War on Christmas, the Agacher strip clash

 

President Sankara in front with beret visits Agacher during conflict in December 1985

 

On Christmas day 1985 the West African nations of Mali and Burkina Faso found themselves in a military conflict. The dispute was called by some African leaders as "the war of the poor" due to the economic conditions within both countries and became known commonly as the Agacher strip War. The Agacher strip was a territory bordering both nations, in the furthest north of Burkina Faso and as part of Mali's southern border. The clashes lasted five days before the International Court of Justice arbitrated. Casualties are had to accurately but are estimated as high as 300 including civilians and military. 

The situation was essentially powder keg next to an open flame. Agacher was a porous border, people living their often crossed what was suppsoed to be the recognised border. Cattle farmers would trespass to graze their cattle on the best lands in the area. And the territory was beleived to be rich in natural resources. Both nations had been pursuing their claims to the territory for many  years with sporadic shooting in 1974. But relations between Mali and Burkina Faso were especially poor by 1985. Burkina Faso's leader Thomas Sankara had publicly urged on revolution in Mali during a period of unrest 

“The other peoples who are on our borders also need a revolution […] I want to talk about Mali. […] The revolution of the people of Burkina Faso is available to the people of Mali who need it. Because he alone will allow him to fight against hunger, thirst, ignorance; and to fight above all against the forces of neocolonial and imperialist domination”.

Speech from September 1985, machine translated from French

Meanwhile Sankara suspected Mali's leader Moussa Traore of working with Burkinabe exiles and the Ivory Coast against him. Further aggravating the situation was the Burkina Faso census being conducted at the time which included the communities in Agacher and border settlements claimed by Mali. Burkina Faso also deployed soldiers to the area without notification resulting in confrontation with Mali authorities. Burkina Faso announced it would withdraw its soldiers but had not done so by the time the conflict had started.

On the 25th of December Mali launched its offensive, over five days its forces successfully occupied a large part of the strip with the Burkinabe forces lead by Blaise Compaore forced to disperse and resort to ambush and delaying tactics. On December 30th a truce sponsored by African leaders was struck and held. In January 1986 the two countries began desecalting, prisoners were exchanged and eventually a time table for withdrawing forces was agreed. Both governments accused each other, Burkina Faso stated it was the victim of aggression while Mali maintained that its operation was to protect its territorial integrity. By that December the International Court of Justice had decided to split the territory roughly in half with Mali taking the West and Burkina Faso the east. Both nations accepted this proposal and that was the end of hostilities between the two countries.

The reason I'm outlining this short conflict is the connection to Thomas Sankara. Thomas Sankara was Marxist revolutionary and statesmen who came to power through a coup d'etat in the former French colony of Upper Volta in 1983. In 1984 as part of Sankara's reforms the country was renamed to Burkina Faso. Sankara's charisma, interventionist policies and lack of readily available information about him or his time in government (in English anyway) and his tragic end, deposed and killed in 1987 in another coup d'etat by his close colleague and fellow band member Blaise Compaore, created the perfect conditions for a posthoumous cult of personality. Sankara is extremely popular today amongst certain left-wing circles and while its difficult to find information about in English, its almost possible to find even mild criticism.

So, I think the Agacher Strip, both the long running dispute and the conflict it birthed are an excellent demonstration of reality. It is possible that Thomas Sankara was truly as selfless and brilliant as he is presented by his admirers. But he was also the leader of a government and a nation state and an active participant in the international community. This means that ultimately his personal qualities aren't of much importance because both he and the Burkinabe revolution he promoted had to work within a system that constrained and limited them. 

As seen by the dispute over territory in Agacher. Two nations wanted to augment their security and natural wealth fought over a territory both had claimed. While Sankara had encouraged Malians to oust Muossa Traore in speeches and print there was no serious attempt to link the struggle for control of Agacher to a revolution in Mali. And Mali despite gaining the upper hand against the armed forces of Burkina Faso made no attempt to deliver a serious blow to Burkina Faso, its forces remained within the territory that was disputed. And after the International Court of Justice recommended splitting the territory both sides agreed and scaled back their aggressive measures. Both governments came to an agreement they could live with at the cost of a few hundred of their citizens. 

Furthermore, despite Sankara being an open Marxist with close co-operation with Cuba the Cold War dynamics of East vs West played no role in this conflict. Moussa Traore had taken steps to improve relations with France but his regime and especially its military relied heavily on the Soviet Union. The air force that bombed Burkinabe positions and villages flew Mig-21s and its tanks and equipment were also from the Soviet military. There were at least 50 Soviet military advisers present in the country at the time of the conflict offering support as well.

MiG-21 in the service of the Malian air force

Ultimately it didn't matter that Sankara was in power at all. The tensions between the two nations predated him and they were fought by means that trump ideological postures and by diplomacy and force, the tools available to all states and endorsed by the international authorities so long as they occurr in the proper manner.

On Change and ballots

 “If voting did anything, they’d make it illegal.”

This often repeated and attributed quote has caused a great deal of argument for many years. Its often attributed to Emma Goldman though attempts to find the source haven't succeeded and sometimes the quote is attributted to other thinkers like Mark Twain. But while its not clear that Goldman said those words I doubt she'd disagree with it. 

A common line of criticism especially from people who live in the United States of America is "but they are making it illegal". The USA and many other countries do have restrictions on eliigibility for voting. In the segregationist South Black Americans were barred by poll tax requirements and ridiculous and rigged tests they had to pass before being allowed to cast a ballot. And to this day in many states the act of gerrymandering of electoral districts continues and multiple states have passed increasingly stringent laws on the need for identification and restrictive lists for what counts as identification. 

This was just one of hundreds of such tests used in the US South.

And its not just the United States. The presidential elections in Brazil this year saw Federal police intervene to close polling stations early and turn buses full of voters away on one flimsy pretext or another. So it does seem like voting is increasingly becoming illegal or at least blunted by heavy restrictions.

So, does this mean the qoutation is incorrect? I would think no, and although we don't know if Emma Goldman said this phrase I think she is still a good example of the phrase's meaning. Emma Goldman was a committed Anarchist-Communist and advocate for social revolution. To her, changing things meant systemic change, the kind of change that rebuilds society from the ground up. To date, while elections and referendums have brought about changes they haven't brought about the systemic change that Goldman advocated. 

For example, let's look at some passages from her essay on Woman Suffrage. 

Woman’s demand for equal suffrage is based largely on the contention that woman must have the equal right in all affairs of society. No one could, possibly, refute that, if suffrage were a right. Alas, for the ignorance of the human mind, which can see a right in an imposition. Or is it not the most brutal imposition for one set of people to make laws that another set is coerced by force to obey? Yet woman clamors for that “golden opportunity” that has wrought so much misery in the world, and robbed man of his integrity and self-reliance; an imposition which has thoroughly corrupted the people, and made them absolute prey in the hands of unscrupulous politicians.

