“It is only in revolutionary struggle against the capitalists of every country and only in union with the working women and men of the whole world that will achieve a new and brighter future.” (Alexandra Kollontai)

Leftist revolutionaries like Alexandra Kollontai at the start of the 20^th century did state that their idealistic goal of a communist and socialist future can just be achieved if there is a new understanding of unity of the working class on a global level. Communism has to be understood as a global phenomena and is not just tied to the Soviet Union. These ideas did challenge dominant hierarchies along racial and gender lines within the exploitative system of imperialism and the capitalist economic structure that it is based on. Communist internationalism has therefore be understood as a promise for the working class all over the world to break free from the ties of the oppressive capitalist to be able to be represented in an autonomous way of self-determination.

Being part of the proletariat is seen as the only important division of society that is used in order to shape a collective identity of the workers and farmers beside their cultural, racial or geographical background or gender.

One can argue that there is an inversion of social hierarchies in the way of how the class background is portrayed as the greatest value of an individual although always in connection to the collective working class as a whole. Dada Amir Haider Khan is describing in his autobiography Chains to Lose how he as an individual, orginally from the subcontinent who has worked on ships all around the world, is experiencing for the first time a sense of recognition and dignity while studying at the University of the Peoples of the East in Moscow. A place of unique diversity of people from various backgrounds mainly from the eastern part of the Soviet Union or the colonial and semicolonial East. A place where male and female students from all over the world of all ages and all different kind of educational backgrounds are studying and learning how “to assist in their national liberation movements against the imperialist powers and to organize communist parties in their countries”. Especially while recalling his experiences in the interview before getting accepted into the university it can be noticed that every personal detail like his social origin or his lack of formal education that led in the past to him being looked down on are now the qualities that are not just appreciated but even glorified.

The global union of the working class which Alexandra Kollontine as well as Dada Amir Haider Khan are idealistically portraying is also one of the main themes of socialist realist art and literature as the official aesthetic of the soviet union. This art movement is characterized by putting a positive hero or heroine of the working class in the centre of story telling of the written word or the visual image. Often the hero is portrayed in a naturalistic idealized way as the well-muscled, youthful and healthy worker that is ready to fight the chains of capitalism and start a revolution to build a classless society in the name of communism and socialism. Even if the female heroine is not portrayed as often as the male, one can see an increasing representation and recognition of the role of women within the revolutionary narrative of the working class.

The postcard above is advertising celebrations to the International Women´s Day on the 8^th of March which is acknowledging women of the working class from various backgrounds. Until today this day marks demonstrations and protests of the socialist women´s movement in 1917 as an event that represents women´s participation in the Russian Revolution. The new image of women is focusing on her identity as part of the proletariat although the narrative of women in their role as mothers of the revolution is still dominant as well. They were increasingly represented in different parts of society like educational and organizational institutions of the communist regimes and movements in place. One can argue that the society that is tried to be achieved is still a patriarchal one where women are not completely free from certain roles that they are described to because of their gender but that there is still change in how women are being given importance and are seen as part of the collective union of the working class. The aesthetics of the postcard are portraying the three women of diverse backgrounds as confident representatives of the international female proletariat. Them being positioned on the same level shows the attempt that racial or cultural divisions have no space in their unity. Their positive and happy appearance while looking into their socialist future is also an example how revolutionary individuals are characterized in socialist realist imagination. Being side by side representing their sisterhood working and fighting for the same goal is also an important image to be recognized. Although the stereotypical representation of “the asian” as well as “the african” women through accessories and the positioning of the white woman at the front does show that there is still a certain bias influencing that representation.

Communist and socialist ideology and their representation in different forms of socialist realist art are not completely free from race and gender divisions but one has to acknowledge that these hierarchies are being challenged and critized while at same time trying to focus on the collective identity that is uniting the working class as a whole.

The concept of communist internationalism allowed many people to dream of an alternative future that is restructuring society and has a new understanding of the value of every human being especially of the ones who have been through struggle in order to achieve this ideal state of liberation from the oppressive system of capitalist imperialism.

 

Dada Amir Haider Khan’s ‘Chains to lose –Life and Struggles of a Revolutionary’ provides insight into the way that an individual’s life was impacted living in Moscow during the 1920s. Dada is an Indian man who carries the chains of the Old World; he is burdened by the remnants of colonialism and the conflicts of identity that arise from it and despite having traveled across the stretches of the globe, it is only in Moscow that he breaks from his chains.

