How did socialist internationalism and its attendant ideas of solidarity with the postcolonial world function within socialist societies? In his opening remarks, GEORGE BODIE (Cambridge) proposed understanding socialist internationalism not merely as an elite practice serving propagandistic ends. Instead, he advocated including the people for whom the propaganda was meant in the analysis. A combination of the often unprocessed or overlooked records of solidarity committees in “Second World” countries, secret police files, and oral history would allow investigating the rise of and the resistance against solidarity.
Keynote speaker JAMES MARK (Exeter) began the history of eastern European solidarity with the Global South in the 19th century, when most eastern Europeans did not join forces with colonized peoples in the Global South. Instead, some even called for the acquisition of colonies to become “fully European.” This changed in the 20th century before the advent of state socialism: the Italian invasion of Abyssinia in 1935 and World War II created an anti-colonial culture of solidarity. However, by the mid-1970s, many eastern Europeans thought that inefficient aid schemes wasted scarce resources. Instead of likening their fate under Soviet domination to the fate of Western-dominated countries in the Global South, they feared that anti-colonial solidarity with the Global South had distanced them from “European civilization.” In the 1980s, when Poles felt that Western support against apartheid was more substantial than its support for Solidarność, eastern European reservations against solidarity with the Global South gained an anti-Western undertone.
As multiple panelists underlined, the memory of the past was central to many solidarity projects. NIKOLA KARASOVA (Prague) and JULIA REINKE (Jena) examined how Czechoslovakia and the GDR between 1948 and 1950 employed the recent past to mobilize their populations to receive Greek Civil War refugees. East Germans framed the support in terms of paying a debt to the Greek people for Nazi crimes, while Czechoslovaks conceived of solidarity in terms of a continuation of the anti-fascist struggle during World War II. In the end, both campaigns mobilized support for refugees and contributed to overcoming the troubled past within and between the two recipient countries.
BARBORA BUZÁSSYOVÁ (Bratislava) showed how the Czechoslovak Committee for Solidarity with African and Asian Peoples invoked memories of Nazi occupation and the 1944 Slovak National Uprising to stimulate feelings of shared anti-imperialist and anti-racist struggle. However, most Czechoslovaks met the Committee’s activities with indifference or criticism. Facing an economic crisis in the mid-1960s, they believed their government spent too much on aid schemes. Moreover, after the Soviet crackdown of the Prague Spring, an invasion under the pretext of socialist internationalism and solidarity, it became even harder for state-led solidarity campaigns to gain traction.
The Czechoslovak “University of November 17” for students from the Global South also invoked memories of Nazi occupation, as MAGDALÉNA KOLOMAZNÍKOVÁ (Cambridge) pointed out. On November 17, 1939, Nazis had closed Czechoslovak universities and brutally suppressed their students. However, this historical reference escaped many students, and Czechoslovak citizens criticized the university, like the solidarity committee, for being too costly, eventually leading to its closure.
STEFFI MARUNG (Leipzig) asked how Soviet scholars, journalists, and photographers translated socialism in Africa for a Soviet audience. Based on visual representations of Africa in the Soviet journal Asia and Africa today (Aziia i Afrika Segodnia), she argued that Soviet authors homogenized socialist experiences in Africa and likened the African present to the Soviet past. This reduced geographic and cultural distance and legitimized Soviet solidarity with Africa.
Conversely, citizens in socialist countries also used solidarity with the Global South to deal with their own past, as KRISTIN ROTH-EY (London) showed. She examined viewers’ reactions to Konstantin Simonov’s There’s No Such Thing as Someone Else’s Sorrow (Chuzhogo goria ne byvaet), a 1972 Soviet documentary film about the Vietnam War. Using letters to the filmmaker, she demonstrated that viewers welcomed the film as an invitation to remember and mourn World War II.
MARY IKONIADOU (Leeds) examined expressions of “Third World” solidarity in issues of Pyrsos (Torch), a Greek-language magazine edited by Greek political refugees in and with the support of the GDR and read by the Greek Diaspora in East and West. She argued that these expressions were not merely directed from above by the Greek or German communist parties. Instead, drawing parallels between Greece and the “Third World” and expressing solidarity with Vietnamese and Algerian guerilla fighters allowed many Greeks to deal with the past of the Greek Civil War and situate their pleas for the democratization of Greece within a larger, anti-imperialist struggle.
Historical memory itself became a field of cooperation with the Global South, as JELENA ĐUREINOVIĆ (Vienna) pointed out. Her case in point was the veterans’ organization of Yugoslav partisans. Based on the organization’s newspaper and letters from African partner organizations, she showed how Yugoslav veterans, convinced of a shared past of anti-imperialist struggle, trained active military movements and veteran associations in the Global South in how to preserve the memory of revolution and liberation struggle.
ELIJAH-MATTEO FERRANTE (Oxford) showed that former solidarity actors attempted to shape the memory of state-socialist solidarity initiatives. Based on the close reading of a book edited by a former pedagogue in the GDR solidarity program for Namibian child refugees, he argued that former administrators, functionaries, and teachers affiliated with this program tried to legitimize and preserve its legacy by presenting a curated view of the program, its dissolution, and the at times conflictual relationship between students and GDR citizens.
