The following is an excerpt of a historical presentation given at our Pre May Day/ InternationalWorking Women’s Day celebration.
Many people today are talking about how history repeats itself. When that is said, usually what is being referred to is the results we see from decisions the bosses around the world have made and are making. Like depressions, or world wars or the rise of fascism. But today we want to present to you with a different take.
We want to focus on the examples of resistance that workers around the world organized and participated in, to smash capitalism. We want to present these so we can learn from them and apply them to the struggles we are involved in, and the ones we are yet to be involved in, to ultimately smash capitalism once and for all. Instead of the saying “history repeats itself”, we prefer to say “we stand on the shoulders of giants.”
Today we will present to you four examples of these giants, the millions of workers who organized and built underground, secret resistance that crushed the bosses, at least for a while: The Bolsheviks (the communists) in Czarist Russia, the partisans during WWII, the African National Congress in apartheid South Africa (that was full of communists from the South African Communist Party) and the Eritrean National Liberation Front.
Bolsheviks lead workers to revolution in Russia
The fight to destroy capitalism in Russia involved millions of peasant and industrial workers. Although the 1905 revolution failed, only 12 years later the Bolsheviks (the communists) organized the first successful revolution and established a worker-led socialist society. This first example comes from a memoir called Twenty years in Underground Russia. It was written by Cecilia Bobrovskaya, a Bolshevik, and it details her life from 1894-1914 and how she and many other regular workers organized secretly. If you haven't read the book, you should! You can get it online for free. In this excerpt she describes how she was able to smuggle leaflets.
At one time, for example, I was utterly unaware that I was being shadowed. Later I discovered that the police had been following me all summer. But a month before the general arrests, the spies ceased to disguise their activities; they watched my house and persistently dogged my steps quite openly... Once it was imperative for me to deliver a package of leaflets and talk things over with two Lubotin workers. I started off for the station that morning looking cautiously about me.
When I got into the train I noticed a suspicious-looking man with a flat nose get into the next car. When I got off at Lubotin station, he also got off. I looked about the platform—my workers were waiting for me. I passed them by, demonstratively ignoring them. They immediately understood that something was wrong and made no sign of recognition. I went over to the buffet and ordered a cup of tea.
I sat at one of the tables drinking tea and thinking what to do next. At another table not far away my friends sat drinking beer.
And at a third table sat the flat-nosed man, also drinking tea. I almost laughed aloud, so ridiculous did the whole situation seem. I sat there until the next Kharkov train pulled in.
I got into the train with the packages of leaflets still safe in my stockings and bosom.
When I returned to the city the flat-nosed man was not to be seen. I walked about the city until I was ready to drop with fatigue.
Then I decided to go to a friend of mine, a nurse, who lived in the Medical Society hospital on Pushkin Street. There I had a bite and a cup of tea. I hid the leaflets in her room and, when I was sufficiently rested, I went home.
But my day's adventures were not destined to end so happily. That night I was awakened by the police. Among them was the flat-nosed man. This fact upset me so much that I thought it all a part of a nightmare, But I soon came to myself and understood that it was grim reality.
My turn had come to go to prison. I had had an unusually long run of luck...
Communists lead resistance in Nazi-occupied Europe
The Partisans were worker-led armed resistance fighters, many Jewish, many communists, who organized throughout Europe to defeat Hitler and the Nazis. The partisans engaged in guerrilla warfare and sabotage against the Nazi occupation, instigated ghetto uprisings, and freed prisoners. In Lithuania alone, they killed approximately 3,000 German soldiers. And many were women!
Sara Fortis was born in Chalkis, a small town near Athens, Greece. When the Nazis invaded in 1941, Sara fled. While on the run, she agreed to join the resistance. In her new position, Sara recruited other women and formed an all-female partisan unit.
In the following excerpt from an interview with the Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation, Sara describes her pride in the work of her unit.
Once we girls received orders to torch a house. It was the only house in the village. It was very orderly. We were responsible for torching it. They gave us the means, and we went dressed not like partisans—we had other clothes, we had villager outfits. One girl took the left side, one took the right; we threw whatever it was that we were supposed to, burned the house down, and I gave them the location where we would meet up.
No one guessed that girls were responsible for that. That was the squad's greatness. The next day the partisans were blamed, or in conversations, [people said,] ”The partisans were here at night, torched the house, luckily the fascist wasn't taken, he wasn't at home.” Things like that happened often, and we assisted [with] them often. I was satisfied and my girls were satisfied that they as women could help, be alongside partisans. Very proud.
Communists fought to end Apartheid in South Africa
Apartheid in South Africa lasted almost 50 years from 1948-1994. Apartheid was a violent system of legal segregation, discrimination and inequality, copied off of the racist U.S. Jim Crow laws. The struggle against Apartheid was a heroic struggle involving protests, strikes, civil disobedience, international solidarity and a secret underground movement. Usually when we are taught about the struggle against Apartheid, we learn about Nelson Mandela, but without the courageous organizing of tens of thousands of little known workers, there would have been no movement. Many of these were of course women!
The African National Congress (ANC) began to recruit ‘freelance’ underground operatives, particularly women. They were effective in helping the ANC escalate its opposition against the National Party government. The government’s police and secret police were oblivious to their identities and their activities; they were not openly associated with any political organisation; and they used simple strategies to carry out their underground work.
One particular operative named Glory came up with a strategy to smuggle anti-Apartheid literature by soliciting the help of some of her friends who lived in Goba village but could easily cross into Mozambique.
Women show the strength of workers’ power in struggle
The EPLF was a marxist-leninist Party struggling to free Eritrea from Ethiopian occupation and create a worker-led state. Under Ethiopia Eritrean workers were brutally exploited and repressed and so a clandestine movement was organized.
In Eritrea, almost half of the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front were women workers fighting for Eritrean Independence. The political program of the EPLF stated explicitly “The role of women is revolution.” Women students and workers organized cells, dug up trenches, gathered intelligence, carried out secret missions, set up and ran health and education systems and fought on the frontlines to transform the country to a revolutionary state that “protects the rights of women workers.“
Unfortunately in all of these places the antiracist, anti-sexist, pro-worker gains made by these heroic workers were either co-opted or have been reversed. As a result we still live under capitalism and our international working class continues to suffer unimaginable attacks.
Today capitalism’s unavoidable crisis is once again leading to growing fascism and the spiraling towards world war. But that is why learning about and analyzing these past heroic struggles is so important.