During this period, Soviet Art was in its peak stage. The Bolshevik era had established the iconic symbolism of the red star, hammer and sickle and art played a significant role in portraying the optimistic views of Soviet life. Social realism was differentiated from Socialist Realism and all pessimistic or critical commentary was banned. ‘Agit-prop,’ a combination of the Russian word ‘agitatsiia’ (agitation) and propaganda was set up by the Soviet Communist Party in the 1920s and the slogans of the revolution were sung proud and loud, fanning the patriotic fires of the heartland. The posters circulated during this period show the power of art and how a small group of painters shaped the attitudes of a nation of 150 million.

The emphasis on literacy as a means of enlightenment was given great emphasis during this period. Dada’s travelogue shows how his time at the ‘University of the People of the East’ was significant not only because he had international exposure but because of the specific approach that the education had. Dada had traveled the world, however, it was only in Moscow that he found himself engaging with a group of people as diverse as this. The students were from a diverse strata of social classes and admission was based on political engagement rather than social background. The university allowed the students to study a wide variety of subjects, from anthropology to political science. It played an emphasis on collective action and combined it with military training. The most significant feature of the university was that it did not expect all students to be taught in the same medium of instruction. This reminds one of the shackles of colonialism and the way it established a hierarchy of language through erasure of native languages and identities. For the first time, Dada Amir was not expected to erase his own mother tongue to assimilate. This poster depicts the way this message was delivered to the people. The poster ‘literacy is the path to communism’ shows a man holding a torch in one hand and a book in the other, while he rides a Peguses above the city and high in the clouds. The torch represents quite literally the light and the book is the means to achieve it. The Pegasus becomes a powerful symbol as the winged horse from Greek mythology combines strength and flight, becoming a sign for power and mobility. The artists use a bright palette of red and yellow to represent the colors of the Soviets. Finally, the poster bears the hammer and sickle emblem, reminding the viewer of who is leading the path of enlightenment. Dada’s account here depicts the way that the message behind this poster rang true and did, in fact, materialize in the universities in the Soviet Union.

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The idea of literacy was not limited just to enlightening the Soviets, there was a central idea of communist internationalism and setting up a network of camaraderie across the globe. Communist International pushed the idea of uniting formerly colonized countries with industrial workers under a new banner. Dada recounts how the university half expected the students to eventually return to their home countries and give back to them the knowledge they have acquired in their time in Moscow. These posters depict the way art was used to embolden the common man and tell him that the soldier, farmer, and worker could all play a role in the way they should be governed. In the poster ‘proletarians of all countries unite,’ three men are depicted in different garb, all with assertive body language and determined faces all at the same level. The ‘Russians and Indians are brothers’ poster has writing in Hindi underneath saying ‘hindi rusi bhai bhai’ showing how one language does not allow for erasure of the other.

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The concept of the ‘new woman’ who was no longer subordinated to the man was emerging which can be seen through this poster. Dada’s travelogue discusses how the girls in the Young Communist League did not waste time in ‘frivolous pastimes’ like man hunting. The new woman was to be indistinguishable from her male counterparts, she was an equal contributor to the struggle and the revolution had emancipated her from the shackles of the patriarchy. This poster then becomes an interesting comparison as it shows the woman holding the hammer with the sickle near her feet, she is emboldened and dressed in red, the color of the revolution, as her face tilts towards the sun. Her arm is extended and she occupies space, she is a new woman who is no longer held hostage indoors by the man. She points towards the library, the workers club, a school for adults and the house. The inclusion of the house within this poster becomes significant as it serves as a reminder of how the new woman is not completely free from the chains of motherhood either. The revolution does not forget its mothers behind but attempts to consolidate taking motherhood and the ‘new woman,’ something that can be observed within the contradictions of Dada’s travelogue as well.

To conclude, Dada’s account presents the extent to which the utopia presented by the posters translated into reality. Dada was able to break his shackles with the Old World by being influenced by whatever extent of the utopia existed in Moscow. In Moscow he found the literacy and mobility promised by the Pegasus and the Torch, the acceptance of his mother tongue among colored faces standing on equal ground and the idea of a new kind of womanhood he had not perhaps encountered before. The ideas of communism his education imparted where the kind he felt he owed to take back to India. In a way, the posters and the reach of art did not stay limited to the heartland in Moscow. The messages of the utopia were deeply imparted in the hearts of the people and one can imagine it is the constant exposure to art just like this that would have shaped Dada’s own views. Soviet posters show the role art played in fueling the spread of these ideas and how the circulation of them all over the world broke the chains of those who encountered them.

