An important subject in the Russian and world political field today are anti-fascists. The emergence and active development of the anti-fascist movement in the conditions of capitalist society and the growth of xenophobia, nationalism characteristic of it, developing into outright Nazism and fascism, is a natural phenomenon.
Russia, with its strong anti-fascist traditions dating back to the victory over fascism in the 1940s, is no exception. Russian anti-fascists are declaring themselves louder and louder.
With a request to talk about the modern anti-fascist movement, its features, goals and prospects, the editors of the site "Communists of the Capital" turned to the activist of the ROT FRONT party, anti-fascist Sergei Miroshnichenko.
Comstol: What, in a nutshell, is the ideology of today's anti-fascists?
S. Miroshnichenko: In my opinion, it is impossible to single out any single ideology of antifa, except for antifascism. Among antifa in Russia, as well as in the world, there are people with diverse political views. There are communists, socialists, anarchists, liberals and even apolitical people.
Comstol: What is antifa culture?
S. Miroshnichenko: She is very diverse. If we talk about subcultures, then there are skinheads, punks, crasters, rappers and a bunch of other youth subcultures in this environment. The anti-fascist idea remains the same for these people.
Comstol: What organizations are positioning themselves as anti-fascist? What is the size of the anti-fascist movement?
S. Miroshnichenko: Basically, the anti-fascist movement in Russia is represented by autonomous groups, but there are also organizations that position themselves as anti-fascist: the Youth Human Rights Movement, the Network Against Racism and Intolerance, the International Society "Memorial". Youth human rights movement is international. I know very little about them and, to be honest, I can hardly say what they do. It's easier for me to talk about affinity groups. They are engaged in everything: from working on the Internet and drawing graffiti to direct actions. In general, whoever has enough strength and imagination for what, he does it.
It is very difficult to estimate the size of the anti-fascist movement, because it is not a political party or a social movement. My opinion is that in Moscow it is several thousand people. Previously, it was much less, but now this figure is growing.
Comstol: Where did the anti-fascist movement originate?
S. Miroshnichenko: AFA is the successors of the anti-fascists of World War II. Even the symbol of the movement, the black and red flags are taken from the Anti-Fascist Action movement (an integral part of the Roth Front in Germany).
Comstol: How do anti-fascists feel about communists?
S. Miroshnichenko: In general, anti-fascists have a positive attitude towards the communists. However, as I said, anti-fascists have different political views. The left part of the movement, anarchists and socialists, have a positive attitude towards the communists. The liberal part considers the communists the same fascists. This is due to their anti-Stalinist sentiments.
Comstol: Are there any websites, newspapers of anti-fascists?
S. Miroshnichenko: Yes, there are. There are sites like http://www.antifa.fm/ and many more. AFA is widely represented in social networks. Also, many anarchist sites sanctify their topic. A lot of samizdat magazines and newspapers are published. All here, perhaps, and not to list.
In general, we Communists need to work more closely with these young people. After all, in fact, people with ready-made political views are represented there. It is only necessary to help them, to direct them in the right direction, to explain that small autonomous groups cannot solve such a problem as the growth of nationalism and xenophobia. A political organization is needed to fight in the political realm and not just on the streets. Such an organization may well be ROT FRONT. By the way, there are a lot of activists in Autonomous Action who joined them through the AFA.
Taking this opportunity, let me remind you that on May 18, a concert of the Nucleo Terco group will take place in Moscow. This is a group of Spanish communists playing oi!, members of RASH-Madrid. They are in Russia for the first time. They will be supported by such teams as Klowns (Kirov), Twenties (Kirov) and Krasnaya Kontora (Moscow). For information about the concert, follow the group in Vkontakte: https://vk.com/nucleo_terco
Other related materials:
15 comments
Aster 06.05.2013 20:46
I wonder how skinheads ended up in anti-fascists?
Oleg 06.05.2013 21:30
Astra, skinheads are a subculture. Among them, there are often nationalists, so we are accustomed to classify them as Nazis and fascists. However, among them there are different ideologies, incl. and the left. An example is red skinheads.
Evil "Ych" 07.05.2013 02:04
In the best way, the skins turned out to be anti-fascists) Smoke the history of the subculture)
cat Leopold 07.05.2013 16:26
ANTI-FASCISM today is an insidious, hypocritical move of ZIONIST TOUGH NATIONALISM, i.e. WORLD FINANCIAL JEWISH OLIGARCHY! Her deeds are bad - the whole World rises against this OCTOBER. And she sees her salvation in pitting all peoples against each other on the basis of nationalism. This world sect of the richest degenerates of the human race from time immemorial, saddling the MONEY ECONOMY of all the peoples of our planet, seeing its approaching HISTORICAL collapse, embarks on all
serious in their FURTHER, this time, attempt to deceive the whole World AGAIN!!! Quite ashamed of your GOOD anger and hide IT for the sake of the human-hating SECT!
Alesya Yasnogortseva 07.05.2013 22:07
Cat Leopold. Well, here you have fallen for the bait of the Zionists. It is they who reduce all fascism to anti-Semitism, so that it would be more convenient for those who are against the Zionists to mold the label of anti-Semites. In fact, Jews have not been subjected to any discrimination anywhere since 45. Even in such fascist states as South Africa and Chile.
Fascism is liberalism taken to the extreme. Liberals believe that "inferior" people should die out - the Nazis believe that they should be destroyed. The liberals have inferior ones - those who do not know how to steal and live on stolen money - the fascists have different conditions in different conditions. Very often, the Nazis declare inferior representatives of any nation (not necessarily Jewish!), Sometimes - followers of any creed.
And the Russian fascists from the RNU are most likely mercenaries of the West. Their activities are aimed at discrediting Russia in the eyes of the peoples of the former colonies. So that Russia will not soon become their leader, when the communists come to power in the country.
cat Leopold 07.05.2013 23:33
ANTISEMITISM=FASCISM=NEO-FASCISM=ANTI-FASCISM AND OTHER THINGS - THESE TERMS ARE INTENTIONALLY PUSHED AND CULTIVATED BY ZIONISM into the communities of SUCKERS and GOYEVS, as they call all of us NON-JEWS!
cat Leopold 08.05.2013 06:00
ZIONISM is the most ardent supporter and guardian of CAPITAL. HE is the FLESH and BLOOD of CAPITAL and the fight against CAPITAL is inevitably the fight against ZIONISM! RUSSIAN! Don't be naive kids. DO NOT bury your heads in the sand at the sight of danger. NOT TO THE FACE!
Valery 08.05.2013 12:56
"Divide and conquer" is the slogan of those who want to rule the world.
Aster 09.05.2013 20:03
As far as I know, the custom of shaving the heads of skinheads came from a desire to hide the real color of their hair. Their ideology is based on racism. And one of the signs of race (for them) is hair color. They believe that blond hair is a sign of a superior race. And since such hair is not common among Russians, they took such a rule - to shave their heads baldly.
Maybe then it became a youth subculture, like hippies or metalheads. But initially it was a political trend of a certain kind.
Evil "Ych" 12.05.2013 12:01
Astra, I'll tell you a secret. The custom of shaving the head of the skins appeared due to the cheapness and simplicity of this haircut. Indeed, in the 60s of the 20th century in England, working youth did not have much money for fashionable haircuts. About skin racism. REAL SKINHEADS ARE NOT RACISTS, We smoke the history of the movement at least here http://tr.rkrp-rpk.ru/get.php?4381 Briefly and meaningfully.
