Third World activists and the Communist University of the Toilers of the East

2016-09-12The Soviet state through the Council of People’s Commissars (Sovnarkom) issued a decree creating the Communist University of the Toilers of the East (KUTV) in April 1921. The university emerged during a turbulent historical moment. After World War I, empires such as the Russian and Ottoman collapsed, while the Versailles Treaty between Germany and the Allies powers led to the creation of new colonial mandates. During the 1910s and 1920s, anti-colonial and nationalist uprisings took place throughout the globe. Although Sovnarkom issued the decree founding KUTV, the university was both a product of the emphasis anti-colonial activists such as M.N. Roy placed on education as a tool in the struggle against imperialism and the emphasis leading Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik) (RKP(b)) members such as Stalin and Lenin placed on the national and colonial questions. The university included students from the Middle East, Africa, the Americas, Asia, Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Siberia. At KUTV, courses focused on Marxist theory, the work of the Soviet Union in its efforts to build a socialist country, the sciences, geography, and for some students included military training. ❧ A study of the university offers a window into the complex relationship between the anti-colonial left and the international communist movement. I argue that KUTV reflected and contributed to the development of a radical anti-colonial left. KUTV was a place where students from different parts of the world could meet each other, exchange ideas, and attempt to build relationships across linguistic, racial, and geographic boundaries. For the Soviet state and the RKP(b), KUTV was a critical institution contributing to Soviet state building particularly among the Muslims of the former tsarist empire; the spread of Marxism-Leninism; the development of communist parties outside of the West; and providing the state and Party with knowledge about non-Western countries and peoples. ❧ KUTV was unsuccessful in building communist parties throughout Asia, Africa, the Americas, and the Middle East as well as developing cadres that would be loyal to the Soviet Union. However, the university was an important institution. Many leading radical anti-colonial activists were teachers or students at the university. That list included Ho Chi Minh, M.N. Roy, and Mirsaid Sultangaliev. Their ideas would continue to influence a new generation of activists after World War II. The university existed during a period in which students, teachers, and administrators were struggling to develop a language that described relationships between people from the Americas, Central Asia, the Caucasus, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. KUTV provides insight into how the idea of what would become known as the Third World took shape during the interwar years