References:
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/s/socialist-realism
https://www.spectator.co.uk/2017/10/how-i-fell-under-the-spell-of-soviet-propaganda-posters-by-fraser-nelson/
https://www.internationalposter.com/country-primers/soviet-vintage-posters/
https://www.mtholyoke.edu/~heale20k/Propaganda/Soviet_Propaganda_Posters.html

“First in Europe and then elsewhere”

“European idea of history—one might say, came to non-European peoples in the nineteenth century as somebody’s way of saying “not yet” to somebody else.”

-Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe

In 1939 Dada Amir Haider writes of coming to Moscow to receive an education in revolution making and communism. Dada writes of Moscow as one experiences a dream, he writes of it as a time when he truly came alive- “the fundamental changes which had taken place in me affected every aspect of my personal and social life beyond my capacity to explain.” In the time that he is there, Dada is able to develop his ideas and articulate what he finds problematic about capitalist societies, specifically that of the USA. In his memoirs he illustrates capitalist inferiority by juxtaposing it to the social economic system operational in the USSR.  1n 1955 Sukarno addresses a room of twenty nine nations on matters of peace and decoloniality. The speech that Sukarno gives is one that is emblematic of Dada’s ideals and experiences in Moscow. While both texts are separated by time, form, audience and structure, they speak to each other in more ways than one. Here, it is instrumental to situate both figures. Dada is writing a few years after the Soviet Union has won the revolution and has successfully destroyed the ‘prison of nations’. Sukarno addresses twenty nine decolonised nations who have each had to experience their own long arduous battles to freedom. It is a moment of great promise. One that is characterized by its rejection of colonial time and what Chakrabarty refers to as the history of the “not yet”. Both texts thus look to the future in what they represent in the present; a demand to participate in the “now” and the yearning of a utopian future.

European civilisation had deemed the subject of the colony as incapable of the same progress on the grounds that it was not yet ‘civilised enough’. Given time, and the guidance of the European nations, the colony could reach the same level of progress the Europeans had. The future of the colony was thus the present of Europe. This also meant that the colony was measured in terms of cultural distance, with Europe being the silent referent at all times. The image of the colonial subject that emerged from this pool of knowledge  was one that depicted the colonial subject as backward, inept and incapable. Communism and the anti colonial struggle ruptured this linear progression towards a European future and simultaneously produced a new subject. Dada’s depiction of Soviet life stands in stark comparison to Eurocentric conceptions. First and foremost, it challenges the capitalist economic and social model. Furthermore, it challenges the notion that the Russian, Indian, Chinese, Black American, Korean etc. can be placed within a racialized hierarchy, with one set above the other. Sukarno demands the same in his insistence that each country embody the political and social role that the colonial empire had denied it. This demand of self governance and the promise of  a better future denied Europe’s claim that colonial nations were not ready to rule themselves.

By challenging colonial time and its linear progression both Dada and Sukarno posit the existence of a different subject, one that had various different ways of being.  For Dada this happens on a daily basis in the Soviet Union. He sees this first at the University of the Peoples of the East and then again, in his personal experiences in the city. Of the university he writes:“nowhere had I even met people of so many diverse races and nationalities, and been able to share a communal life with them, as in this university.” For Dada, what was more important than the diversity at the university was how it was supported structurally. He shows how religions and people were all welcome and no one was allowed to feel foreign. Education was given in everyone’s mother tongue so that subjects were better understood and there was little alienation. Most importantly, the state ensured that no one live an individualised life, instead collective well being took precedence. Sukarno’s anti-colonial subject was similar in its bid to accept diversity “Must we be divided by the multiformity of our religious life?”. He also demanded that countries that had been freed of colonialism not rest till all countries were free, creating a global community that recognised and protected each other’s well being. People now had a third way to exist: there were not simply backward, inept and corrupt. Both Dada and Sukarno expanded that definition to accommodate the image of a free coloured person.

The challenge of colonial time and the rupture that it brought had important geographical implications. Moscow in 1926 becomes the new centre of the world, rivaling Washington DC. It became a refuge for the world’s political refugees and men and women who were not credited with human rights and dignity within their own nations. In Bandung, Sukarno remarks “Today the contrast is great. Our nations and countries are colonies no more. Now we are free, sovereign and independent. We are again masters in our own house. We do not need to go to other continents to confer.” Europe was no longer at the center of the world and oppressed peoples had successfully charted out a place for themselves in the global arena as anti-colonial and communist revolutions provided with ruptures in colonial time and logic.