Several panelists focused on the role of students. HELENA TRENKIĆ (Cambridge) investigated how Yugoslav students and the state negotiated acceptable expressions of student solidarity with the Global South. She found that state-affiliated and grassroots student organizations deployed internationalist discourse in support of and against the state, at once contributing to its legitimacy and undermining it.
What happens when domestic conflicts from the Global South spill over into recipient countries? RAIA APOSTOLOVA (Sofia) pointed to the conflict between Iraqi students in Bulgaria affiliated with the Iraqi Communist Party and their compatriots affiliated with the Ba’ath Party, culminating in the murder of two Iraqi students. She showed that Bulgarian officials suppressed some of the activities of both groups and ultimately segregated them: Ba’athists studied in Sofia, Iraqi communists in the province.
THOM LOYD (Georgetown) asked why African student activists in the Soviet Union and Soviet human rights activists employed a similar language of human rights but did not join their struggles. Loyd pointed to diverging views of the role of the Soviet state. African students in the 1960s Soviet Union wanted to mobilize the Soviet state to protect them from discrimination by Soviet citizens. In contrast, Soviet human rights activists employed the language of human rights as protection from the Soviet state.
SUNNIE RUCKER-CHANG (Ohio) investigated the changing racialization of international students. In Yugoslavia, students sometimes protested against the racism experienced by some of their peers. In contrast, interviews with international students in Serbia today reveal that Serbians are fascinated by “exotic” international students racialized as “Black.” In contrast, they exclude Sri Lankan students, coded in Serbia as “Roma” and thus “local.”
SARA PUGACH (Los Angeles) asked how students from the Global South tried to influence the policies of their host country. Based primarily on East German archival documents, she showed how members of the left-wing Union des Populations du Cameroun studying in East Germany attempted to act as “student-diplomats” to shape the form of East German solidarity with their home country.
Not only students from the Global South attempted to shape the forms of state-socialist solidarity. Based on German and South African sources, LEA BÖRGERDING (Berlin) investigated ANC women’s lobbying within the Women’s International Democratic Federation in East Berlin. As a product of this lobbying, GDR officials criticized black African women’s “double oppression” based on race and sex. However, they did not address gendered discrimination within the GDR or the ANC nor recognize feminist activism outside the Women’s International Democratic Federation.
ERIC BURTON (Innsbruck) showed how Tanzania stood out among the countries in the Global South which practiced solidarity with anti-colonial movements. Due to government initiatives, grassroots groups, and foreign liberation movements present on Tanzanian soil, Tanzanian solidarity emerged both from above and below, as well as from “inside” and “outside,” lasted longer, and was more substantial. Based on English- and Swahili-language sources, he demonstrated how Tanzanian party elites, local party or youth league branches, and social spaces beyond the direct involvement of the one-party state mobilized and channeled emerging popular anti-colonial activism.
Why did Angela Davis become a celebrity in the Soviet Union? Based on published and unpublished letters to Soviet newspapers in support of Angela Davis, MAXIM MATUSEVICH (Seton Hall) finds that many Soviet citizens saw in her not the communist icon of the official Soviet “Free Angela Davis” campaign but a representative of the world outside the Soviet Union and a symbol of freedom and transgression. However, Soviet dissidents were unable to coopt the official campaign to promote freedom of speech and freedom from political persecution in the Soviet Union.
SARAH BINZ (Frankfurt an der Oder) drew attention to the material dimension of international socialist solidarity, examining a record containing poems by the Chilean Pablo Neruda, melodized by the Greek Mikis Theodorakis, and performed and recorded in the GDR. She argued that the record illustrated how solidarity between Chileans and Greeks against their respective repressive right-wing regimes flowed at different times in different directions.
International solidarity during the Cold War sometimes bridged the East-West divide, as FRANZISKA DAVIES (Munich) demonstrated. Her case in point was the Polish reaction to the 1980s British miners’ strikes. While the Polish government publicly supported the strikes, it delivered coal to the UK. In a meeting with Margaret Thatcher, Wojciech Jaruzelski posited that both politicians were in the same boat, fighting domestic opposition by trade unions.
The concept of solidarity could also be employed against state socialist countries. MARION DOTTER (Munich) showed how the Catholic Church used a Christian concept of solidarity in a 1945-1958 offensive against communism in Austria, until 1955 partly under Soviet occupation. The Catholic church criticized the excesses of capitalism in general and social policies by the conservative Austrian government in particular and provided Catholic answers to the social question that were, in the view of the Austrian ambassador to the Holy See, more radical than socialist ones.
JESSICA DALLJO (Halle) analyzed GDR children’s magazines’ fundraising appeals in support of countries in the Global South. She argued that these calls for donations were meant to strengthen GDR citizens’ attachment to their homeland and to make parents talk to their children about countries in the Global South, thus educating them in the spirit of internationalism. They also conveyed to the readers a sense of agency: via donations, they could contribute to the realization of specific projects in the Global South.