Alexander 12.05.2013 13:18
As it became known (to me), neo-Nazis are being persecuted in Germany for being against NATO, against the dominance of the Jewish Masonic USA, their puppet Merchel, and for partnering with a strong Russia (not Putin's, of course). It's not that simple. Anti-fascists can be puppets in the hands of real Nazi Zionists. Kitty is right!
(APPO) - one of the antifascists. organizations of owls. prisoners of war during Vel. Fatherland. war. Members of the APPO operated in 1942-45 on the territory. USSR, Poland and France. Created in May 1942 in a non-Russian prisoner of war camp. nationalities ca. Warsaw, in the town of Benyaminovo, where the fash. the command tried to forcibly create nat from prisoners. battalions for use in the military. purposes. The Center was at the head of the organization. underground bureau (CB), led by Major S. A. Yagdzhyan. The Central Bank also included officers: V. M. Vartanyan, A. A. Kazaryan, D. E. Minasyan, A. M. Karapetyan, B. K. Petrosyan and L. M. Titanyan. A. D. Babayan, S. A. Bagratyan, P. P. Meloyan, I. M. Kogan (“Markosyan”), M. M. Sesadze (“Sesadyan”), and others played an active role in the APPO. the work was led by groups subordinate to the Central Bank. Oct. In 1942, some of the prisoners were transferred to Pulawy (Poland) to the assembly point for Armenian prisoners of war, where the Central Bank decided to take underground command positions in the battalions being formed and prepare them for the uprising. In the autumn of 1942, one of the members of the organization, S. Ya. Ter-Grigoryan, through the Polish underground worker E. D. Bovionik (Lelya), managed to establish contact with local patriots. A plan was developed for a joint uprising, but it did not take place, because in October. 1943 the camp was transferred to France (Mand). One of the battalions was transferred to the Maykop region. Oct. In 1942, the Gestapo learned about the upcoming uprising in this battalion. The leader of the uprising, E. P. Khachaturian, was shot with a group of underground workers, the rest were imprisoned and penal camps. Another battalion was sent to the Zhytomyr region, where in Aug. 1943 raised an uprising. Part of the rebels managed to break through to the partisans and join the Gen. M. I. Naumov, where a detachment was created from them (commander A. M. Osipyan), which participated in raids behind enemy lines.
Underground bureaus and groups of battalions, transferred to the West in 1943, established contact with the Resistance Movement and the Allied command. The battalion at the English Channel (leaders R. A. Manukyan, A. I. Avetisyan and others) revolted. A unit was created from it, which took part in the liberation of the dep. Somme. Two rebel battalions in the Toulon region joined the French. partisans. The Central Bank of the APPO was transformed into an underground Military. committee of owls Patriots of the South of France. In Aug. 1944 owls. partisan the detachments were reorganized into the 1st Sov. partisan regiment in France. The regiment liberated hundreds of people. points in the departments of Gare and Lozère. APPO members also participated in the partisans. movement of Holland, Yugoslavia, Greece, Czechoslovakia. Franz. the command awarded the regiment with a battle banner and the Order of the Military Cross. APPO participants were awarded owls. orders and medals.
On the partisan movement of owls. For prisoners of war abroad, see also the articles: Resistance Movement, Partisan Movement in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-45, Fraternal Union of Prisoners of War.
Lit .: Oganyan V., An open letter to fighting friends in France, "Spark", 1955, No 12; Titanyan L., Friendship sealed by blood, "New time", 1955, No 18; We Fight for Peace, ibid., 1955, No 24; Les Immigrés dans la resistance, "Le combattant et resistant immigré", P., 1946.
M. L. Episkoposov. Moscow.
The party underground was active in the enemy's rear. From the first days of the war, under his leadership, militant anti-fascist underground Komsomol and youth organizations and groups were created in Baranovichi, Orsha, Grodno, Gomel, Bobruisk, Brest, Mogilev, Mozyr and many other settlements. Some organizations managed to form in advance, others - after the seizure of the territory by the Wehrmacht troops.
At the end of June 1941, the first underground organizations were created in Minsk, which were led by the Minsk Underground City Committee of the CP(b)B under the leadership of the courageous patriot I. Kovalev. The anti-fascist underground united more than 9 thousand residents of the city of thirty nationalities, as well as representatives of nine European countries. During the years of occupation, the underground fighters brought more than 10 thousand families of Minsk residents into partisan detachments, including about a thousand families of suicide bombers from the Minsk ghetto.
On June 30, 1941, the Central Committee of the CP(b)B adopted Directive No. 1 "On the transition to underground work of party organizations in areas occupied by the enemy." It defined the tasks of the underground, the forms of construction and communication, and emphasized the need to observe the strictest secrecy.
The underground members of Minsk were the most active. They staged explosions, arson and other sabotage on the enemy's communications, took out the wounded soldiers and commanders of the Red Army from the encirclement, assisted them, and distributed leaflets.
In the summer - autumn of 1941, underground anti-fascist groups began to operate in Grodno under the leadership of N. Volkov, K. Vasilyuk, N. Bogatyrev, V. Rozanov. The members of the groups helped the soldiers and commanders of the Red Army, who were in Nazi captivity, recorded and distributed reports of the Soviet Information Bureau.
During the battles near Moscow in December 1941, sabotage at the Minsk railway junction reduced the capacity of its highway by almost 20 times. In Gomel, the underground blew up a restaurant with German officers who were there. K. Zaslonov's group was active in the Orsha railway depot. With its help, several dozen steam locomotives were put out of action, and the operation of the station was repeatedly paralyzed.
The underground struggle was a difficult and at the same time a responsible task. Difficult - due to novelty, lack of personnel with experience in illegal activities; responsible - since the party underground was to become the direct organizer and leader of the people's struggle behind enemy lines.
The underground paid great attention to agitation and propaganda work among the population behind enemy lines. In January 1942, the publication of the periodical "Herald of the Motherland", the newspaper "Patriot of the Motherland", and leaflets was organized in Minsk. By the end of the year, about 20 underground newspapers were being published in Belarus. In May 1942, the newspaper Zvyazda (an organ of the Minsk City Underground Committee of the CP(b)B) was published. It was edited by V. Omelyanyuk (died on May 26, 1942). The newspaper “Savetskaya Belarus”, the propaganda poster “Let's crush the fascist reptile!”, the front-line newspaper “For Savetskaya Belarus” were delivered to Belarus in mass circulation. On January 1, 1942, the radio station "Soviet Belarus" began to work. On January 18, 1942, an anti-fascist rally of the Belarusian people was held in Moscow, which was broadcast on the radio. Writers M. Tank, K. Chorny, secretary of the Central Committee of the Komsomol S. Pritytsky and others spoke at it.
Great tasks were assigned to the underground fighters: reconnaissance, distribution of leaflets, newspapers and proclamations, familiarizing the population with the appeals of the party and government of the USSR, acts of sabotage at industrial enterprises and transport, organizing sabotage, all possible assistance to the partisan movement.
The work of the underground workers was fraught with extreme dangers, since enemy garrisons, headquarters, intelligence and counterintelligence agencies were located in the settlements. Each wrong step could lead, and sometimes led to the death of an underground worker and even to the disclosure of the entire organization. Therefore, it was necessary to act, observing the strictest secrecy, alone or in small groups, each of which specialized in a single business: either printing and distributing proclamations, or intelligence, or terrorist actions and sabotage.