The image of brutality associated with the word ‘communism’, thanks to both western influence in pop culture etc. and a few isolated incidents, is widespread. Spotting a red poster on the internet displaying the hammer and sickle evokes no positive emotions of any kind within the general populace. Hidden to them are the details, the minuteness to which you must shrink down to realize the true beauty of the whole. Dada Amir Haider Khan’s life is a testament against the supposed ‘villainy’ of communism.

This poster, for example, from the days of the Soviet Union, propagates the image of the Red Air Force and, subsequently, the image of the Soviet Armed Forces in general, in a positive light. Dada Amir Haider Khan hailed from northern Punjab, near Rawalpindi. People from that area in the country constitute the bulk of the Pakistan Armed Forces. Dada’s influence on soldiers from his own village was profound and none of it was directed towards sabotage or treason towards the state.

This poster on the other hand displays the focus placed on children. Dada Amir Haider Khan, among many other things, is known for the two schools he built in his village, one for boys and another for girls. Both fully equipped with every tool needed for learning at that level.

These posters, apart from furthering the interests of the state in the international arena during the Cold War, shed light upon certain aspects of communism that people tend to gloss over in the brilliant yet blinding light issuing from the bloc of ‘liberty’. Aspects, whose ‘absence’, further submerge the Reds in ‘wickedness’.

Dada Amir Haider Khan and Sukarno are separated by several decades and thousands of miles. While one is set in the context of Communist internationalism, the other immediately follows global decolonization. And yet this does nothing to reduce the decidedly similar desires and hopes that their words reflect. Both represent the possibility of a world that diverges from European ways of being.

At the very beginning, Sukarno lays out that the Afro-Asian countries are present in Bandung because of a conscious choice and not out of a necessity or a sense of obligation to any other country. This is the first prominent departure from the kinds of conferences that were organized historically. For one, the countries are seen as equals in both their status and their ability to contribute to a mission that goes beyond their own selves. For another, no one is a silent bystander: every country gets its voice heard and respected. And in this process, the geographic centers of power have started to shift. In the time that this part of Dada’s account is set, the only geography that mattered was the link between the colony and the metropole. Moscow represented a completely unprecedented alternative and in some ways became the center of a new world that promised the ideals of Communism. As far as the time of the Bandung Conference is concerned, it represented a shift of power from the global north to the newly decolonized countries who could now hope to meet in places of their own choice, voluntarily.

A prominent theme in Sukarno’s speech is that of diversity. While Europe looked at diversity (whether it came through skin colour, ethnicity, language or religion) as a threat, it was a source of mutual recognition for Sukarno (which automatically implied acknowledgment of, and respect for, traditions and customs that were local to Asia and Africa). This recognition and sense of self-worth is precisely what the colonized had been robbed of by the colonialists. Regardless of how apparently different people may be, as long as they are guided by similar principles, diversity becomes a strength and represents a potential for self-recognition. In Moscow, Dada recounts a similar multiplicity of people gathered. Volunteers from all over the world congregated in one city and bridged the social distance that otherwise made cohabitating near impossible. The needs of the collective took priority over those of the individual. Diversity can hence become a positive trait “when there is unity in desire” and oppressed groups globally can gather in solidarity.

The presence of a cohesive society also became contingent upon state structures. For Dada, Moscow became the ideal that other places were compared to. A civilized society was one that had some social safety nets for its citizens (including access to healthcare, education, security and unemployment benefits). If a state failed to provide this to its people, then it could no longer expect the people to abide by its unjust laws. Interestingly Sukarno also talks about the ideal state and its responsibilities. He claims that the purpose of the law is fulfilled only so long as it is deployed for the wellbeing of people. In saying this, he is reconceptualising the idea of what politics can and should look like.

Dada and Sukarno allude to transformative experiences that helped shape the people who are engaged in these activities in their own times. For Sukarno, it is the price they have had to pay for freedom, on the journey to self-transformation. The pain and sacrifice that has helped shape the people, has also enabled them to stand on an equal footing with all others. For Dada, transformation was entirely different. It was the experience of the University of the Peoples of the East that many got to attend in Moscow and the pivotal shift it represented for them. For many, it was their first exposure to formal education. It also tied them in to people with similar aims globally and became a source of pride, for all the traits that were deemed undesirable in a Euro-centric world were desirable in this one.

