their Marxist leanings, were professedly Muslim and were never likely to be regarded with the same degree of suspicion by their co-religionists in the Muslim countries.63 Their cry against colonialism was thus likely to be lent more credence, especially if it was taken in its extreme form as implying a rejection of what they envisaged as Russian imperialism over the Muslim peoples.64 Moreover, these Muslim National Communists were able to 'easternize' communism, thereby promising the Muslim peoples a certain sense of pride if they

62 Ibid., p. 3. 63 Sultan Galiev in fact urged the Russian Bolshevists to drop their anti-religious attitude and adopt a formula whereby instead of the destruction of Islam, its secularization (together with its purging of all its reactionary elements) should be the goal. Bennigsen and Wimbush, op. cit., p. 51. 64 After 1923 (after he had lost all hope in the Russian Communist Party) Sultan Galiev did not hesitate to equate Russian objectives in countries under colonial rule with those of the Western imperialist powers. 'We think', he declared,

that the plan to replace one class of European society by the world dictatorship of its adversary-that is, by another class from this same society-will bring no significant change in the situation of the oppressed part of humanity. Even if there would be a change, it would be for the worse, not for the better.

Quoted in ibid., p. 58.

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decided to subscribe to it. They claimed that there was nothing inherent in socialism that could stop the West or the Russians from exploiting the East and that it was therefore incumbent upon a socialist East to fight them both in order for it to realize true socialism. They further expressed their lack of confidence in the Western proletariat and its ability or willingness to forego its easy life for the sake of their colleagues in the East. They, therefore, called upon the peoples of the East to carry out single-handedly the struggle for socialism and to exert all efforts in order to realize it.65 They also maintained that the class struggle element in Marxism was a unique product of European historical development, and that as the East was of a totally different historical make-up, the concept of class struggle should be replaced with that of co-operation among all sectors inside the nation for the realization of socialism.66

The British would have been less than human had they not been frightened by this new challenge against which the old anti-Russian weapons in their arsenal were powerless. Whether in their extreme67 or moderate forms, the doctrines of Muslim National Communism stood more chance of winning the hearts of the Muslim peoples than communism as advocated by the Russians ever had. But if it was natural and expected that the British should become worried at the prospect of their empire being undermined by the proselytizing of these new socialist missionaries, the reactions on the part of their Intelligence were not always sensible or restrained. The Intelligence Department, as we have seen, so over-reacted on several occasions that it started to imagine most unrealistic situations in which it was genuinely feared that the Muslim National Commu- nists were searching for new recruits in the different parts of the Muslim world. Thus, we are told:

in the summer of 1926 a Soviet Delegation of six members attended the Muslim

Caliphate Conference and spoke of Bolshevism and the East. With regard to the Sudan

they stated that the people there were too ignorant as a whole, but they were trying to

approach the more intellectual.68

65 Ibid., pp. 45-8. 66 This is how Sultan Galiev put it:

All Muslim colonized peoples are proletarian peoples and as almost all classes in Muslim society have been oppressed by the colonialists, all classes have the right to be called proletarians. Muslim peoples are proletarian peoples. From an economic stand-point there is an enormous difference between the English and French proletarians and the Afghan or Moroccan proletarians. Therefore, it is legitimate to say that the national liberation movement in Muslim countries has the character of a socialist revolution.

Ibid., p. 42. 67 Observe how emphatically Hanafi Muzaffar, a colleague of Sultan Galiev, tried to present the argument of how Muslims could liberate themselves through co-operation with the Bolshevists:

...It could be a great mistake for us peoples oppressed by Europe to fail to recognise that Marxism is fighting imperialism. As the Communist Party is fighting this same imperialism in Russia and abroad we must accept Soviet power. We must not fear the anti-religious character of the dictatorship of the proletariat because the alliance between the Russian proletariat and the Muslims could deal a death blow to Europe.

Ibid., p. 29. 68 Public Security Intelligence, S. G. Resume of Secret Intelligence Reports, Nos. 1-26 (1924-1930), NAS, p. 2.

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The Intelligence Department followed every move made not only by the Soviet delegation, but, also, surprisingly, by the Sudanese pilgrims. These were all prominent religious notables for whom any talk about communism was out of the question; they also included two of the leaders of the largest two tarrqas in the Sudan, who were almost worshipped by their devout followers. The intelligence staff were only able to rest when they were positive that:

there was no evidence that the pilgrims from the Sudan had been in touch with the

[Soviet] Delegates, or that the two religious notables who had attended the Conference had been approached.9

The Intelligence Department, in a nutshell, was prepared to go to any lengths to help achieve the goals behind British strategy in the region. For this reason, an uncritical reliance on material appearing in its reports seems extremely dangerous.