...

 As to our own States where women vote, and which are constantly being pointed out as examples of marvels, what has been accomplished there through the ballot that women do not to a large extent enjoy in other States; or that they could not achieve through energetic efforts without the ballot?

Bolding my own.

For Goldman economic and social conditions and power relationships between classes and individuals were the important thing. And for her there were many ways to available to achieving gains along those ends, while expanding the franchise to women didn't automatically lead to any progress as far as she could see in the United States of America. 

But, nevertheless, the right to vote or to be more accurate acess to the vote is being restricted in many parts of the world. So, why? Well I think we can answer this question by looking at who is trying to make it harder for people to vote. In the United States currently much of the hostile legislation and policies enacted by state governments towards voting have been carried out by the Republican party*. In Brazil the Federal police are known to overwhelmingly support former President Bolsonaro and most of the reports of their inttereference were carried out in parts of Brazil were his opponent Lula had a strong lead.

They aren't trying to prevent the coming revolution, these are members of specific political factions targeting the voting blocks of their opponents to suppress their electoral opposition and secure their positions in power. Passing a law that requires identification while voting and at the sametime restricts what forms of ID are acceptable to types that are less common amongst the demographics that vote for other parties helps one party in particular win elections. 

Revolutions and even major reforms are often driven by non elective means. The Voting Rights Act that abolished the restrictions on Black americans from voting in the South was passed in 1965 after the civil rights movement had sucessfully used direct action to desegerate many businesses, services and schools. And the passage of the act did not end the struggles for racial equality and justice in the United States. The African National Congress formed a government in 1994 by being the largest party in the South African parliament, but that was only possible through decades of mass disobediance campaigns, boycotts and armed struggle. Meanwhile the dictator Napoleon III passed male suffrage, the Brazilian dictatorship maintained a congress with political parties that stood for elections. And in Australia its a crime to not vote in elections.

And in much of the democratic world change through ballots alone are usually limited by a political orthodoxy established by two or more large political parties that compete to form a government. Yes, we have the right to vote for any candidate we wish, but that doesn't lead to more radical change. You vote for the incumbent and thus more of the same or you thought for the largest opposition which will implement a few changes along their manifesto plan. Some nations have tried to address this issue by switching electoral systems and changing thresholds for representatives or implementing recall mechanisms but these haven't widened the scope for change much.

So, I suppose if we had to criticise the qoutation it would be that "voting on its own doesn't change anything substantial, which is why politicians who fear growing unpopularity but barriers in place to make it as difficult as possible to do".

* I have on occasion seen allegations of similar behaviour leveled at Democratic party administrations but the overwhelming number of cases involve the Republicans.

Strike Season

 

The news has started calling 2022 the year of the strike, which is a good indicator of the decline of industrial action in a country that used to be famous for it. I honestly could not keep up with the number of strike ballots that have passed. The transport unions on the bus and railways across the country have been picketing since the summer, the Royal Mail have started a series of strike days, and the dockers at one of my former workplaces also came out on strike after years of building grievances. 

Now nurses are striking and ambulance drivers are preparing to take action as well. The union branches in my area didn't vote to strike, well they didn't vote at a high enough margin stipulated by the industrial relations legislation, but it is a national health service so it is still having an effect. 

Overall its quite a turn around from the slow decline of industrial action and unionisation that's dominated the UK economy. I'm not surprised we've reached boiling point, I broke my ankle in a road accident in late June. I don't have a bad word to say about the treatment I recieved both the ambulance crew who got me within minutes of being called and the trauma team and the nurse who oversaw my discharge were professional and quick and kind. They were also extremely hardworking, I spent roughly 8-9 hours in A&E before being discharged and hobbling out of there on a pair of cructches a walking boot and a syringe of morphine. During those hours everyone who was present when I went in was still working when I left and they were working. After checking me they went straight to another patient and then another and another before back to me. Once it became clear from my CT scan that there was no neck or back injury they wheeled my bed into different arrangments to make room for others. It never stopped, for everyone patient discharged three or four took their place.

The CT scan was a bit like the lines at the factory I was working at, as soon as one scan was done out you go and in goes the next person, the demand was incredible high, I was extremely lucky that I was second in the queue. My parents were waiting for me in the discharge room, the line was outside the hospital, and they were doing triage in the line to find the most serious cases. When I left at 9pm the line was still stretching outside. The official capacity for the Accident & Emergency ward at my local hospital was 30, on that day they had managed to squeeze in over 60 at its busiest, and that left a lot of people outside or stuck on a chair for hours. 

And this may be a minor point but I include it anyway for completeness sake, I spent 8 hours staring at the ceiling that day. I wasn't allowed to move until the all clear from the scan. Every single ceiling I saw in that building had large holes in it, and when I went back for physiotherapy I noticed that all the floors at bits that had given way and had been patched up, you feel it when your still trying to bend your leg and lift your foot properly.

Both myself and my parents left feeling relieved the injury wasn't worse but extremely dismayed and angry at what we saw. My sympathies are always with fellow working people when struggling against exploitation and the powerful, but I especially support all the health care workers including the social care workers in these struggles. These people are dedicated and are worked relentlessly, meanwhile their service has been strangled and allowed to degrade and stagnate into this present crisis. And they've been doing this for decades. For years Health Ministers have claimed to have increased spending and ring fenced health care and so on. And yet during that time the service has declined, and Doctors, nurses have been vocal about how the government has kept staffing levels and new applications at the same level year after year, and hasn't approved infrastructure expansion or equipment modernisations so procedures take longer and some of the latest treatments simply aren't available. And the influx of private companies and service providers have meant even more bureacracy, and a further decline in the services as cost cuts and profit incentives are introduced. The fees for using the hospital car park are very high, the revenue goes to a private company and not the hospital. When my mother was in hospital for an operation all the beds in the ward had an overhead monitor with a TV built in. No-one was watching them because they charge for them now, they were free when they were introduced. And insult to injury the monitors are owned by another private firm who collects the money. As bad as parking and tv rental fees are that they don't even raise revenue for the improvement of the health service is just spit in the eye.

The government wish to frame the conflict as just another pay dispute with the unions being greedy with the typical argumentative soundbites "not an unlimited pot of money" and "they're already paid more than x" but if they lose this fight the health system will collapse and the public will be in a crisis. My injury wasn't life threatening but it very easily could've been, it could've been a veterbrae that snapped instead of an ankle joint, and even with an ankle fractue without prompt attention and ongoing support I could've damaged the leg permantly and lost the ability to walk. 

I still have to do regular exercise and walk with a cane for support half a year later. There's no way I could afford this under the private model pushed by the government. So I wish to support them and all other striking workers as much as I can. I decided to share some details to show my appreciation. 