State-socialist countries also demanded domestic solidarity from their citizens. However, MAREN HACHMEISTER (Dresden) argued that this domestic solidarity was shaped “from below” and even outlasted socialism. Her case in point is the still existing East German Volkssolidarität (People’s Solidarity), a former socialist mass organization that provided free-of-charge care for the elderly via neighborhood volunteers. Based on archival documents and interviews, she underlined that the volunteers adopted solidarity as a personal attitude and continued to provide care after 1989.
Similarly, PAUL SPRUTE (Erkner) showed that the East German solidarity committee did not cease to exist in 1989. Instead, it re-established itself under a new name, Solidaritätsdienst International (Solidarity Service International), taking over the committee’s networks, resources, and personnel and transforming into a professional development NGO over time. To this end, projects in former Soviet republics and Romania were crucial. Providing humanitarian relief to past fellow “Second World” countries helped Solidaritätsdienst International and its East German supporters to re-position themselves in the “First World.”
Conference Overview:
Panel 1: Depicting solidarity
Chair: George Bodie (Cambridge)
Kristin Roth-Ey (London): ‘Solidarity and the pain of others: Soviet documentary film and the Vietnam War
Steffi Marung (Leipzig): ‘How to see the socialist (br)other? Visual repertoires for the non-European world in the Soviet Union’
Jessica Dalljo (Halle): ‘Socialist internationalism and solidarity in GDR children’s magazines’
Panel 2: Solidarity in (post)Yugoslavia
Chair: Celia Donert (Cambridge)
Sunnie Rucker-Chang (Ohio): ‘(Re)imagining solidarities, (Re)imagining Serbia: student mobility, the non-aligned movement, and the “World in Serbia”’
Helena Trenkic (Cambridge): ‘Negotiating acceptable forms of activism: student contributions to Yugoslav non-alignment, 1964-1981’
Jelena Đureinović (Vienna): ‘Veterans, memory, and networks of solidarity: Yugoslavia and the Global South during the Cold War’
Panel 3: Transnational Solidarities
Chair: James Mark (Exeter)
Eric Burton (Innsbruck): ‘Frontline citizens. Liberation movements, transnational solidarity, and the making of anti-imperialist citizenship in Tanzania’
Sara Pugach (Los Angeles): ‘Negotiating solidarity: Cameroonian students as mediators between the German Democratic Republic and the Union des Populations du Cameroun, 1958-1967’
Panel 4: Internationalism within the USSR
Chair: Kristin Roth-Ey
Maxim Matusevich (Seton Hall): ‘‘You Are Not Alone’: Angela Davis and the Soviet dreams of freedom’
Thom Loyd (Georgetown): ‘African protest and the Soviet human rights movement’
Keynote:
James Mark: ‘Connections, erasures, ambivalence: the lives and afterlives of eastern European solidarity in global perspective’
Panel 5: Solidarity’s institutions
Chair: Celia Donert
Barbora Buzássyová (Bratislava): ‘“Side by side with fighting nations”: making the new culture of pro-African solidarity in the campaigns of Czechoslovak Committee for Afro-Asian Solidarity’
Magdaléna Kolomazníková (Cambridge): ‘The everyday paradoxes of socialist internationalism: Czechoslovak society and international students through the lens of University of 17th November’
Lea Börgerding (Berlin): ‘Gendered socialist solidarity? Anti-Apartheid activism and women’s rights behind the Berlin Wall (1975-1985)’
Panel 6: Antifascism, solidarity, and the Greek Civil War
Chair: George Bodie
Nikola Karasova (Prague) and Julia Reinke (Jena): ‘“We provide aid, like we would help brothers or sisters”? Practicing solidarity with Greek Civil War refugees in socialist Czechoslovakia and the GDR’
Mary Ikoniadou (Leeds): ‘Periodical publishing as a layer of socialist solidarity in the GDR in the 1960s’
Sarah Binz (Frankfurt an der Oder): ‘Canto General: an artefact of international socialist solidarity’
Panel 7: Bridging solidarities
Chair: Thom Loyd
Franziska Davies (Munich): ‘Beyond “East” and “West.” A transnational perspective on Polish solidarity and the British miners’ strike in the 1980s’
Raia Apostolova (Sofia): ‘Negotiating friendships: The Bulgarian State caught between Ba’ath and the Communists’
Marion Dotter (Munich): ‘With international solidarity against Communism?”
Panel 8: Late-, Post-, and non-Socialist Solidarity
Chair: George Bodie
Maren Hachmeister (Dresden): ‘“Without solidarity, no people”: When solidarity among caregivers in the East German Volkssolidarität reached upwards from below’
Paul Sprute (Erkner): ‘The afterlives of solidarity: The Solidaritätsdienst International and its re-interpretation of East German socialist internationalism in re-unified Germany’
Elijah-Matteo Ferrante (Oxford): ‘“Suffer poor children!”. ‘The ‘Kindergate’ scandal and the decline of socialist solidarity between Namibia and the GDR”