The first military winter and spring of 1942 turned out to be the most difficult for the underground workers. Lack of experience, disregard for secrecy led to the failure of many underground organizations. Serious violations in illegal work were committed by members of the underground organization "Military Council of the Partisan Movement", who worked in close contact with the Minsk City Party Committee. Contrary to all the rules of conspiracy, its leading core issued written orders, established vigils at the headquarters, which means that most of the members of the organization knew each other. All this made it possible for an enemy agent who penetrated into its ranks to identify many underground workers. As a result, the Minsk underground suffered enormous damage: in March-April 1942, the German secret services arrested over 400 people, destroyed a printing house, and many safe houses. Irreplaceable were the losses in the leadership of the underground. The Germans seized members of the city committee of the party S. Zaits and I. Kazints, secretary G. Semenov. Until the beginning of May, the Nazis subjected those arrested to sophisticated torture. Soon, the residents of Minsk saw a terrible picture: 28 leading workers of the underground were hanged on trees and telegraph poles. 251 underground workers were shot. Large failures were also noted in other places.
Often, on the instructions of underground party organizations or partisan command, underground workers got jobs in the military and administrative institutions of the enemy, demonstrating ostentatious loyalty to the “new order”. This allowed them to find out secrets of a military nature, to identify traitors to the Motherland, provocateurs and spies, to warn the population about impending raids, and partisans about punitive actions. The most terrible thing for the underground was not even the constant risk, but the knowledge that everyone around them considered them traitors. But for the sake of victory over the enemy, the patriots took such a step.
The first serious tests did not break the underground. They increasingly adapted to extremely dangerous conditions, acting both alone and in small groups. According to the rules of conspiracy, their members were no longer informed of the passwords and appearances of other groups. Underground workers began to receive tasks along a chain through a leader associated with an authorized person from the center. The functional distribution of responsibilities within organizations was worked out. All this increased the combat capabilities of the underground and its stability.
In 1943, the anti-fascist movement intensified in Germany and in the countries allied to it. As long as the Wehrmacht was victorious in the war, the Nazi leadership managed to influence the majority of the Germans and subordinate them to their crazy plans for world domination. However, heavy defeats on the Soviet-German front, the loss of North Africa and the capitulation of Italy led to the fact that the population of Germany was losing faith in victory. The huge losses of the fascist German troops in the East, the continued total mobilization, the growing shortage of food and other goods, the Anglo-American air raids led to the growth of anti-fascist and anti-war sentiments not only among the working people, but also among representatives of some bourgeois circles.
Assessing the situation, a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Germany, W. Ulbricht, wrote: “The resistance of the working people to Hitler's fascism will grow. The conditions for the organizational rallying of the anti-fascist forces in Germany became more favorable" (1166) .
The aggravation of internal political relations in Germany contributed to the growth of the activity of the communist and social democratic parties. Under the exceptionally difficult conditions of the Hitlerite dictatorship, the party organizations that had survived the defeat and were newly created during the war waged a selfless struggle against fascism and the war.
Resistance organizations were strengthened. New fighters poured into them. The number of illegal leaflets and other anti-war propaganda materials distributed has increased. The struggle of the patriots against the war and Nazism was led by the Communist Party of Germany, which sought to unite all sections of the German people in a single anti-fascist front. In his speech at the celebration of the 20th anniversary of the German Democratic Republic, L. I. Brezhnev emphasized: “The best sons of the German people - the communists, anti-fascists carried through the entire Second World War, through terror and persecution, through torture in fascist prisons and concentration camps, loyalty to proletarian internationalism, love for the Soviet Union - the birthplace of socialism "(1167) .
An important milestone in the anti-war and anti-fascist movement of the German people was the creation, on the initiative of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Germany in July 1943 in the USSR, of the National Committee "Free Germany" (NKSG), which included prominent political figures W. Pick, W. Ulbricht, V. Florin, writers I. Becher, V. Bredel, F. Wolf, progressive prisoners of war soldiers and officers. The Soviet government supported the committee in every possible way. He published his own special newspaper and had a radio station. The Free Germany movement united representatives of various segments of the population into a single national front. It had a significant impact on the German prisoners of war who were in the Soviet Union, on the personnel of the Wehrmacht, the German people. In September 1943, at a conference of delegates from POW officers near Moscow, the Union of German Officers was founded. As its platform, the Union adopted the NCSG program and joined it. General W. von Seydlitz, former commander of the 51st Army Corps, was elected chairman of the Union. The Union of German Officers appealed to the German generals and officers. Under the leadership of the KKE and following the example of the NKSG, the Free Germany movement subsequently arose in Denmark, France, Greece, Great Britain, Yugoslavia, Latin America, Sweden, Switzerland, the USA and other countries, which contributed to the intensification of the struggle of German anti-fascists against the Nazi regime.
Assessing the fact of the creation of the Free Germany National Committee, the Pravda newspaper of August 1, 1943 wrote: accidental and temporary failures, as the German fascist leaders repeated in every way, but with inexorable logic they follow from the entire course of the war, from the change that has taken place in the balance of forces of both warring camps ... ".
The underground communist organizations operating in Germany explained to the population the possibilities and ways of withdrawing the country from the war. The organization, headed by A. Zefkov, F. Jakob, B. Bestlein, was especially active, striving to restore the central leadership of the communist underground. During 1943, she managed to contact the underground of Leipzig, Dresden, Bautzen, Erfurt, Weimar, Jena, Gotha, Hamburg, Hanover, Magdeburg, Düsseldorf and Innsbruck (Austria). From the second half of 1943, it actually becomes the anti-fascist center of the country (1168).
In November, under the leadership of the Central Committee of the KKE, the operational leadership of the party and the illegal anti-fascist struggle in Germany itself arose. It included A. Zefkov, F. Jakob, T. Neubauer, G. Schumann and M. Schwantes. The political activities of the operational leadership of the KKE were carried out on the basis of the directives of the Central Committee of the party. “As a result of the creation of a unified leadership of the largest organizations of the party and the resistance movement and the establishment of constantly growing ties throughout Germany, a significant upsurge in the anti-fascist struggle began” (1169).
The Anti-Fascist German People's Front (ANF) organization, which arose in Munich at the end of 1942, was headed by communists and representatives of the radical Christian party of workers and peasants. By the end of 1943, it had extended its activities to the whole of South Germany (1170) . Closely connected with the ANF was Germany's largest underground organization of Soviet prisoners of war and workers, Fraternal Cooperation of Prisoners of War (BSV), which had organized groups in a number of camps.
The expansion and strengthening of the network of the anti-fascist underground in Germany contributed to the organization of the struggle of foreign workers and prisoners of concentration camps. In the districts of Berlin, Leipzig, Chemnitz, Debeln, Soviet underground groups, with the help of German anti-fascists, carried out a series of sabotage at enterprises. Soviet people were at the forefront of the struggle of the prisoners of the fascist camps. In order to coordinate their actions, the camp organizations, with the help of the German communists, established close contacts with each other. Escapes from fascist hard labor became more frequent, and sabotage at enterprises employing foreign workers became even more widespread and effective. The widely ramified network of the BSV was of particular concern to the fascist authorities. The punitive organs in the summer and autumn of 1943 carried out mass raids and searches not only in Germany, but also in Poland and Austria. Hundreds of active members of the organization ended up in the hands of the Gestapo. Despite a number of failures, the struggle of the prisoners continued. She diverted the forces of the Nazis, created an alarming situation in the country.
The growth of the anti-fascist struggle in Germany was still hindered by the powerful, widely ramified mechanism of the Gestapo-police apparatus, and unbridled national-chauvinist propaganda. A significant part of the leaders of the German resistance movement was forced to stay outside the country.