Farha

 

I watched Farha, as a film its very good. The sets, locations costumes and acting are very convincing, I could say I enjoyed the movie very much, but that feels wrong. Fahra is about a young Palestinian girl trapped in the nightmare that was 1948s Nakba, the massive campaign of violence that destroyed many Palestinian communities. So it feels wrong to use wordslike enjoyment and liked. The beginning of the film was pleasant enough seeing Fahra and the village children playing in the last days of the Mandate, but the conflict isn't far a way and many sequences are brutal and extremely unpleasant to watch. 

I recommend watching it, but only if you're in an appropriate mood to do so, its hard viewing. I wasn't planning on watching it, I had not heard about it until yesterday. I was browsing social media when I saw the tail end of the argument about it. Several screenshots of article titles and journalists reacting very hostilely to it. In particular I remember a screenshot of some journalist I didn't recognise making a statement that pushed to seek out the film. I've tried finding it again but that's an impossible task so from memory it went like "I have no issue with criticism of Israel. I just don't like seeing all Jews being depicted as bloodthirsty monsters" or words to that effect. 

That comment decided me for a couple of reasons, firstly I doubted that Netflix would stream a film that did depict all Jewish people as monsters, but more seriously because I understand the sentiment. I also really don't like it when communities and groups I'm connected to or feel connected to are shown to do horrible things. But, here's the issue its a film about the Nakba, and is based on the accounts of a survivor of the Nakba who ended up in a refugee camp in Syria.

From the credits of the film

After watching the film I looked up background details, and found that the director Darin J. Sallam was told of the account by her own mother. So while I can understand not liking how the Israeli soldiers are shown to be behaving, in fact I would be alarmed to encounter someone who wasn't disturbed by their behaviour. Like all films based on true accounts the film adds or changes details, unless we get a recording we'll never know for sure that the real Farha or Radiyyeh saw the murder of a family of refugees while the officer cracked jokes about it. But even if that's an embellishment, we do know the depiction of how the soldiers are behaving was accurate to the time, not only because of the testimonies of the Palestinians, 800,000 refugees is a lot of witnesses, but also the testimony of Jewish people and Isrealis. 

One of the most popular entries on this very site is a 1948 open letter to the New York Times by Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt and a dozen other prominent Jewish people denouncing the campaign of terror being carried out in the villages. 

A shocking example was their behavior in the Arab village of Deir Yassin. This village, off the main roads and surrounded by Jewish lands, had taken no part in the war, and had even fought off Arab bands who wanted to use the village as their base. On April 9 (The New York Times), terrorist bands attacked this peaceful village, which was not a military objective in the fighting, killed most of its inhabitants—240 men, women and children— and kept a few of them alive to parade as captives through the streets of Jerusalem. Most of the Jewish community was horrified at the deed, and the Jewish Agency sent a telegram of apology to King Abdullah of Trans-Jordan. But the terrorists, far from being ashamed of their act, were proud of this massacre', publicized it widely, and invited all the foreign correspondents present in the country to view the heaped corpses and the general havoc at Dein Yassin. The Deir Yassin incident exemplifies the character and actions of the Freedom Party. Within the Jewish community they have preached an admixture of ultranationalism, religious mysticism, and racial superiority.

Bolding my own.

And as time has gone on, more and more accounts have surfaced of similar atrocities in the other 400 villages that were attacked and pillaged.

“The Jewish soldiers who took part in the massacre also reported horrific scenes: babies whose skulls were cracked open, women raped or burned alive in houses, and men stabbed to death,” the historian Ilan Pappe wrote in his book, “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine,” describing accounts of a massacre that took place in the Palestinian village of Dawaymeh.

The Intercept 

So even if the Israeli militants weren't present in the original story they're conistant with the period.

And while I can't be 100% certain of every word in the reaction I did note it said Jews, and not Israelis. Which is an interesting substitution. Not every Jewish person is Israeli, and to be blunt not every Israeli citizen is Jewish, there's strong overlap but the Venn diagram isn't a circle. In Fahra there are less than a dozen onscreen Israeli characters. They're all armed and they're pretty nasty people doing horrible things, but I would argue that has more to do with them being members of a radical military organisation that's open aim was to expand its borders by driving out its neighbours, then being Jewish. I don't have to qoute the Einstein-Arendt letter again do I?

I do understand why Israelis don't like this movie and wish to belittle and minimise it. While there was an existing Israeli movement and identity, and a network of communities in the Mandate it was the military campaigns of 1948 that cemented the existence of Isreal as a nation state. This means that the campaigns of violence were integral to its establishment and its founding myth. So acknowledging the darker parts of those episodes is an attack on the nation itself.

But that's just nationalism. There is nothing unique about Israel and its national history nor its people's sensitivity to criticism. Americans venerate their war of independence and founding fathers and really don't like people talking about slavery, and wars with the natives. British nationalists take pride in the Empire but will not be pleasant if the conversation goes beyond train travel and military vigour. Irish nationalists love the 1916-22 generation of heroes but will not welcome an accurate accounting for the campaigns of terror by the Free State. Algerian nationalists are proud of their nation's hard won battles against the domination of the French, but aren't interested in discussion the legacy of independent Algeria's discrimination and forced expulsions of its minority populations that were deemed not Algerian nor loyal enough to stay.

Keep going with the nationalist group of your choice, it does not matter which one you pick it never ends. If watching Farha makes you feel targetted then the problem isn't the movie, the problem is nationalism and the divisions and misery it causes. 

Palestinians are allowed to explore and come to terms with their traumas and their history just as Israelis and everyone else is. I've seen comments by Palestinians praising the film for helping them do that which to me is the best praise it can get.

This is a perfect summary of the emotional experience of Farha.

"Right now we are through a turning point in the history of Eastern Europe" - The Combat Organisation of Anarcho-Communists (BOAK) discusses the situation for Anarchism in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus

From the telegram channel of Boak

 Be your own force

“...many of us anarchists, especially those who were a little bit theoretically determined, wasted time on false attempts to find in anarchism something super-perfect, for which there is no place in the life of the present. The place for it, they say, is only in the future, and it is not known in what forms.

Nestor Makhno. Memories.

Right now we are going through a turning point in the history of Eastern Europe. In the abyss of events, we can clearly distinguish the small black sail of the anarchist movement. In the Russian resistance, the actions of the Combat Organization of Anarcho-Communists had a great resonance. In Ukraine, at the forefront of the fight against imperialism, groups of our like-minded people, both with weapons in their hands and in many “peaceful” spheres, are demonstrating an anarchist perspective in the context of current events. In the nationwide upsurge against the dictatorship in Belarus in 2020, which in this war echoed the echo of rail sabotage, the anarchists were one of the brightest and most articulate forces. These testimonies tell us about the relevance of anarchism in the current political realities.