From the economic point of view the West had from the outset realized the potential danger inherent in the new Russian regime. It was probably because of this fear that they tried their best to stifle the Revolution by, among other things, making it impossible for it to find the economic and financial support that was essential for its survival, and for which it was forced to devise the NEP with all its dangerous consequences for the purity of its cause. Thus the Genoa Confer- ence, as well as the other conferences that followed it, almost all foundered on the rocks of the insistence of the West on fair compensations for their concerns which had been confiscated or nationalized on the outbreak of the Revolution, as well as on the demand that arrangements for the speedy repayment of their loans to Russia should be worked out regardless of the dire economic conditions prevailing in Russia. The refusal of the American Department of Commerce to look with favour on the prospect of the West coming to the rescue of Russia typified the worries of the West over the prospect of the severe economic competition it was bound to face once Russia had been enabled to stand on its own feet. The hostile posture assumed by the Department of Commerce led an acute observer of events at the time, who had no sympathies with the Russians, to comment that:

Such was the attitude of the Department of Commerce. From a purely selfish point of view, the possibility that the Russian harvest of 1923 and 1924 might help to supply the European market would, of course, react on the American farmer who was already clamorous over the fact that the price of wheat in America was falling as he failed to find a foreign market for his surplus grain. The price for his surplus fixed the price for his commodity; and there is now the additional fact of potential competition with Russia in the wheat market of the world. Such considerations may also have effect on foreign policy.70

In taking that stand, the Department of Commerce had been under heavy pressure from the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York, which had

69 Ibid., p. 2. 70 Dennis, op. cit., p. 483.

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for years been fighting to persuade the American government to sever all technical, economic and trade relations with the new regime in Russia. The Report and Resolutions, as submitted by its Executive Committee on 4 July 1931, offer a vivid example of their line of argument over a long period since Russia had become communist. 'Some of the industries of the United States', they warned,

are gravely threatened by unfair and destructive Russian competition. We should not hesitate to act promptly to prevent any aggravation of the situation. Otherwise the communist economic menace may be fraught with the gravest consequences. It is necessary that trade with the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics be discontinued in order to conserve the economic well-being and political institutions of the world. We believe that if the United States takes the leadership in defending its economic system, the nations of Europe will follow.71

In Britain, The Times volunteered to champion the cause in its well-known diplomatic manner. 'The Egyptian Government', it went on to sound the alarm,

has been informed that the Soviet Government, which has already flooded the Yemen and the Persian littoral with cheap exports, is preparing an intensive campaign of trade penetration in Egypt, largely for propaganda purposes, and Sidky Pasha, the Prime Minister, is considering a suggestion to impose a differential tariff against Russian goods. Soviet agents are seeking to enter Egypt in order to push sales principally of cotton piece-goods, of which 150,000 bales have been imported so far.

In British commercial circles it is pointed out that harm will be done to Lancashire unless the campaign is nipped in the bud...

The Soviet has succeeded in including a number of young Egyptians to go to Russia in order to be educated in communist doctrines, and, it is understood, to return to Egypt to push Russian trade.72

It is a little surprising to notice in passing that people from the East who went to Russia for training would now come back to their home countries not as political agents, as had been the charge previously, but as economic ones.

It was now the turn of al-Ahram to popularize the theme of Russian commercial manoeuvres in the East-with special reference this time to the Sudan. Its London correspondent was reported as having sent a telegram in which he tried to draw attention to the Russian appointment of a certain Mr Stupak as their representative at Musawa, and to be in charge of all African countries of the Red Sea Basin. 'The Soviets', the correspondent continued,

give a special attention to Eritrea, Massawa, Abyssinia and the Sudan. Eritrea is becoming a warehouse for Soviet goods and the action of Russia is now extending to the Sudan where they are endeavouring to export cement, matches, soap, etc....73

This message was carried to the Sudanese through the good offices of the newspaper The Sudan Chronicle, one of two papers published by the Greek

71 Security/5/1/1 (Trade with Soviet Russia), NAS. 72 The Times, 3 September 1931. 73 Al-Ahrdm, 2 October 1931.

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community in Khartoum who had an overwhelming interest in such economic and commercial affairs.74

As a result of this continuous flow of what was depicted as startling economic news, the Intelligence Department started to question the commercial back- grounds and activities of anyone whom it suspected of having any connections with the Russians. Yet they completely failed to prove that, at least in the Sudan, the Russians had any dealings, whether commercial or financial;75 and insofar as such dealings were now considered to be a cloak for political activity, it could be safely assumed that the Intelligence Department had been unable to establish the existence of any political links between Russia and the Sudan.