The activity of the Austrian anti-fascist underground increased. On November 16, the Nazi newspaper Neues Wiener Tageblatt wrote: "You will not find a single enterprise where there were no production failures ... In 108 Viennese enterprises with a number of workers of 47 thousand, 54,366 cases of production failures were registered." The connections of the Austrian underground with foreign workers expanded. Underground groups of the Austrian Front helped hundreds of foreign concentration camp prisoners escape to Switzerland and Slovakia. The underground itself began to switch to methods of armed struggle.
The defeats of the Wehrmacht on the Soviet-German front and in North Africa led to profound changes in the internal political situation of Italy - the closest ally of Nazi Germany. Neither terror nor the demagoguery of its rulers could stop the growing mass anti-war, anti-fascist movement in the country.
The consolidation of anti-fascists was facilitated by powerful strikes that swept in March 1943 throughout all the cities of Northern Italy. At the same time, the main force of the anti-fascist movement, the Communist Party, faced serious difficulties at that time in its attempts to create a united front of struggle. At the end of June, a meeting of representatives of the anti-fascist parties was held in Milan: the Communist, the Socialist, the Proletarian Unity Movement for a Socialist Republic, the Action Party, the Liberal Reconstruction group, and the Christian Democratic Party. The Communists proposed the creation of the National Action Front (1171). A month later, the Committee of Anti-Fascist Opposition Parties was formed, which, along with other parties, included Catholics and liberals. But, apart from the Communists, not a single party took practical steps to prepare mass uprisings against fascism.
After the overthrow of Mussolini, the Badoglio government set the task of withdrawing Italy from the war, preventing popular unrest and revolutionary uprisings. The attitude towards the new government among the opposition parties was different. The Action Party and the Socialists even objected to temporary cooperation with Badoglio. The communists proceeded from the need to unite all forces in order to achieve priority tasks - the conclusion of peace, the struggle against the threat of enslavement of the country by Nazi Germany and against fascism. Speaking for the democratization of the government, they did not demand the immediate liquidation of the monarchy and agreed to cooperate with figures such as Badoglio (1172). When on September 8 the Italian command announced the surrender agreement and the Nazi troops went on the offensive, the leaders of the bourgeois parties abstained from organizing resistance to the Nazi troops who occupied Italian cities. The organizers of the people's fighting squads, which in a number of localities acted together with military units, were communists, socialists and representatives of the Action Party. However, the pockets of resistance were few in number and still insufficiently organized. Therefore, already two days after the announcement of the armistice, the entire territory of Italy, except for the southern tip of the peninsula, was at the mercy of the Nazis.
A new stage began in the history of the Italian anti-fascist movement - the deployment of a mass armed struggle against the invaders and Italian fascists. On September 9, the Roman Committee of Anti-Fascist Opposition Parties decided to transform into the Committee of National Liberation (CLN). The Rome KNO officially recognized the need for armed resistance to the occupiers, but the predominance of conservative elements in it led to the fact that in fact the Committee took a position of waiting. The Christian Democratic and other right-wing parties called for "passive resistance" in order to "reduce the sacrifices of patriots and Christians to a minimum" (1173) . The true leader of the Italian resistance movement soon became the Committee for the National Liberation of Northern Italy, located in Milan. In northern Italy, where the bulk of the Italian proletariat was concentrated, the initiative of the left parties, especially the communists, played a decisive role.
With the beginning of the occupation, many Italians left the cities and hid in the mountains. But by the end of September, only 1.5 thousand of them could be considered active partisans (1174). These were primarily anti-fascist communists, members of the Action Party and socialists. Under their leadership, "political detachments" were created, which played a decisive role in the Italian Resistance.
Numerous formations were also stationed in the mountains, calling themselves "independent" or "military". They consisted mainly of soldiers and officers of the disintegrated Italian army. These detachments were much better armed than the partisan detachments led by the leftist parties, but their morale was low.
At the end of September, the Nazi command began operations against the main areas of concentration of partisans. During these battles, the Italian patriots suffered significant losses. Many "independent" partisan formations ceased to exist: the tactics of waiting and the desire to organize a tough defense, which were adhered to by the officers who commanded them, did not correspond to the nature of guerrilla warfare.
The Italian Communist Party resolutely embarked on the path of organizing mass armed struggle. She believed: "Only a struggle, an open and merciless struggle without delay or compromise, could lead to the liberation of Italy" (1175). On September 20, in Milan, led by L. Longo, the military command of partisan detachments began to function, which began to form military brigades named after Garibaldi in the mountains. In order to develop the struggle in the cities, the communists began to organize combat groups of patriotic action, which carried out raids on enemy headquarters, sabotage, and the elimination of prominent fascists. In the same period, the headquarters of the partisan detachments of the Action Party was created. The well-known anti-fascist figure F. Parry became its leader. The detachments of these parties, which were later joined by the socialists, formed the core of the emerging partisan army.
The difficulties that increased with the onset of cold weather did not stop the growth of the partisan movement in Italy. Partisan detachments in December 1943 numbered about 9 thousand people (1176).
Under the influence of the victories of the Soviet Army and as a result of the further deterioration of the situation of the working people, the anti-war and anti-fascist movement in the countries of Eastern Europe that were part of the Nazi bloc intensified significantly.
Despite the repressions of the fascist authorities, the struggle of the Bulgarian people expanded. The Bulgarian Workers' Party (BRP) and the Workers' Youth Union (RMS) made great efforts to popularize the program of the Fatherland Front among the population and especially in the army, where party and RMS cells played an important role. The radio stations Khristo Botev and Naroden Glas, as well as the newspaper Rabotnichesko Delo, other newspapers and leaflets published by the Central Committee of the BRP and its local committees, were engaged in explaining this program. Letters were sent to progressively minded soldiers and officers, which revealed the treacherous policy of the ruling monarcho-fascist clique, which was pushing the country into the abyss of a military catastrophe. Anti-fascist sentiments penetrated widely into the army; it became an ever less reliable support of the monarcho-fascist regime (1177).
In various parts of the country, committees of the Fatherland Front arose, which united representatives of non-fascist parties and organizations. In August 1943, the National Committee of the Fatherland Front was formed. It included representatives of the Bulgarian Workers' Party, the left wing of the Bulgarian Agricultural People's Union, the People's Union "Link", the left wing of the Bulgarian Workers' Social Democratic Party, the Radical Party, the Union of Craftsmen, the Workers' Youth Union, trade unions and other public, cultural and educational organizations ( 1178) . Participation in the Fatherland Front of various parties significantly expanded its social base, attracted new fighters against fascism to the ranks of front organizations. But this also created certain difficulties associated with the hesitations of the leaders of some parties, in cases where a decisive policy and active actions were required.
By the end of 1943, the fascist elite had to admit that an internal front had formed in the country, which threatened the existence of the regime. As V. Kolarov wrote, Bulgaria "became the scene of a civil war" (1179). The number of acts of sabotage has increased. If in April - June 340 actions of partisans and combat groups were registered, then in July - September - 575 (1180). The number of partisans increased. Their actions became more active. In March-April 1943, a harmonious military organization of the forces fighting against monarcho-fascism was created. The Central Military Commission under the Central Committee of the BRP is transformed into the General Headquarters, which develops military operational plans on a national scale, and the People's Liberation Rebel Army (NOPA) is created. The territory of the country was divided into 12 rebel operational zones (1181). The total strength of the People's Liberation Rebel Army by the end of the year reached 6 thousand people (1182). During the period from April to December, SPPA forces carried out 774 military actions (1183).