Dada Amir Haider’s account of his stay in the Soviet Union illustrates how radical the Soviet Union was; it was not radical just in its conceptions of the state and economy but also in its internationalist vision of a world where disenfranchised people were placed at the forefront of change. People of color from colonised lands, people of color from a very racialised United States of America, peasants and women all of whom who had been previously consigned to the backdrop of revolutionary movements were now heroes who spearheaded progress and development in the Soviet Union. This comes across in works of Socialist Realism where the subjects in the posters are often steel workers, peasant women, factory workers and engineers. Socialist Realism relies on ordinary heroes like these who overcome hardships to succeed to shape the consciousness of the masses. These heroes represent what the Socialist society is supposed to be like, presenting an ideal that the toiling masses must strive towards.  

The Socialist project is not confined by state boundaries but extends to the entire world- a vision that is embodied in the university education that Dada Amir Haider Khan receives at the University of the Toiling Masses of the East. University programmes like these aimed to provide literacy and training to people from colonised lands and elsewhere to enable them to administer and build territories that were premised on the interests of the working classes. The students at this university were expected to, once they finished their programme, to assist in the anti-colonial liberation struggles and  organise communist parties in their respective homelands. Class oppression, in Leninist-Marxist conceptions, was tied with colonial exploitation that stunted the development of nations. Soviet posters too take up the cause of anti-imperialism with representations of multiple nationalities.

This poster helps illustrate how the newly formed Soviet Union (which is placed at the centre of the globe) emerged as a major centre for political dissidents and revolutionaries. This and accounts like that of Dada Amir Haider Khan represent a de-centring of the world from Western Europe, which up to that point had been viewed as the intellectual and revolutionary breeding ground of ideas. Moscow became a safe haven for those who had been driven out of their own homelands by repressive regimes and those who wanted to escape the class system and other forms of oppression that they were subject to in their homelands. The funds raised in USSR to support the British workers on strike and the excitement generated by the British strike in Moscow, mention of which appears in Dada Amir Haider’s account, is a testament to how connected the Soviet Union’s regime was to struggles elsewhere. Moscow is a place where the colonised people, their languages, their culture and their struggles find recognition. Their lack of formal education and their lack of proficiency in English and/or Russian is not a hindrance to their training and they are instead taught in their own native languages.

 

The internationalist dimension of socialism is also revealed in this poster. It is not enough for the workers of the Soviet Union to be liberated; their freedom is tied to the freedom of other workers in the world and as long as they remain unfree, the work of Soviet Union remains incomplete. Imperialism is not just a threat to countries subject to this but also to the prosperity of socialism. The Soviet Union acknowledges contributions by other communist leaders and workers across the globe as signified by the state funerals accorded to Bill Heywood and  Comrade Ruthanbarg. Also significant is the participation and leading of funeral processions by Dada Amir Haider Khan and his non-Soviet comrades. Works of socialist realism usually depict fit-looking youth, something that can be seen in this poster too. The Soviet Union, in its propaganda, associates itself with muscled, fit, radiant youth, signifying a break from a past deemed to be withered and ancient much like capitalists are depicted in other posters. 

 

 

Another prominent agent of change in the new order is the peasant woman as exemplified by Noora in Dada Amir Haider’s account. No matter how different the reality in Soviet Russia was, the Soviet state did put forward “The New Soviet Woman” – one who was educated, one who was as much a part of the workforce as the man, one who was relieved of the burden of domestic work and one whose care work was acknowledged by the state. Nurseries were seen as being as instrumental in the progress of the nation as tractors were. In Amir Haider’s account, there is an incident where women protest when the university administration attempts to close down nurseries due to budget cuts.  Amir Haider’s account refers to subsidies that were provided to young women like Noora who could have not afforded education otherwise.  Peasant women like Noora were to harbingers of change, encouraging collectivisation in their own villages. Peasant women and women workers came to symbolise ideal femininity. This can be seen in the regard and admiration that Amir Haider has for Jenny, a young black woman distinguished by her discipline in the military camp.The idealisation of women from proletariat origins is also seen in the censure that the Indo-American group is subject to for fraternising with upper-class women. Women before the revolution look rather washed-out in contrast to the brighter hues used to depict the same women after the revolution. The women are seen as the ones leading discussions post-revolution in sharp contrast to the humiliation they were seen as being subject to before the revolution. It is unclear how much gender roles changed in the Soviet Union, but the possibilities available to women did increase.