However, those involved understand that in order to become a real factor of change and a force influencing the minds of the people and society as a whole, we still lack something. Maybe a lot.

Let's talk about one thing today. There are two approaches that seem to prevent our movement and the active people who make it up from adequately realizing themselves and building a line of action in the current moment. In fact, these are two sides of the same coin.

Now sometimes you can hear statements that “everything is lost”, “the anarchist movement in Russia and Belarus has been defeated, and in Ukraine it is incredibly weak” ... put your hands down, drain the water - write memoirs, but it’s better not to have them. And they say it just the same at a decisive moment. When the entire social reality of the region is staggering and can choose the most unpredictable trajectory (and this alone already gives the revolutionaries a great chance).

The Road Back

 

Netflix released another film adaptation of Remarque's novel All Quiet on the Western Front. I don't really like the movie, of the three versions I've seen I think this is the one I'd put at the bottom of the list. It reminded me of the 1930 version, which then reminded me of that version's ill fated sequel that came out in 1937, The Road Back.

The Road Back is a loose version of Remarque's sequel novel of the same name. After learning about it I was intrigued I enjoyed reading All Quiet on the Western Front and liked both film versions, and this time the action is set during the German Revolution. And it was directed by James Whale, whose directorial debut was the British WWI film Journey's End, and he had directed Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, Old Dark House, Bride of Frankenstein etc. So, this is a rare film. Its also notorious as an early example of Hollywood being more than willing to wreck a movie for a chance to score big in a international market, when its studio Universal tried to create an alternative version for the foreign market. That was a problem, because of the market trends in the 1930s the largest foreign consumer of Hollywood movies was Germany. And the movie was released in 1937, which meant that this film had to appease the film board set up by Joseph Goebbels.

This is why the film is barely known outside of film history trivia. As far as I can tell The Road Back never received a home release, though curiously I did find a copyright renewal for the movie in 1965, and copies of the film do show up online on occasion though are also often pulled by takedown request. Also curious for a 1937 film print the copy I saw was in pretty good shape, considering, I've seen worse conditions of films that are readily available. 

Above is a copy I managed to find online right now, I'd recommend ripping it if you want to keep it, just to be save.

Here is the time when I would like to say The Road Back is a lost classic, but honestly aside from novelty I don't think its very good. I suppose its the most substantial treatment of the German Revolution by an English language movie. Granted most of what it has to say about the revolution are jokes about how strange it is that German's with their rigid conformity and worship of procedure are trying to overthrow the established order. The Road Back is a comedy, though its an uneven one, some scenes are supposed to be dramatic and say something of importance but then the next scene will have a couple actors bumble through a comedy routine and it doesn't handle the transitions between them very well. The ending courtroom scene with its appeal for sympathy for traumatised survivors of the war and the raw disgust shown to a character whose a rich boy and son of a war profiteer should fit perfectly into a film like this, but they stick out like sore thumbs. 

And the revolution subplot doesn't really go anywhere conclusive. Most of the scenes involving it are comic, but then you have a small number of scenes involving street clashes and police firing on and killing civilians. One occasion the scene shifts from a joke about the revolution to having civilians shot dead by police with machine guns seconds after jokes were cracked at how silly this is. And then it just stops completely. 

While its depiction was very strange I did like some of the jokes in the revolution scenes, especially the part when the townspeople march on the Mayor and make him host a mass meeting. Its revealed that they do this every single night and make him host a meeting while he complains that he's old and needs to sleep. But most of the other comedy fell flat to me. Especially that provided by Willy played by Andy Devine. He has a braying voice and he sulks through all of his lines. The dialogue is also pretty poor, a lot of what he has to say seems to be on paper to be combative and cocky, but it comes across as whiny. 

Its a bizarre and uneven movie, though this seems to be down to the panic by the studio over its potential loss of investment in Germany they re-edited the film and shot new material to limit the offense caused to the German authorities. It didn't work. Which isn't remotely surprising to me. This was a film based on a book that was banned in Germany by a writer who was denounced as an enemy for his antimilitarist writing. Furthermore it depicts the German revolution, a period that was dominated by the Nazi party's domestic political enemies, Social Democrats, Anarchists, Communists etc. And to cap it off many of the actors demonstrate shell shock and the film is one of the earliest explorations of soldiers Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

The finished film does undermine and weaken much of the theme's of the story, but they are still present, and of course its still attached to Remarque. It was simply doomed from the outset.

To give a flavour of how impossible appealing to the German cinema authorities was, here's a news clipping from the time.

“The movie, Typhon, based on the comedy by the Hungarian writer Lendengyel, has been banned in Germany. The censorship board justifies this decision by pointing out that in the movie the person whose behaviour is exemplary is Japanese. The white people all behave rather badly. The Japanese, with whom the heroine strikes up a friendship, is an impeccable gentleman. Moreover the movie shows French people and in fact does not deal with Germans. In short, this work is regarded as, by omission, an insult to the Aryan race, whose superiority is not even mentioned.”

From, Against the Racist Delirium by Camillo Berneri.  

 Bolding is mine.

As an added insult, the meddling over the film soured James Whale on directing, he had high expectations for the movie and fought the studio over its cuts and re-shoots. He didn't quit directing immediately after The Road Back but his career did wind down and end a few years later in 1941. 

Taking all this on board it isn't really a surprise the film has languished in the shadows. I get the embarrassment but the refusal to release the film at all and to swipe at bootleg copies nearly a hundred years later speak to some real hostility. I don't believe it'll ever escape the trivia or be held up as a classic, but I think it deserves to be shown and seen. 

Letter to Stalin: “can a homosexual be in the Communist Party?” - Harry Whyte

 

Harry Whyte (centre with glasses) at a political rally in 1933.

In 1933 the Soviet Union introduced provisional legislation into the penal codes of the entire Soviet Union criminalising sexual activity between men. Previously the legal standing of such activities had depended on the legal codes of the specific Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR). Some including Russia and Ukraine and removed legal prohibitions but others including the Central Asian SSRs did not. On the 7th of March 1934 the new law was finalised as Article 154 and became the law of Soviet Russia.

154-a. Sexual intercourse between a man and a man (sodomy) - imprisonment for a term of three to five years. Sodomy committed with the use of violence or with the use of the dependent position of the victim - imprisonment for a term of five to eight years.

This law would remain in force in the Soviet Union until its collapse in 1991 and became known by the article it took in the revised Soviet Penal Codes after the Second World War, Article 121.

Article 121

‘Pederasty

Sexual relations of a man with a man (pederasty),

Shall be punished by deprivation of freedom for a term of up to five years.

Pederasty committed with the application of physical force, or threats, or with respect to a minor, or with taking advantage of the dependent position of the victim,

Shall be punished by deprivation of freedom for a term of up to eight years.’