At the risk of their lives, Bulgarian workers organized the escape of Soviet people from Nazi captivity, sheltered them, and helped to contact partisan detachments. Bulgarian military personnel also provided assistance to Soviet prisoners of war. Often, when the lives of Soviet citizens were in danger, Bulgarian soldiers and progressive officers rescued them. The first Soviet fighters joined the Bulgarian partisan detachments in the autumn of 1943 (1184) .
An internal political crisis was also brewing in Hungary. The attempts of the Hungarian ruling circles to place the hardships of the war on the working masses to an even greater degree caused the growth of the anti-war and anti-fascist movement. In the summer of 1943, cases of sabotage were noted in the mines of Varpalota. In August, only 2.5 thousand workers left the metallurgical plant of Manfred Weiss, which carried out military orders. In an attempt to counteract the large turnover of agricultural workers, the government on June 25 introduced a law on their forced labor. Increasingly, it came to open anti-war actions of the working people. On September 9, an anti-war demonstration was held by more than 2.5 thousand workers of the Dnoshdyorsky metallurgical plant (1185).
Anti-fascist sentiments penetrated deeper and deeper into the environment of the Hungarian prisoners of war in the Soviet Union. In 1943, the Foreign Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Vietnam opened several anti-fascist political schools for prisoners of war. Subsequently, many listeners joined the Soviet partisan detachments and fought heroically against the Nazis. Others assisted the political agencies of the Soviet troops in carrying out explanatory work among the Horthy troops at the front (1186).
Under the influence of the growing crisis in the country, an alliance of opposition parties was formed in August - the independent party of petty proprietors and the Social Democratic Party. However, the assurances of their leaders that at an opportune moment the Hungarian government would allegedly break with partners in the bloc seriously hampered the unification of the patriotic forces of the people. The leader of the anti-fascist struggle in the country was the Communist Party, which operated deep underground. The communists opposed the participation of Hungary in the predatory war of Nazi Germany, demanded that the country withdraw from the aggressive fascist bloc and go over to the side of the anti-fascist coalition.
On May 1, the Communist Party of Hungary came up with the program "Hungary's Path to Freedom and Peace", in which it called on the workers, peasants, intelligentsia, anti-fascist bourgeoisie, progressive democratic parties and the population of the regions captured by the Horthys to unite in a single national front. The program demanded the immediate withdrawal of Hungary from the war on the side of the fascist bloc, the restoration of the country's independence and the implementation of democratic reforms (1187). It provided for the release of political prisoners, the abolition of forced and free labor, the complete equality of national minorities, the division of large landlord estates and the transfer of land to those who cultivate it. The Hungarian working class, it was said in the program, has the historic task of mobilizing the country's political forces and leading the struggle for Hungary's independence.
In an effort to withdraw the Communist Party from the blows of the Horthy and Hitlerite authorities, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Poland in June 1943 adopted a fictitious decision to dissolve the Communist Party, which was published in a specially issued leaflet. In reality, the Communist Party was preserved, but for the purpose of secrecy, it became known as the Peace Party. "The very name of the party emphasized its main combat mission, which was then on the agenda - the task of fighting for the country's exit from the Nazi war, expressed the desire for peace of the overwhelming majority of the population" (1188) . However, this tactic did not achieve its goal. It was not possible to hide the communist character of the Peace Party. Because she continued the policies of the CPV, the authorities severely persecuted her.
Despite the terror of Antonescu and his clique, the anti-fascist movement of the Romanian people intensified. In the summer of 1943, under the leadership and with the participation of the Communist Party of Romania, the Patriotic Anti-Fascist Front was created. It also included the Front of Farmers, the Union of Patriots, the Transylvanian Democratic Union of Hungarian Workers in Romania (MADOS). Later, some local organizations of the Social Democratic Party and the Socialist Peasants' Party joined it. The platform of the Patriotic Front was the declaration of the Communist Party of September 6, 1941, which demanded the overthrow of the Antonescu regime, the formation of a truly national government from representatives of all patriotic parties and organizations, an immediate withdrawal from the war on the side of Nazi Germany, the conclusion of peace with the Soviet Union, Britain and the United States, the accession free and independent Romania to the anti-fascist bloc, arrest and punishment of traitors led by Antonescu, recognition of the equality of national minorities (1189).
The Communist Party tried to involve the bourgeois-landowner parties in the Patriotic Front, followed by certain groups of the population. However, the leaders of the National Liberal and National Tsaranist parties refused to cooperate with the Communists and actually supported the annexationist policy of the Antonescu government towards the USSR. The communists initiated the creation of patriotic combat units, which subsequently played an important role in the overthrow of the Antonescu regime.
At the initiative of the Communist Party, the Patriotic Front organized and led strikes of workers in Galati, Brasov, Aradi, speeches at the pyrotechnic plant, the Rigel factory, the nitrogen plant in Trnavena, the Resita factories, among the railway workers of Grivitsa, Prahov, Brasov, miners of the Jiu valley. In Constanta, workers sabotaged the repair of submarines, in Targovishte they blew up a military depot, in Resita they disabled a power plant, and organized arson at the Prachov oil fields. The railroad disrupted the schedules of the movement of military echelons. Small partisan groups and sabotage detachments were created in the regions of Oltenia, Banat, Argesh, in the mountains of Karash, Vrancea and other regions of the country.
Thousands of Romanian soldiers and officers who were captured on the Soviet-German front chose the only correct path - the path of fighting fascism. With the help of the Soviet government, the formation of the Romanian Volunteer Division named after Tudor Vladimirescu (1190) began in October.
The formation was formed according to the state of the Soviet rifle division and was fully equipped with Soviet weapons and military equipment. The news of the creation of the division caused a huge uproar among the Romanian prisoners of war. In just three days, 12,000 applications were submitted. 90 percent of the prisoners of war soldiers expressed a desire to become its fighters. The division was staffed mainly by Romanian soldiers and officers taken prisoner at Stalingrad. One of the first to enter it were Romanian anti-fascist emigrants, among them communists who fought in the international brigade in Spain - P. Borile, M. Burka, M. Lungu, S. Muntyan, G. Stoica and others (1191).
Growing anti-war sentiment in Finland. They also infiltrated the ranks of the Social Democratic Party. The newspaper Suomen Socialidemokraatti wrote in August: "Discontent among the workers in our country is already very deep and embraces a large mass of people." An expression of anti-war sentiment was a memorandum of 33 political and public figures, most of whom were deputies of the Sejm, demanding Finland's withdrawal from the war (1192). “... In the country,” noted O. Kuusinen, “a political struggle is developing against the anti-Soviet war of the Finnish government. This struggle is waged by groups of the underground Communist Party and other anti-fascist circles” (1193) .
The echo of the Battle of Stalingrad, the victories of the Soviet Army near Kursk and on the Dnieper echoed in Europe with new successes of the anti-fascist forces.
Antifascism: On the history of the concept
An illustration from the anti-fascist comic "Kur-Fascist". Artist Erdil Yasaroglu
Author - Anson Rabinbach Professor of Contemporary European History at Princeton University, co-founder and contributor of the journal New German Critique and author of numerous publications, including books In the shadow of disaster. German Intellectuals between Apocalypse and Enlightenment (1996, in English) and Motor Man. Energy, Fatigue and the Origin of Modernity (2001, in German)
Anti-fascism.