References:

 

https://www.britannica.com/art/Socialist-Realism

http://soviethistory.msu.edu/1934-2/socialist-realism/

Dada Amir Haider Khan’s travelogue is an indispensable source of first-hand insight into the newly emerging world of communist internationalism. His personal experiences, his aspirations as a fervent supporter of this dynamic New World, his personal history and background, which ironically, in a time where all ideals were turned upside down, granted him the legitimacy necessary to participate in the birth of the New World. In this new utopia, things were, by his account, idyllic. 

However, there is some uneasiness, even in this utopia that may be sensed by a particular group of persons; a sort of underlying hypocrisy in the way, and- perhaps more importantly- the intentionswith which notions of fairness and equality were exercised. The claim of equality among people of all races and nationalities was met as far as one could see, indeed, as is made explicit in Dada’s work: “nowhere had I even met people of so many diverse races and nationalities”; yet there is one group whose turn at equality, is not addressed in the same terms: women. 

This poster will serve as a way to elaborate what I mean when I question the extent to which women attained- or were granted, rather- equality alongside the opposite sex. 

As far as poster making goes, this one does the trick. It serves to evoke strong emotions of maternal aggression and ultimately inspire women to enlist in the communist effort. However, the poster itself, addresses women in their capacity as mothers- not as comrades fighting for the same cause, but as mothers who are bound by instinctand not conscious intellectual discourse, to embrace a cause that promises a better future. The poster also incorporates elements of divinity in saying that this maternal drive is “holy”, and therefore more difficult to cast aside. Of course, women were not passive recipients of this gendered propaganda; Dada Amir Haider testifies that the Young Communist League girls did not “waste time in man hunting or any other frivolous pastime.” In the same account, however, he mentions women who were “all dressed up” and were the “object of much flirtation”. Object. This may not seem like a substantial enough point to go on about, but if one were to contextualize: women were spoken about, in this account, as either “object(s)” of desire or as those who were “like men”; there were also the “women of non-proletarian origin”, with whom any kind of intimate relation was discouraged.

In this New World then, a binary was nevertheless imposed on women, a binary based on distinctions of a superficial nature, such as their physical appearances- their “fascinating feminine faces”- and their dressing style. Why is it then, that in this utopia, stereotypical perceptions of women were still used as the means to achieve a goal, as a means to evoke emotionally driven responses? 

On the opposite end of the spectrum, we see that women are not placed into categories but are generalized to the point where one woman represents the entire female population, as is seen in the poster. 

I maintain, and one can probably infer, that the posters, as well as Dada Amir’s travelogue, are not overtly or even, perhaps, deliberately patronizing towards women- they make their own wary attempts at relenting some space for women to enter a stage dominated by men. What I hope to communicate, is that these attempts- carried out by men- detract from the larger fact that what women really need emancipation from are men. Being tied to men through marriage, through children, through social expectations, is what prevents women from embracing their personhood. The same personhood, the same recognition, the same representation that is vouched for in a communist utopia.

If communism truly caters to all voices equally, then why is it that the voices of women are not as loud, or are subdued, if they are heard at all. Why is it that women like Crystal Eastman, who possess immense intellect, are weighed down by that same intellect instead of being elevated to the ranks of great thinkers? Why is their greatness never actualized? Why do their dreams never come to fruition? Because as Claude McKay put it, they are “fettered with a family”. They are crushed by the burden of their womanhood and their subsequent duties to men, leading me to believe that the communist utopia was indeed a gendered experience.

Western history textbooks are not kind to the Soviet Union while describing the events of the twentieth century. They tend to overuse the advantage of hindsight and claim that the Soviet Union was bound to disintegrate because of various reasons such as the absence of democracy and human rights violations. Once again, the west is guilty of viewing history as a linear process in which Western Europe and the United States are at the forefront, the USSR is somewhere in the middle and the ‘backward’ colonies are at the tail end and have barely begun their journey. But once one moves beyond textbooks and archives and explores eyewitness accounts and literature produced during the time, they realize how the Soviet Union really was a life changing entity for some people. One such person is Dada Amir Haider Khan, an Indian from Rawalpindi who attended the University of the Peoples of the East in Moscow during the late 1920s. Dada recounts his experience in the Soviet Union in his memoirs and exhibits immense admiration for Moscow and the Communist government. Through this admiration one is able to realize why for 45 years the United States was worried about Communism spilling over. At a more personal level is able to prevent crass labelling of Soviet literature, rhetoric and art as ‘propaganda’ and starts to understand the appeal it held not only for Russians but the many people living under imperial rule.