(Butler, WE, Translator & Editor, Basic Documents on the Soviet Legal System, Oceana Publications, 1983, Page 344)

Just a quick note on Article 121, most official English translations of the penal code and Soviet Constitution use pederasty as the English translation. This has been used by supporters of Stalin's rule to deny that homosexuality was repressed, and that the law was a measure to protect children. This is despite the language specifying two men being involved and an additional clause specifically differentiating sex with a minor. The Russian texts of both the older 154 and the newer 121 Articles use the term Мужеложство, which can be translated as pederast, but is also the Russian word for Sodomy, and has been used to refer to all sexual activity between men[1]. 

And as we will see with Harry Whyte's letter this law in the early days of its implementation was broadly understood to have been targeting all homosexual men within the Soviet Union. This letter is also of importance as it shows that Stalin was in fact aware of this legal persecution of homosexuals within the USSR. As Stalin saw fit to have the letter sent to his archive and made the following note on it.

“Archive. An idiot and a degenerate. J. Stalin.”

Harry Whyte was a socialist from Scotland who was also openly a homosexual. A career in journalism and a membership in the Communist Party of Great Britain facilitated his emigration to the Soviet Union where he worked for the Moscow Daily News. The growing hostility to homosexuality by the Soviet authorities alarmed Whyte and after a lover of his was arrested for homosexual activity he wrote this letter to Stalin criticising the law and asking for an answer. 

In 1935 he left the Soviet Union and was expelled from the Communist party. When the Civil War erupted in Spain he took part in the support for the Republic as a member of the Spanish Medical Aid Committee. During WWII he served in the Royal Navy. The British authorities treated him with as much suspicion as the Soviet's, MI5 kept him under surveillance and reported on his activities within the anti-Stalinist left, noting sympathy for Yugoslavia's Tito after his break with Stalin. He spent his last years in Turkey as a correspondent for Reuters and passed away in 1960.

The letter was translated by Yevgeniy Fiks Moscow, its an important look into the treatment of minorities in the Soviet Union and is a sort of time capsule of Gay rights and attitudes. Whyte is writing to protest the law and question the logic of its implementation, but he does make some curious statements himself.

Harry Whyte's Letter

Comrade Stalin,

The content of my appeal is briefly as follows. The author of this letter, a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, requests a theoretical grounding of the March 7 [1934] decree of the USSR Central Executive Committee on [the institution of] criminal liability for sodomy. Since he strives to approach this question from a Marxist viewpoint, the author of this letter believes that the decree contradicts both the facts of life itself and the principles of Marxism-Leninism.

Here is a summary of the facts that are discussed in detail in the attached letter:

1. On the whole, the condition of homosexuals under capitalism is analogous to the condition of women, the coloured races, ethnic minorities, and other groups that are repressed for one reason or another;
2. The attitude of bourgeois society to homosexuality is based on the contradiction between:
   • capitalism’s need for “cannon fodder” and a reserve army of labour (leading to repressive laws against homosexuality, which is regarded as a threat to birth rates);
   • the ever-growing poverty of the masses under capitalism (leading to the collapse of the working-class family and an increase in homosexuality).
3. This contradiction can be resolved only in a society where the liquidation of unemployment and the constant growth of the material well being of workers fosters conditions in which people who are normal in the sexual sense can enter into marriage.
4. Science confirms that an insignificant percentage of the population suffers from constitutional homosexuality.
5. The existence of this insignificant minority is not a threat to a society under the dictatorship of the proletariat.
6. The new law on homosexuality has provoked the most various and contradictory interpretations.
7. The March 7 law fundamentally contradicts the basic principle of the previous law on this question.
8. The March 7 law essentially calls for “levelling” in the realm of sexual life.
9. The March 7 law is absurd and unjust from the viewpoint of science, which has proven the existence of constitutional homosexuals and has no means at its disposal to change the sexual nature of homosexuals.

Dear Comrade Stalin:

Although I am a foreign communist who has not yet been promoted to the AUCP(b), [later to be renamed the CPSU, Communist Party of the Soviet Union] I nevertheless think that it will not seem unnatural to you, the leader of the world proletariat, that I address you with a request to shed light on a question that, as it seems to me, has huge significance for a large number of communists in the USSR as well as in other countries.

The question is as follows: can a homosexual be considered someone worthy of membership in the Communist Party?

The recently promulgated law on criminal liability for sodomy, which was affirmed by the USSR Central Executive Committee on March 7 of this year, apparently means that homosexuals cannot be recognized as worthy of the title of Soviet citizen. Consequently, they should be considered even less worthy to be members of the AUCP(b).

Since I have a personal stake in this question insofar as I am a homosexual myself, I addressed this question to a number of comrades from the OGPU[2] and the People’s Commissariat for Justice, to psychiatrists, and to Comrade Borodin, the editor-in-chief of the newspaper where I work. [Note: Mikhail Borodin, 1884-1951, was editor-in-chief of the Moscow Daily News. In 1949 he was arrested and later disappeared; he either died in a Siberian labour camp in 1951 or was shot in 1949, depending on different sources].

Borodin, giving a speech in Wuhan in 1926

All that I managed to extract from them was a number of contradictory opinions which show that amongst these comrades there is no clear theoretical understanding of what might have served as the basis for passage of the given law. The first psychiatrist from whom I sought help with this question twice assured me (after verifying this with the People’s Commissariat for Justice) that if they are honest citizens or good communists, his patients may order their personal lives as they see fit. Comrade Borodin, who said that he personally took a negative view of homosexuality, at the same time declared that he regarded me as a fairly good communist, that I could be trusted, and that I could lead my personal life as I liked. Somewhat earlier, when the arrests of homosexuals had only just begun, Comrade Borodin was quite disinclined to view me as a potential criminal; he did not regard me as a bad communist, and this was confirmed by the fact that he promoted me at work by appointing me head of editorial staff, which is the highest-ranking supervisory position with the exception of members of the editorial board. Somewhat later, when the December 17 version of the law already existed, but before the March 7 decree, I contacted the OGPU in connection with the arrest of a certain person with whom I had had homosexual relations. I was told there that there was nothing that incriminated me.

All these statements produced the impression that the Soviet organs of justice were not prosecuting homosexuality as such, only certain socially dangerous homosexuals. If this is really the case, then is there a need for the general law?

On the other hand, however, after the law was issued on March 7, I had a conversation in the OGPU in which I was told that the law would be strictly applied to each case of homosexuality that was brought to light.

In connection with the lack of clarity that exists in this matter, I turn to you in the hope that you will find the time to give me an answer.

Allow me to explain to you this question as I understand it.