Epochs in the development of one point of view
The harshness with which the debate about the legacy of anti-fascism is currently going on stems in large part from a lack of agreement on its historical role as a political and cultural movement. In contrast to Italian fascism and German National Socialism, which after 1945 were considered militarily defeated and politically discredited, the reputation of anti-fascism increased enormously, because it was surrounded by a victorious resistance movement and the Soviet triumph. Communist parties and post-war regimes, and to a very special extent in the GDR, saw their legitimation in the sacrifices made by heroes and martyrs - those whose names stood at the center of state-sanctioned myths and rituals until 1989. While some historians have identified anti-fascism with the defense of Western culture and democracy and given it a positive connotation, others - due to its connection with communism - have considered it a manifestation of extreme corruption.
An example of this contradiction is provided by the positions of two prominent historians. Both are veterans of the anti-fascist movement. British historian Eric Hobsbawm Hobsbawm E. The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century (1914-1991). M., 2004. speaks of the triumph of anti-fascism in the 1930s: the left has said goodbye to its utopias, recovered from heavy defeats, opposed the cowardly and dishonest policy of "appeasement" and in many places created a broad coalition against fascism, in which included conservatives, liberals, socialists and communists. On the contrary, the French historian François Furet Furet F. The History of an Illusion. M., 1998. sees in anti-fascism nothing else but the new face of Stalinism - a mask with which the European communists, as they say, overnight could turn from zealous Bolsheviks into respected freedom fighters, full of hatred for Hitler and united under the banner of humanism and democracy.
None of these approaches will succeed either in understanding the concept of anti-fascism in the full breadth of its spectrum, or in being able to rise to the height of the diversity of possibilities for interpreting this phenomenon. The collective concept of anti-fascism was supposed to include both the official statements of the Communist International (Comintern), which explained fascism as the “overflowing banks” of monopoly capital, and the journalistic activity of prominent representatives of the intelligentsia, for example, Romain Rolland or Heinrich Mann, motivated by moral considerations. At the highest point of its popularity, in the 30s, anti-fascism was the slogan of the left. It represented a compromise formula and a common denominator of the common struggle against National Socialism. On the one hand, the anti-fascist movement in many places has achieved significant support among the population. On the other hand, however, it formed a fatal force of blindness that clouded the ability of many Western intellectuals to make decisions. Ultimately, many of these active participants in the anti-fascist struggle drifted into the "double life" defined by the secret service of the Stalinist regime.
Therefore, it is necessary both to engage non-communist anti-fascism on a broader basis, and to go beyond parties and organizations in order to equally gain insight into diverse ideas, the activities of a wide variety of intellectuals, polyphonic journalism, religiously motivated activism, and everyday life. At the same time, such a broad approach in no way excludes the understanding of anti-fascism as an inclusion-oriented picture of the world, which, despite all the various forms and motivations, found its minimum common denominator in a fundamentally hostile position towards fascist ideology. It is therefore appropriate to distinguish between the official anti-fascism of the Comintern, the anti-fascism of local initiatives, émigré intellectuals, and non-communist resistance groups. After all, behind the concept of "anti-fascism" there is undoubtedly a diverse phenomenon that encompasses a wide range of beliefs, hopes and emotions. The history of this moral-political point of view, which was characterized by an extreme degree of variability, can be outlined in the form of three phases.
Anti-fascism before Hitler's "seizure of power" (1920-1933)
The brutal violence against the Italian socialists and communists, which the fascists resorted to even before the seizure of power by Benito Mussolini in October 1922, at first did not cause much concern in the ranks of the Italian Communist Party (CPI). The founder and leader of the party, Amadeo Bordiga, could not recognize the fundamental difference between bourgeois democracy and fascist dictatorship. Convinced of the impending collapse of capitalism, he considered the greater danger to be the establishment of a social democratic government after the overthrow of the dictatorship. In 1922 in the form Alleanza del Lavoro ("Union of Labor".- It., approx. per. ) was founded, probably the first anti-fascist organization, based on a more or less spontaneous coalition of socialists, republicans, trade unionists and communists.
This early anti-fascism was apparently diverse, both in terms of its ideological motives and political aims. At the head of the parliamentary opposition was, until his death in 1926 following a beating, Giovanni Amendola, a brilliant journalist who protested against the prohibition of opposition parties and coined the term "totalitarian" to describe Mussolini's system. Catholic, socialist and communist opponents of the dictatorship, who in 1924 after the assassination of the reformist socialist Giacomo Matteoti withdrew from parliament, founded Aventine Secession It is named so in memory of the protest of Gaius Gracchus in Ancient Rome. ("Aventine block".- It., approx. per. ).
In the following years, anti-fascists were blackmailed, arrested, forced to emigrate and killed. The philosopher Benedetto Croce, who represented the voice of Italian liberalism, withdrew his initial support for Mussolini and published his landmark "Manifesto of the Liberal Intelligentsia" on May 1, 1925, demanding "a deeper and clearer understanding of the virtues of the liberal position and right." Originally published in "Il Mondo" , 1.5.1925. . After 1926, the CPI, led by Antonio Gramsci, who was arrested in 1926 on Mussolini's orders, and Palmiro Togliatti, leader of the party in exile, became more critical of the Italian dictatorship. Both leaders, however, took the position that fascism, at least in its early years, was a truly revolutionary movement.
No other Italian resistance movement had such an influx and support as the underground communist organization. At the same time, the communists in exile were weakening the Italian Resistance because they did not participate in it. Under the leadership of the socialist Pietro Nenni, an association was created in Paris in 1927 « concentration Antifascista» ("Anti-Fascist Concentration".- It., approx. per.). The largest anti-fascist organization in exile was „ Jiustizia e Liberta“ ("Justice and Freedom".- It., approx. per.). Its founder, Carlo Rosselli, advocated liberal socialism as an alternative to the rubble pile left behind by divisions on the European left. Many of Italy's prominent anti-fascist writers, such as Carlo Levi, Cesare Pavese, and Ignazio Silone, played prominent roles in the Parisian exile community. But after the murder in 1932 of the brothers Carlo and Roberto Rosselli, the Italian anti-fascist emigrants increasingly lost their influence on the situation in their homeland.
At the same time, Soviet foreign policy in the 1920s was the most controversial. The USSR maintained friendly relations with Musolili and sought with all its might, especially after the conclusion of the Rapallo Treaty in 1922, the favor of the nationalist right-wing forces in Germany. In 1924, Stalin proclaimed the new policy of the Comintern: “Social Democracy is objectively the moderate wing of fascism… These organizations do not negate, but complement each other. These are not antipodes, but twins ”Stalin I.V. Works. T. 6, M., 1947, p. 282. . For tactical reasons, the Communists and National Socialists in 1931 and 1932. at times they even entered into real alliances, as, for example, in the course of this, the International Congress against Fascism and War, held a few months earlier, could not achieve a principled condemnation of the fascist movements in Germany and Italy.
Anti-fascism in the era of Hitler and Stalin
Until 1934, the Italian socialists in exile formed, together with the Austrian and German Social Democrats, the spearhead of the opposition movement directed against Mussolini and Hitler. After the Reichstag fire on February 28, 1933, about 5,000 communists were arrested. Somewhat later followed the ban and defeat of the Communist Party of Germany with its 100 million members and almost 6 million voters. However, even before January 1934, the Red Army maintained friendly relations with the German Reichswehr. In addition, the USSR concluded a trade agreement with Germany. Leading Soviet politicians, however, began to ponder at the same time whether an alliance with France and Great Britain might not have been more expedient than efforts to preserve the deteriorating German-Russian relations. Finally, in May 1935, the Soviet Union signed secret mutual assistance treaties with France and Czechoslovakia, signaling a turn in foreign policy.