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Apart from posters, Soviet artists were also engaged in a movement known as Socialist Realism. It gained popularity with the government and its purpose was to “treat the present as though it did not exist and the future as though it had arrived”.  Nowhere is this better exemplified than the soviet posters and art regarding growth and economic success. The Soviets celebrated not only hard work but collective efforts. The painting displays this seems to suggest that every individual must play his role if the state is to prosper. One also notices the absence of anyone regulating these workers and giving them orders, showing that one man does not benefit at the expense of many. Dada discusses this in his memoirs and defends the notion that there is no freedom of expression in the Soviet Union by exclaiming “Yes there is no freedom for a capitalist to exploit the labor of others for personal gain, nor is there freedom for counter revolutionaries to harm the Soviet institutions which have been striving to end the exploitation of man by man!”.  The Soviet poster also employs the ideals of Soviet realism and looking at the future by displaying statistics that will supersede the west in terms of production. These posters depict the fact that the USSR CAN take over the west in economic terms, and if the buildings and statistics do not convey this effectively, the predominance of the color red achieves this effect and nurtures hope within the viewer. It is understandable to hear Dada recount how he “felt in the red flag a symbol of victory over the exploiting system”. The Soviet Union had become a new vision of what the future could look like and one had to be in Moscow in order to truly experience the tremendous forces that were being unleashed. Dada succinctly sums up Western biases and their devotion to their own models of development and Laisses Faire by saying that they “could not conceive that economic development could be regulated by a scientific pre meditated economic plan”

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Economic and scientific advancement was something the Westerners would have still understood by the 1960s when the Soviet Union shocked everyone by launching Sputnik. What baffled the more was why people chose to follow to Soviet Union when democracy and capitalism were options. The Western countries never had to experience living lives as second class citizens. They were never made to feel like aliens in their own homeland. To the Soviet Union decolonization was a process that was linked to communist internationalism and Moscow was the capital of the revolutionary world. Through classes on political geography the Soviets made it very clear to their Eastern students that the “reality of colonialism was very real” and that they must overthrow their colonial leaders who had robbed them of a decent lifestyle for far too long. The Soviets propagated this message well before the United States did after the end of the Second World War. And they didn’t leave it there. This poster clearly distinguishes Moscow from Washington DC. It did not “exclude dark skinned people from using the public conveyances, eating places and cinema houses’. It recognized and celebrated differences as is also shown in Dada’s account. This place is a home to these people to the extent that Dada feels immense humiliation when he mistakenly violates traffic laws, as he feels a sense of responsibility for Moscow. The Soviet Union gives its people a leader who is a lot more accessible than leaders of the west as well as leaders Dada had probably heard of back in India. The people who follow communism are given the chance to adore their leader, and this adoration is not restricted to Russian men, as the poster clearly shows people from the global south as well as women. Dada also narrates how people are able to follow their religions freely, a promise that Jinnah also made to the new state of Pakistan but was sadly never followed. In a way Moscow is even friendlier to Dada than the power holders of his own country, showing how the goal of Communist internationalism was bigger than anti-imperialism; it was to eradicate oppressive social relations as a whole and to provide the colonized people with a home and a sense of pride and self-worth.  It wanted to do away with the belief that these people were backward and tell them that the moment they were living in belonged to them in the same way it belonged to the white man.

To make one’s own what was previously foreign remains the ultimate aim of all hermeneutics. Interpretation in its last stage wants to equalize, to render contemporaneous, to assimilate in the sense of making similar. The goal is achieved insofar as interpretation actualizes the meaning of the text for the present reader.” – Paul Ricoeur

Dada Amir Haider Khan’s enrolment in the University of the Peoples of the East was more than an avenue of his formal education and literacy. It was a “break with the old world”. The subsequent new world was to be characterized by an understanding of a future that was different from the past, and of being that was other than European. A monumental break, it was enabled by the fact that socialism was carried out on people’s own term. At Dada’s university, “all nationalities received instruction in their own languages”, which granted them the liberty to create their own spatial and temporal imaginations and freely inhabit them as per their will. Soviet Russia paid enormous emphasis to orthography and lexicon. When communist parties took to the streets with red flags, and asked the workers of the world to unite, while referring to each other as comrades, they presented the possibility of existing; even if it was in a revolution; that was different from that of the West. Language was an essential component in constructing identities, so it was the words they spoke and thought in which created the New Soviet Man and the New Soviet Woman.