First and foremost, I would like to point out that I view the condition of homosexuals who are either of working-class origin or workers themselves to be analogous to the condition of women under the capitalist regime and the coloured races who are oppressed by imperialism. This condition is likewise similar in many ways to the condition of the Jews under Hitler’s dictatorship[3], and in general it is not hard to see in it an analogy with the condition of any social stratum subjected to exploitation and persecution under capitalist domination.

When we analyse the nature of the persecution of homosexuals, we should keep in mind that there are two types of homosexuals: first, those who are the way they are from birth (moreover, if scientists disagree about the precise reasons for this, then there is no disagreement that certain deep-seated reasons do exist); second, there are homosexuals who had a normal sexual life but later became homosexuals, sometimes out of viciousness, sometimes out of economic considerations.

As for the second type, the question is decided relatively simply. People who become homosexuals by virtue of their depravity usually belong to the bourgeoisie, a number of whose members take to this way of life after they have sated themselves with all the forms of pleasure and perversity that are available in sexual relations with women. Amongst those who take to this way of life out of economic considerations, we find members of the petit bourgeoisie, the lumpenproletariat, and (as strange as it might seem) the proletariat. As a result of material necessity, which is particularly aggravated during periods of crisis, these people are forced temporarily to turn to this method of satisfying their sexual urges insofar as the absence of means deprives them of the possibility of marrying or at least contracting the services of prostitutes. There are also those who become homosexuals not in order to satisfy their urges, but in order to earn their keep by means of prostitution (this phenomenon has become especially widespread in modern Germany).

But science has established the existence of constitutional homosexuals. Research has shown that homosexuals of this type exist in approximately equal proportions within all classes of society. We can likewise consider as established fact that, with slight deviations, homosexuals as a whole constitute around two percent of the population. If we accept this proportion, then it follows that there are around two million homosexuals in the USSR. Not to mention the fact that amongst these people there are no doubt those who are aiding in the construction of socialism, can it really be possible, as the March 7 law demands, that such a large number of people be subjected to imprisonment? 

Just as the women of the bourgeois class suffer to a significantly lesser degree from the injustices of the capitalist regime (you of course remember what Lenin said about this), so do natural-born homosexuals of the dominant class suffer much less from persecution than homosexuals from the working-class milieu. It must be said that even within the USSR there are conditions that complicate the daily lives of homosexuals and often place them in a difficult situation. (I have in mind the difficulty of finding a partner for the sexual act, insofar as homosexuals constitute a minority of the population, a minority that is forced to conceal its true proclivities to one degree or another.)

What is the attitude of bourgeois society to homosexuals? Even if we take into account the differences existing on this score in the legislation of various countries, can we speak of a specifically bourgeois attitude to this question? Yes, we can. Independently of these laws, capitalism is against homosexuality by virtue of its entire class-based tendency. This tendency can be observed throughout the course of history, but it is manifested with especial force now, during the period of capitalism’s general crisis.

Capitalism, which needs an enormous reserve army of labour and cannon fodder in order to flourish, regards homosexuality as a factor that threatens to lower birth rates (as we know, in the capitalist countries there are laws that punish abortion and other methods of contraception).

Of course, the attitude of the bourgeoisie to the homosexual question is typical hypocrisy. Strict laws are the cause of few nuisances for the bourgeois homosexual. Anyone who is at all familiar with the internal history of the capitalist class knows of the periodic scandals that arise in this regard; moreover, members of the dominant class who are mixed up in these affairs suffer to an insignificant degree. I can cite a little-known fact in this connection. Several years ago, one of the sons of Lord and Lady Astor was convicted of homosexuality. The English and American press omitted to report this fact, with the exception of the Morning Advertiser. This newspaper is owned by beer manufacturers, and it was in its interests to compromise Lord and Lady Astor, who had been agitating for the introduction of prohibition. Thus the fact of [Astor’s conviction] became known thanks to contradictions within the dominant class.

Thanks to its wealth, the bourgeoisie can avoid the legal punishment that descends in all its severity on homosexual workers with the exception of those cases when the latter have prostituted themselves to members of the dominant class.

I have already mentioned that capitalism, which has need of cannon fodder and a reserve army of labor, attempts to combat homosexuality. But at the same time, by worsening the living conditions of workers, capitalism produces the objective conditions for an increase in the number of homosexuals who take to this way of life by virtue of material necessity.

This contradiction is reflected in the fact that fascism, which employed the pederast [Marinus] van der Lubbe as a weapon in its provocation[4], at the same time brutally suppressed the liberal-intelligentsia “liberation” movement of homosexuals led by Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld. (See the Brown Book, which cites the Hirschfeld case as an instance of the anti-cultural barbarism of the fascists.) [Note: van der Lubbe (1909-1934) was the young Dutch council communist accused of setting fire to the German Reichstag on February 27, 1933, sentenced to death and guillotined in Leipzig on January 1934. Magnus Hirschfeld (1868-1935) was a German doctor, sex researcher, and advocator of homosexual emancipation. The Brown Book of the Hitler Terror and the Burning of the Reichstag was a book published by the World Committee for the Relief of Victims of German Fascism in 1933.]

Another reflection of this contradiction is the figure of André Gide, French homosexual writer, leader of the antifascist movement, and ardent friend of the USSR. The general public in France knows about Gide’s homosexuality, for he has written about it openly in his books. And despite this, his authority amongst the masses as a fellow traveller of the communist party in France has not been shaken. The fact that Gide has joined the revolutionary movement has not hindered its growth or the support of the masses for the leadership of the communist party. In my view, this shows that the masses are not intolerant of homosexuals.

Praising the “purity of the race” and family values, fascism has taken an even sterner stance against homosexuality than the pre-Hitler government. However, because fascism destroys the working-class family and furthers the impoverishment of the masses, it essentially stimulates the development of the second type of homosexuality I have described — that is, [homosexuality] out of necessity.

The only solution to this contradiction is the revolutionary transformation of the existing order and the creation of a society in which the absence of unemployment, the growing prosperity of the masses, and the liquidation of the family as an economic unit secure the conditions in which no one will be forced into pederasty out of necessity. As for so-called constitutional homosexuals, as insignificant percentage of the population they are incapable of threatening the birth rate in the socialist state.

“Overall results in the growth of material prosperity have led to the fact that, whereas mortality rates have grown along with poverty in the capitalist countries, mortality has decreased and birth rates have increased in the USSR. Compared to the pre-war years, the population in the USSR has grown by a third, while in capitalist Europe it has fallen by ten percent. Today our country with its population of 165 million shows the same population increase as capitalist Europe with its population of 360 million. As you can see, in this matter as well the pace here [in the Soviet Union] is furious (laughter).” (Comrade Kaganovich’s report on the work of the AUCP(b) Central Committee at the conference of the Moscow organization — the italics are Comrade Kaganovich’s.)