Meanwhile, events in France contributed to the fact that the anti-fascist movement gained growing support among the population. The revolt of the nationalist "leagues" on February 6, 1934, led to powerful left-wing counter-demonstrations on February 12, the same day that the Social Democratic uprising against the government led by Chancellor Dollfuss broke out in Vienna. In addition, a joint anti-fascist statement was signed by intellectuals with different political views, including the surrealists André Breton, René Crevel and Paul Eluard, the writer André Malraux and the radical philosopher Emile Chartier.
At a congress in June 1934, the communist Maurice Thorez told his supporters that the choice was not between communism and fascism, but between fascism and democracy. Denis Peschansky. Et pourtant ils tournent. Vocabulaire et strategie du PCF, 1934-1936, Paris, 1988. . In 1930 there were only about two hundred active communists in the Loire department; in 1935 their number increased to 5,000 in 77 local anti-fascist committees. The communist idea reached not only the working-class districts of Orleans, but also rural areas, where the left traditionally had hardly any influence. It remains unclear to what extent this pressure from below prompted the French Parti Communiste(Communist Party. - Fr., approx. Lane) to the turn that took place on July 27, 1934 - the day it signed a statement of unity with the socialists.
This pact anticipated, no doubt, the strategy of the “broad anti-fascist Popular Front” proclaimed on July 25, 1935 at the 7th Congress of the Comintern. The head of the Comintern was Georgy Dimitrov, from the moment of the accusation brought against him during the Leipzig (1933) trial of setting fire to the Reichstag, he had the status of a hero. Dimitrov's Comintern formula, named after him, defined fascism from now on as "an open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic, most imperialist elements of finance capital" Resolutions of the VII World Congress of the Communist International, [M.], 1935, p. ten. .
This alliance of the left was cemented as a result of the creation, following the results of the parliamentary elections in May 1936, of the government of the Popular Front, headed by the Socialist Prime Minister Leon Blum. The number of communist deputies increased seven times, and the socialists received 146 mandates (instead of the previous 97). During the strike wave of 1936, however, tensions arose in the Blum government. The predominance of communists in the anti-fascist organizations in France, in turn, alienated them from the anti-fascists at the local level and resulted in a rapid loss of votes at the bottom.
German social democrats and communists in exile failed to organize a joint resistance, even if there were individuals like the communist Willi Münzenberg or the social democrat Rudolf Breitscheid in both groups who tried to establish such a connection between the two parties. Münzenberg and his "lieutenant" Otto Katz orchestrated campaigns, congresses and committees for the release of Ernst Thalmann, which attracted everyone's attention. But anti-fascist activity was not at all under the dominant influence of the communists. If we compare the number of publications of German communist and non-communist emigrants, it turns out that bourgeois-liberal authors published three times more than communist ones. Thus, the anti-fascist culture of the 30s. characterized by social openness, political flexibility and, last but not least, a lack of ideological precision, which can be traced with particular clarity in the example of the concepts of "fascism" or "fascists".
Popular Front organizations supported the anti-fascists in every possible way, from helping intellectuals such as Romain Rolland, André Gide and Heinrich Mann, to preparing performances by Soviet artists, readings with the Archbishop of Canterbury and tea parties in support of the Spanish Republicans. This activity, which gave the impression of something harmless, often hid an uncritical admiration for the events that took place in the Soviet Union, and its subjects, in part, even often turned a blind eye to the crimes committed in that country. At the height of the Spanish Civil War and the Great Terror in the Soviet Union, however, the pro-Soviet stance meant neither support for communism nor rejection of liberalism. “The anti-fascist movement,” recalled, for example, historian George L. Moss, “had for us in the 30s. independent political and cultural value; admiration for the solitary resistance of the Soviet Union to the policy of appeasement, as well as the materialistic perception of history, but at the same time, the rejection of communism and Bolshevism as a system, could be attributed to him. ”George L. Mosse. Aus grossem Hause. Erinnerungen eines deutsch-judischen Historikers. Munich, 2003, S. 176. .
Consequently, anti-fascism was a complex mixture of ideas, images and symbols, which ultimately divided the world into two warring camps, and every political assessment was subject to Manichaean logic. In the whirlwind between "fascism" and its enemies, in a world divided between the forces of progress and reaction, friends and enemies of culture and civilization, there was no place for a middle ground or neutral point of view of a person who did not participate in the struggle. Historian Richard Cobb, who lived in the 30s. in Paris, describes in his memoirs how France experienced a kind of mental, moral war, during which it was necessary to decide in favor of fascism or communism Cf. Richard Cobb. A Second Identity. Essays on France and French History. London, 1969. .
According to this "logic of enemy and friend," the anti-fascist myth of masculine innocence was projected especially on male heroes. “Better to be the widow of a hero than the wife of a coward” was an oft-quoted adage of the day. The core of this myth of heroic innocence was formed by the book published in 1933 in Paris. "The Brown Book on the Reichstag Fire and the Hitler Terror", one of the bestsellers of international communism and equally "the bible of the anti-fascist crusade" by Arthur Koestler. Autobiographische Schriften. bd. I: Fruhe Empörung. Frankfurt am Main, 1993, S. 416. . She painted an image of National Socialism which, in its moment of triumph, not only masked the defeat of Communism, but rather accurately illustrated the essence of National Socialism: an image of a regime that lacked popular support, relied on terror, conspiracy and extortion, and which was ruled by "feminized » Homosexual degenerates, drug addicts, sadists and corrupt officials.
Numerous volunteers from different countries, at the high point of the anti-fascist movement during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) who went to this country, really felt that they did not belong to any nation or class, party or movement, represent the doctrine or metaphysics, but defend a united humanity, all of whose supporters spoke the same Spartan language, made equal sacrifices, and fought together to unite the world. Writer Milton Wolf joined in 1937 the so-called "Lincoln Brigades" (actually the Lincoln Battalion. - Note. per.), consisting of 3 thousand American volunteers. Later, in the third person, he wrote about his experiences in the Spanish Lesson: “In 1936 he went to Spain because he was an anti-fascist. He thought, though he was not quite sure of it, that fascism would overwhelm the whole world if it was not stopped in Spain. Arriving in Spain, he did not at first know what to do. He certainly knew nothing about fighting, killing or dying. But he was a volunteer. In Spain, he met people for whom anti-fascism was life, sleep and food, who worked tirelessly for this goal” Milton Wolff. Spanish lesson. – Alvah Cecil Bessie (Hrsg.) Heart of Spain. Anthology of Fiction, Non-Fiction, and Poetry. New York, 1952, pp. 451-453. . This rhetoric of innocence and the innocence of anti-fascist rhetoric might explain why anti-fascism appeared so "pure" in the eyes of its veterans. In his classic "My Catalonia"(1938) George Orwell argues that this illusion was in fact the correct "anti-fascist position" propagated systematically and carefully to mask the true nature of civil war within George Orwell's civil war. Mein Catalonia. Berichtüber den Spanischen Bürgerkrieg. Zürich, 1975. .