I have chosen the posters below because they show the emphasis on education in the soviet revolution, but more than that, I will also read them into Dada’s account of self-actualization. The first image is a Red Army propaganda poster in the new orthography; 1921 in Moscow. It shows an open book which reads “From Darkness into Light; From Battle to Books; From Misery to Happiness.” In other words, it is an illustration of a “break with the old world”, the former of which constitutes darkness, battle and misery, whereas the latter is a world of light, books, and happiness. The book is placed between the revolutionaries and their new communist world, hinting at the significance of education in achieving the transition from the old world to the new. 

But it was not education alone that made Dada feel recognized as a man with self-worth, respect, and dignity as he stepped on the Soviet soil. The acknowledgement of individual diversity within literacy so it could be united into a collective literacy was also important. The second Soviet poster is from 1927 in Uzbekistan, and reads “Workers and Peasants, Don’t let them destroy what was created over 10 years.” It consists of script that is written in more than one language, and confirms Dada’s claim of how “all nationalities had been collectively struggling to rebuild their motherland.” 

Although Soviet Russia placed the collective over the individual, however, in no way was the latter rejected during the process. When Dada “felt in the red flag a symbol of victory over the exploiting system”, he looked forward to an inversion into Sukharoff that would teach him words of worth; not some European’s worth, but for the first time, Dada’s worth. It happened. He lived the journey of his sacrifice and patience in the land of the Americans, and self-transformation and worth in the land of the Soviets. The words’ worth was not limited to Dada’s self but extended beyond geographical boundaries, and when Dada took upon the mission to spread the word to his birth land, the cycle had begun wherein oppressed Indians would emerge out of the exploitative system and find their worth through the Soviet education that stood for unity in diversity. 

As the dominant constructors of history, one of the most important tools the colonizers owned was time. They could shape the past, present and future of the colonized people in whichever way they preferred. By calling the colonized ‘backward’ and ‘primitive,’ the colonizers established that the former lived in the past, one that the latter had long outgrown. It is in this moment of the past where Dada Amir Haider Khan is traveling the world. He finds himself in Moscow amidst the Russian Revolution where the colorful mix of people surprises him. What Moscow presents Dada with is a sense of self-worth and dignity which the colonizers had stripped him off. When Dada describes Moscow as the “break with the old world,” he describes time in his own terms. The “old world” or the past described here is the world of the colonizer where people of different races were treated as inferior. Similarly, when Sukarno makes his speech in 1955, most of the previous colonies have been liberated and he focuses on the “new departure in the history of the world.” The contexts in which Dada and Sukarno find themselves are different but they both seem to desire the same thing: to break away from the historical time defined by the colonizers and to leave their colonial masters in a newly defined past that the colonized had now outgrown.

What is magical and adds the heavy flavor of hope in both these texts is the turning of tables. The colonizers seem to have been left in the past while the colonized are not only reclaiming time but also moving forward with it. The way in which they move forward is also similar. Dada observes the diversity of people from “colonial and semi colonial east,” all of whom had gathered in Moscow to learn to “assist in their national liberation movements against the imperialist powers.” Under the colonizer, “the individual motive had dominated every aspect” but in Moscow, “the emphasis was on collective action.” This is the communist internationalism that views the struggle of the working class around the world as a singular one. Sukarno appeals to a similar notion of “peace” and “unity” among the Afro-Asian nations. He calls for the “New Asia” and “New Africa” to stand together and protect their “newly recovered independence.”

In this way, despite the difference in time and situation, the two texts seem to be very similar in nature and one seems to follow the other. Dada’s memoir seems to depict the start of the struggle against the colonizer. It shows the assembling of all communities. Sukarno’s speech shows a time when the struggle has been won and break from the “old world” is complete but as the newly freed colonized stand at the epoch of a new world, they are faced with the new anxieties. The task at hand now is to live in the present time and not let any force of power throw them back into the past or the past. Sukarno could have been looking back at Dada’s memoirs and taking notes while writing his speech. He could have been swaying the following Soviet Union communist posters in the faces of the people gathered in Bandung. They depict what he is advocating for: equality, unity, peace, and the will to protect the freedom of the once exploited people.

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