Despite the unusually severe laws on marriage that exist in the capitalist countries, perversion in the realm of normal sexual life is significantly more widespread in the capitalist countries than in the USSR, where the laws on marriage are the freest and more rational than in rest of the world. True, we know that in the first years of the Revolution certain people tried to abuse the freedom provided by the Soviet laws on marriage. However, these abuses were stopped not by repressive measures, but by broad-based political education and cultural work, and by the evolution of the economy towards socialism. I imagine that with respect to homosexuality (of the second type) a similar policy would prove the most fruitful.

I have always believed that it was wrong to advance the separate slogan of the emancipation of working-class homosexuals from the conditions of capitalist exploitation. I believe that this emancipation is inseparable from the general struggle for the emancipation of all humanity from the oppression of private-ownership exploitation.

I had no intention of turning this into a problem, of posing this question theoretically and seeking a definite opinion on this question from the Party. However, at present, reality itself has forced this question on me, and I consider it essential to achieve general clarity on this issue.

Comrade Borodin has indicated to me that the fact that I am homosexual in no way diminishes my value as a revolutionary. He has shown great confidence in me by appointing me the head of editorial staff. Then he did not treat me as someone who might become or was a convicted criminal. He likewise indicated that my personal life was not something that could even in the slightest degree harm my status as a Party member and editorial worker.

When I posed to him the question of the arrests, he once again (and the OGPU through him) assured me that in the given instance the reasons [for the arrests] were political in nature, and not in any way social or moral, although the December 17 variant of the law existed already then. After I made the corresponding request to the OGPU, I was told: “There is nothing incriminating against you.” When I learned of the December 17 variant of the law, I received replies of a similar sort from a number of people. True, Comrade Degot from the People’s Commissariat of Justice said that the reason for the law was that homosexuality was a form of bourgeois degeneracy.

The specialist psychiatrist with whom I spoke about this matter refused to believe in the existence of such a law until I showed him a copy of it.

Despite the existence of a number of incorrect interpretations on the part of certain comrades, it is completely obvious that in the period preceding the promulgation of the law, public opinion on this question was nevertheless not in the least hostile to homosexuals. And this did not surprise me at all.

I accepted the arrests of homosexuals as a wholly natural phenomenon insofar as the occasion [for the arrests] were reasons of a political nature[5]. As I have already mentioned, this was all wholly in line with my own analysis of the question (as stated above), and in exactly the same way it did not contradict the officially expressed viewpoint of the Soviet public. Comrade Borodin pointed out to me that I should not attach too much significance to the article on homosexuality in the Great Soviet Encyclopaedia because (he said) its author was a homosexual himself and the article was published during a period when a number of deviations had still not yet been exposed. I do not think we should mistrust a history of the Communist Party if a communist wrote it. If a homosexual in fact wrote this article, then all that was required of him was an objective and scientific approach to homosexuality. Second, I know enough about the efficacy of Soviet political control of the press that I cannot admit the possibility that an article with serious deviations could be printed in such a publication as the Great Soviet Encyclopaedia. If this is possible when it comes to individual articles in some insignificant journal or newspaper, then it is not possible in the Great Soviet Encyclopaedia. In any case, I thought it possible to have full confidence in a publication whose editors include such people as Molotov, Kuibyshev, and Pokrovsky (or even Bukharin, although he deserves less confidence).

However, from the point of view that I am defending, the article in the Great Soviet Encyclopaedia was of no great significance. The attitude of the Soviet public to this question was expressed with sufficient clarity in the law that existed right up until the adoption of the March 7 law. If the law had said nothing about this question, then doubts might have existed earlier. But the law in fact did formulate an opinion on this question: it defended the interests of society by forbidding the seduction and perversion of minors. But this led one to conclude that homosexual relations between adults were not forbidden.

The law, of course, is dialectical: it changes as circumstances change. It is obvious, however, that when the first law was ratified, the entire question of homosexuality was taken into account as a whole (this, at any rate, is what one might think on the basis of the conclusion that followed from the law). This law established that the Soviet government altogether rejected the principle of persecuting homosexuality. This principle is fundamental in character, and we know that basic principles are not altered in order to bring them into line with new circumstances. Altering basic principles for such ends means being an opportunist, not a dialectician.

I am capable of grasping that changed circumstances also require certain partial changes in the legislation, the application of new measures for the defence of society, but I cannot understand how changed circumstances can force us to change one of [our] basic principles.

I visited two psychiatrists in the search for an answer to the question of whether it was possible to “cure” homosexuality — perhaps you will find this surprising. I admit that this was opportunism on my part (this time, perhaps, it can be forgiven), but I was incited to do this by the desire to find some kind of solution to this cursed dilemma. Least of all did I want to contradict the decision of the Soviet government. I was prepared to do anything if only to avoid the necessity of finding myself in contradiction with Soviet law. I took this step despite the fact that I did not know whether contemporary researchers had succeeded in establishing the true nature of homosexuality and the possibility of converting homosexuals into heterosexuals — that is, into people who engage in the sexual act only with members of the opposite sex. If such a possibility were in fact established, then everything would be much simpler of course.

But, frankly speaking, even if this possibility were established, I would be uncertain all the same how desirable it was in fact to convert homosexuals into heterosexuals. Of course, there might be certain political reasons that would make this desirable. But I imagine that the necessity for such a leveling procedure should be supported by unusually strong reasons.

It is no doubt desirable that the majority of people be normal in the sexual sense. I fear, however, that this will be never be the case. And I think that my fears are confirmed by the facts of history. I think that one can say with certainty that the majority of people desire and will continue to desire a normal sexual life. However, I greatly doubt in the possibility of all people becoming utterly identical in terms of their sexual proclivities.

I remind you that homosexuals constitute a mere two percent of the population. You should also remember that amongst those two percent there were such exceptionally talented people as Socrates, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Shakespeare, and Tchaikovsky. These are the ones about whom we know that they were homosexuals. But how many other such talented people have there been amongst homosexuals who hid their true proclivities? I have no intention of defending the absurd theory that homosexuals belong to a breed of superhumans, that homosexuality and genius are synonyms, that homosexuals will, allegedly, someday take their revenge on society for their sufferings by uniting to conquer heterosexuals. “Theories” of this ilk were already condemned with considerable contempt (as they deserved to be) by Engels in his letter to Marx from June 22, 1869. In this letter, Engels writes about the “theory” advanced by a clique of German bourgeois homosexuals who had formed their own special organization. Engels characterizes this whole affair with the epithet “swinishness” (schweinerei).

That it was precisely the political “theory” of the organization, not the specific sexual orientation of its members, that aroused the ire of Engels, can be seen in his letter to [Friedrich] Sorge from February 8, 1890. Engels writes:

Here there is another storm in a teacup under way. You’ll read in the Labour Elector about the brouhaha provoked by Peake [?], assistant editor of the Star, who in one of the local papers openly accused Lord Gaston of sodomy in connection with the scandalous homosexuality of the local aristocracy. The article was disgraceful, but was only of a personal nature; the matter was hardly political. [The translation is imprecise and made from the English text published in an English communist journal.]

