Vol. XIII (2007), no 20 - The International Newsletter of Communist ...

The International Newletter of Communist Studies Online XIII (2007), no 20 37
Fredrik Petersson, Åbo:
“We are no Visionaries and Utopian Dreamers” – The Network of the Axis
League against Imperialism, Comintern, and the Anti-imperialist Struggle,
1924-1933. Doctoral thesis project.
The League against Imperialism and for National Independence (LAI) was founded as a result
of the “First International Congress in Support of the Oppressed Peoples in the Colonies” in
Brussels 10-15/2-1927. No such event had taken place before where the situation in the
colonial world was put on top of the agenda. With delegations representing European working
class organizations, radical and pacifist intellectuals active either as artists or scientists, and
representatives from the colonial world, the congress even surprised the chief architects,
namely the Communist International (more known as Comintern, or the Third International,
1919-1943) 73 and the German communist and main man in charge of various propaganda
operations and relief actions in Europe during the Inter-war era, Willi Münzenberg (1889-
1940). 74 The twist with organising the congress was to keep the communist links of the LAI
hidden and secret, all guided after principles decided upon a year earlier in Moscow. 75 Hence,
the LAI was from the very beginning constructed as a genuine front and idealist non-party
organization, existing under communist surveillance and monitored by Comintern
headquarters in Moscow. In its initial phase, the LAI stirred up a huge amount of attention
among its sympathizers, but also fear among actors (mainly the “Imperialist” nations), who
did not now how to approach and treat such a dubious and subversive organization as the LAI.
The general concern during LAI’s first phase was primarily to act as a nursery for colonial
freedom fighters. For example, India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Mohammad
Hatta, one of the driving forces behind the formation of Indonesia in the 1940s were
particularly active in the organization. Other fellow travelling celebrities as scientist Albert
Einstein, French authors Henri Barbusse and Romain Rolland were members.
73 The Communist International was founded on initiative by Lenin, and the first congress was held in
Moscow 2-6/4-1919. The Comintern was dissolved in 1943.
74 The most valuable interpretation on Willi Münzenberg’s life and career as a communist and in the
Comintern is still the work compiled by his wife Babette Gross, Willi Münzenberg. Eine politische
Biographie. Mit einem Vorwort von Arthur Koestler (Stuttgart, 1967). Other examples are Sean
McMeekin’s The Red Millionaire (Yale University Press, 2003) and Stephen Koch in Double Lives (London,
1995), but in one way or the other these two have failed to put forward a coherent picture. Instead, see
Michael Scammell’s article “The Mystery of Willi Münzenberg” in New York Review of Books, 3/11-2005,
and Thomas Kampen’s “Solidarität und Propaganda: Willi Münzenberg, die Internationale Arbeiterhilfe
und China” in Zeitschrift für Weltgeschichte, Jahrgang 5, Heft 2 (Herbst 2004), pp.99-106 for a justified
and complex analysis on the nature of Münzenberg. The Brussels Congress was visited by 174 delegates,
representing 104 organizations, both colonial and European.
75 Rossiisky Gosudarstvenny Arkhiv Sotsialnoi i Politicheskoi Istorii (RGASPI) Fond 542/1/3, pp.15-17,
Instructions from ECCI Secretariat in Moscow to Münzenberg in Berlin, 2/7-1926. The quote from these
instructions illustrates this further: “While influencing and directing the entire work of the League, the
Communist Fraction should try to remain as much as possible in the background, so that neither the
League nor the Congress is too obviously identified with the Communists.”