A real slap in the face for Hitler's opponents was the non-aggression pact signed on August 23, 1939 by Foreign Ministers V.M. Molotov and Joachim von Ribbentrop. Although Stalin had already begun to move away from the Spanish conflict, although information about a possible rapprochement with Hitler had been circulating since 1937, and although the Anglo-French alliance never became a fact, no one considered possible what seemed impossible. While most communists quickly capitulated and abandoned their anti-fascist stance in favor of a pro-Soviet one, a minority of intellectual dissidents - Willy Münzenberg, Manes Sperber, Arthur Koestler, Gustav Regler, Ignazio Silone and Hans Saal - broke with the Stalinist belief system in order to remain anti-fascist how they understand this position. Forced to make a choice between loyalty to communism and opposition to Hitler, these writers realized that the forces of Machiavellianism, as Manes Sperber characterized, united in the totalitarian alliance of Mannès Sperber. Bis man mir Scherben auf die Augen legt. Erinnerungen. Wien, 1977, S. 224 ff. . Then, for the duration of the Hitler-Stalin pact, the word "fascism" completely disappeared from the communist lexicon.
If the Hitler-Stalin pact destroyed the hope of European anti-fascists for a speedy end to fascism, then the attack on the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941 partly strengthened it. Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to believe that the policy of the Comintern during the war, which was again terminated in May 1943, would again be able to revive the broad anti-fascist consensus of the Popular Front era. Stalin opposed the idea of propagating a war between National Socialism and the Soviet Union as fundamentally an "anti-fascist war" and demanded instead the creation of a broad "national front" of all patriotic forces intending to fight against the Germans. The "Great Patriotic War" became a national symbol and a national myth in the Soviet Union, continuing to live even after the collapse of communism.
Anti-fascism after fascism
After the Second World War, anti-fascism became a myth associated with the creation of new "people's republics" throughout Eastern Europe. The expansion of the sphere of Soviet domination was celebrated as a victory over fascism, the elimination of private property was justified as a "precautionary measure" against the resurgence of "imperialism" and "militarism". During the Cold War, West Germany and the United States were seen as symbols of this ostensible renaissance. The GDR, anti-fascist and post-fascist according to its respective claims, was based on a complex "alloy" of myths that legitimized themselves, but above all on the assertion that the KPD led a significant resistance movement against National Socialism, and it was the victorious history of this movement that culminated in the end with the creation "the first socialist state" on German soil. The anti-fascist myth lived primarily through its stereotypical exaggeration of the heroes of the Resistance, the solemn exaltation of the sacrifices made by the Soviet Union and the "lives of the saints" that served as the basis for the texts of textbooks, monuments and rituals. Arrested in 1933 and killed in the Buchenwald concentration camp in 1944, the former leader of the KPD, Ernst Thälmann, was turned into a central figure in this official veneration of saints - countless poems, books and songs were dedicated to him.
This ostensibly anti-fascist German state granted a significant amnesty to a mass of former members and supporters of the NSDAP. The anti-fascist narrative made it possible to hide the wide support of the NSDAP and Hitler by the population and indiscriminately free him from any association with the recently defeated National Socialist regime. Collective memory in the GDR was subjected to manipulation, ritualization and censorship to such an extent that it existed and had the right to exist only one authorized version of the history of anti-fascism. Especially in the 50s. The KKE was presented as the only leading and effective force of the anti-fascist resistance in Germany. In eight large volumes of the official from the point of view of the party "History of the German Labor Movement" Autorenkollectiv. Walter Ulbricht et al. Geschichte der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung. 8 Bde., hrsg. v. Institut für Marxismus-Leninismus beim ZK der SED, Berlin (Ost), 1966. no mention was made of key figures in the German anti-fascist movement such as the disfavored Willi Münzenberg, and it goes without saying that she avoided mentioning the approximately 3,000 émigrés who fell victims of the "great terror" in the USSR.
Under the conditions of Stalinism, one's own biography was pure chance. Formulating the biography, and then modifying it so that it contains the "correct" anti-fascist background and writes down the correct points on the author's account, was condition sine qua non(sine qua non. – Lat., approx. translation.) climbing into the ranks of the party elite. The state-sanctioned myths of anti-fascist resistance often collided with the real life experiences of individuals and groups who, as just described, actually experienced events elevated to the rank of stylized memory. Among them were, for example, veterans of the Spanish Civil War, although they became objects of worship in the pantheon of heroes, they were often perceived as a danger to official memory. Their experience with the Spanish military police, anarchist repression and the "Trotskyist" POUM Note. per.), as well as their knowledge of what the writer Bodo Uze called "arrest there" (in the Soviet Union), had a deep distrust of them on the part of the party cadres.
In 1953, the OLPN (Association of Persons Persecuted under Nazism) was suddenly dissolved in the GDR, as there were constant frictions between the members of the association and the regime. Some members of another highly respected group - communist functionaries imprisoned in the Buchenwald concentration camp - were later found to be involved in highly dubious events as "red kapos" (camp policemen). However, the experience of imprisonment or emigration in the Soviet Union led among party members not, say, to about more doubts, but on the contrary, increased loyalty to the cause and distrust of comrades who could abuse this loyalty.
From the very beginning, active "fighters against fascism" occupied a higher position in the official hierarchy of memory than the survivors of the Holocaust or Jehovah's Witnesses, who were only not without hesitation recognized as "victims of fascism." Communist survivors of the war in Western exile were placed under surveillance, because - and partly not without reason - their adherence to ideology was questionable. Until the beginning of the 60s. most left-wing intellectuals of Jewish origin, including philosopher Ernst Bloch, literary critic Hans Mayer or publicist Alfred Kantorovich, who settled in the Soviet occupation zone after 1945 and then in the GDR, moved to the West.
In 1948, the Soviet Union began a campaign against prominent representatives of the Jewish people, which began with the assassination of actor Solomon Mikhoels, a world-famous activist of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee ( CM. Mikhoels was chairman of the JAC from the moment of its creation in 1941, he was killed on January 13, 1949, after the liquidation of the committee in November 1948 and the subsequent arrests of a number of future accused and victims.- Approx. per.). In August 1952, 15 Soviet Jews, including five well-known writers, were secretly accused and executed.
In December of the same year, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia Rudolf Slansky and 13 other defendants (including 11 Jews) were found guilty of espionage in Prague. Finally, in 1951, preparations began in the GDR for a trial against "cosmopolitans" (an anti-Semitic euphemism). The target of the trial was Paul Merker, a member of the SED Central Committee, who lived in Mexico during World War II. Although the trial against Merker did not take place after Stalin's death, contrary to what was planned, Merker was accused as an agent of the "imperialist intelligentsia" and a "Zionist" because he advocated compensating the Jews for the suffering caused to them by the Germans. The process created a milestone in Holocaust remembrance in East Germany. With few exceptions, such as Jurek Becker's novel "Jacob the Liar"(1969), the topic of the murder of European Jews remained taboo in the GDR until the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989.
Official anti-fascism was nothing more than a cult around state-sanctioned nostalgia and an image of history imbued with attempts at legitimation. This cult culminated metaphorically and in real politics with the construction in 1961 of the Berlin Wall, which was even called the "anti-fascist defensive rampart." The institutionalized remembrance of anti-fascism made the mass murder of Jews marginalized, since this mass murder was a solid scheme that went beyond the realm of the "eternal struggle" between communism and fascism and therefore threatened to destabilize the official masterful narrative.
The post-1989 efforts of well-meaning scholars and intellectuals to separate the "genuine" anti-fascist testament or "sense of life" from the official rituals of the state politics of remembrance could not, in retrospect, separate what had previously been inseparably linked. To realize this is probably bitter for the adherents of widely interpreted anti-fascism. While not all anti-fascists were involved in communism and its crimes, anti-fascism as an ideology and state-sanctioned memory can never be seen in complete isolation from its legacy.