We may thus conclude by warning against the risk involved in accepting uncritically the day-to-day reporting of the Intelligence Department which was itself later either retracted or drastically changed. 'I always keep you in mind', wrote Mr Anson, of British Intelligence in Cairo, to the Sudan Agency there,

when anything comes in on communism which you apparently have not received from the same source as myself and which appears to be of interest to you, but hitherto not many indications of projected work in the Sudan have been received which are sufficiently definite to be of value.76

Furthermore, Edward Atiyah-a Christian Lebanese who, as an Arab, was employed by the Sudan Government to help handle the educated Sudanese after the failure of the 1924 uprising-examined the detailed evidence given in support of the alleged Soviet infiltration of the Sudan through their agency at Jiddah and did not hesitate to dismiss it, at best, as inadequate. 'While the Soviets', he observed,

have been thus undoubtedly hovering tentatively over the boundaries of the Sudan during this period (1924-1929) on the three sides of Egypt, Red Sea Ports and the Eritrea-Kassala frontier, it may be safely said that they have not yet effected an entrance on any serious or even appreciable scale. There has so far been no indication at all of the growth of Communist thought or feeling in the Sudan; nor any evidence of

74 The Sudan Chronicle, 28 October 1931. 75 As proof of this we can select one letter, from a host of similar ones, from I. C. Penny, Controller of Public Security Intelligence (No. PS/59504), to Commissioner in Port Sudan, dated 21 April 1931, in which Mr Penny writes:

I should be glad if you could confirm (or otherwise) the statement that Benin has an agency in Port Sudan (his alleged attempt to get in touch with Sovotogflot we can leave alone for the time being: as it might spoil the game if we disturbed him now). If you identify the agent please let me have all available information about him.

It is important to notice, before we come to the rather surprising reply to the above letter from Port Sudan, how certain Khartoum was of the presence of Russian commercial links in the Sudan. On 9 July 1931, Mr E. R. Burgess, the Acting Commissioner in Port Sudan, sent his reply (letter No. ScR/36-p-1/4), to the Controller of Public Security Intelligence in Khartoum in which he notified them that 'I am unable to trace any agency of Maurice Benin in Port Sudan'. Both letters are to be found in Security/S/l/1 (Trade with Soviet Russia), NAS. 76 Letter No. B.2188, dated 20 April 1926 from F. G. Anson, of the Ministry of the Interior in Cairo, to C. F. Rider, of the Sudan Agency in Cairo, in File No. Security/5/1/4, entitled: 'Propaganda Leagues, Workers International Relief', NAS.

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systematic Bolshevik propaganda, either by couriers or by post. The only evidence available is that of a few sporadic cases of communist suspects being discovered either in the country or attempting to enter-and of Bolshevik literature (The Anti-Imperialist Review, etc., and private letters) occasionally finding its way to addresses in the Sudan.

The present time with its prevalent economic depression, unemployment among artisans in the towns, low wages, and poor conditions in the Gezira, seems indeed to offer a favourable opportunity for Bolshevik agitations in the Sudan which the Soviet Agency or some other body (e.g. in Egypt) may try to utilize-but so far there is no sign of any such agitation being afoot.77

It could thus be strongly argued that the only real element in the charge of the existence of any influences in the Sudan on the part of International Communism is that it was frequently used by the British against their weak and helpless partners in the Sudan, namely the Egyptians. It is also tempting in this regard to suspect that the Sudan Government itself may have played some role in raising the spectre of communism before a British Government which on occasions opted for a less hostile posture towards Egypt for strategic reasons. In particular, it could be assumed that following the 1919 Revolution in Egypt, and after the British decided to confer nominal independence on that country in 1922, the Sudan Government (which believed it alone knew what was best for the Sudan) wanted to make sure that the Sudan would not be adversely affected by whatever steps the British Government thought were necessary in Egypt to protect British interests in that vital country. Nothing, the Sudan Government must have thought, could have persuaded the British Government to leave things in the Sudan as they were, except to warn it that its interests were equally threatened in the Sudan as a result of the alliance between International Communism and the Egyptian nationalist parties for the purpose of penetrating the Sudan and helping to effect there what happened in Egypt in 1919. The fact that such an alliance only existed in its imagination clearly mattered very little to the Sudan Government.

77 Edward Atiyah's Report (1931), entitled 'The Political History of the Sudan from 1924 to the Present Time', in File No. Security 7/1/1, NAS, pp. 42-3.

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