“The matter was hardly political.” The fact that Engels regards the case of a member of the enemy class who was accused of sodomy and caused a scandal in the aristocratic world as “hardly political,” as “storm in a teacup,” is of great and fundamental significance to us. If homosexuality is viewed as a characteristic trait of bourgeois degeneracy, then it is correct to attack its individual manifestations, especially during a period when homosexual scandals were widespread in the aristocratic milieu. However, it follows from the quotation that Engels did not view homosexuality as a specifically bourgeois form of degeneracy. He attacked it only when (as, for example, in cases involving Germany) it adopted the political form of an association of certain bourgeois elements. When, on the other hand, the matter had no political overtones (as in the case cited above), Engels did not find it necessary to attack it[6].

I assume that certain kinds of talent (in particular, talent in the realm of the arts) are startlingly often combined with homosexuality. This should be kept in mind, and it seems to me that one should carefully weigh the dangers of sexual levelling precisely for this branch of Soviet culture, for at present we do not as yet possess a sufficiently scientific explanation of homosexuality.

I will permit myself to cite one passage from Comrade Stalin’s report to the Seventeenth Party Congress:

[A]ny Leninist knows, if he is a genuine Leninist, that levelling in the realm of needs and personal daily life is a reactionary absurdity worthy of some primitive sect of ascetics, not of a socialist state organized in the Marxist manner, for one cannot require that all people should have identical needs and tastes, that all people live their daily lives according to a single model. […]

To conclude from this that socialism requires the egalitarianism, equalization, and levelling of the needs of society’s members, the levelling of their tastes and personal lives, that according to Marxism everyone should wear identical clothes and eat the same quantity of one and the same dishes, is tantamount to uttering banalities and slandering Marxism.” (Stalin, Report to the 17th Party Congress on the Work of the Central Committee of the AUCP(b). Lenpartizdat, 1934, pp. 54-55. The italics are mine — H.W.)

It seems to me that this excerpt from Comrade Stalin’s report has a direct bearing on the question that I am analysing.

What is important, however, is that even if one pursues this levelling in the present, it is impossible to achieve it either with medical or legislative methods.

When both psychiatrists whom I visited were forced by my insistent questions to confess that cases of incurable homosexuality exist, I finally established my own attitude to the question.

One should recognize that there is such a thing as ineradicable homosexuality— I have yet to encounter facts that would refute this— and hence as a consequence, it seems to me, one should recognize as inevitable the existence of this minority in society, be it a capitalist or even a socialist society. In this case, one cannot find any justification for declaring these people criminally liable for their distinguishing traits, traits for whose creation they bear no measure of responsibility and which they are incapable of changing even if they wanted to.

Thus, attempting to reason in accordance with the principles of Marxism-Leninism as I understand them, I have arrived in the end at the contradiction between the law and those conclusions that have followed from my line of reasoning. And it is just this contradiction that compels me to desire an authoritative statement on this question.

Communist greetings,

Harry Whyte

A group of Russian sailors and crossdressers

Footnotes:

1: https://www.wordsense.eu/%D0%BC%D1%83%D0%B6%D0%B5%D0%BB%D0%BE%D0%B6%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B2%D0%BE/

2: Soviet Secret police, this version of their name stood for Joint State Political Directorate. Apart from those claimed in the purges these men would become the more infamous NKVD and later KGB.

3: Homosexuals in Germany were designated as a category for imprisonment in the Concentration Camp system alongside Jews.

4: Marinus van der Lubbe as far as I'm aware was heterosexual, the only romantic relationship he had that I know of was with a sex worker in Budapest who he wish to live with provided she gave up her profession. She turned him down. However, the Soviet did try to distance itself from van der Lubbe by smearing his character as both a Fascist stooge and a deviant. This was the crux of much of the contents of The Brown Book of the Hitler Terror and the Burning of the Reichstag which Whyte cites. But was also presented in film with Gustav von Wagenheim's The Fighters (Der Kampf), which claims to show the real events of the Reichstag fire and presents the entire Nazi leadership as active homosexuals. 

A Soviet film made in 1936 stressed the same point. Gustav von Wangenheim’s The Fighters purported to tell the true story of the 1933 burning of the Reichstag. It depicted the Nazis as homosexuals- the official Communist Party line about the German Fascists. Soviet officials quietly shelved the film in 1939 after Hitler and Stalin signed the nonaggression pact. The film has never been publicly seen in the West.

The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War Against Homosexuals, pg, 09. 

5: Whyte doesn't seem to have grasped that since the anti homosexual laws are being justified by reference to homosexuality being a form of "bourgeois degeneracy" homosexuality is by definition a political crime. The Soviet Union would stick to this view and in a short time after Whyte wrote this letter would add the crime of Fascism to it.

6: This is in essence an appeal to authority, and its a dangerous appeal, the two cases cited seem to support Whyte though the notation about the translation being unreliable is a bit of an issue. Its not the only time however that Engels and Marx saw fit to way in on the issue. In 1869 an early proponent of same sex right Karl-Heinrich Lins sent a copy of his ideas to Marx who shared it with Engels. “The pederasts are beginning to count themselves, and discover that they are a power in the state. Only organisation was lacking, but according to this source it apparently already exists.”  “It is a bit of luck that we, personally, are too old to have to fear that, when this party wins, we shall have to pay physical tribute to the victors.” are snippets of his reply, the whole thing is extremely ugly and vulgar, the main defence of that letter in my experience has been "it was a joke" as if that neutralises the ugly attitudes expressed and that "Engels didn't know the author was Karl Heinrich Lins" which is impossible as the author attached his name to it and contacted Marx for comment. In addition there is the case of fellow social democrat Jean Baptista von Schweitzer who coined the term Democratic Centralism in 1868, was arrested on charges of solicitation a boy under the age of fourteen in a park in 1862. And since then his opponents would cite that incident whenever his political career gained momentum. However it should be kept in mind that the charge and allegations of seduction of a minor were assumptions as the boy was never detained and question so his age couldn't be verified. The evidence against him was the word of two women who claim they overheard Schweitzer talking in a sexual manner to a young man in the park. Schweitzer maintained that the charges were baseless. Because of the weakness of the case the court didn't charge Schweitzer with a sexual crime but a vague moral offense and sentenced him to two weeks. Although Marx and Engels still associated with and corresponded and clashed with Schweitzer for several years in the 1860s within the German social democratic circles they also spent years bitterly ridicule him for many perceived personal failings including his sexuality. And in 1871 while Marx was clashing with Bakunin in the International Workingmen's Association, Bakunin's inferred attraction to the revolutionary Nechayev was used by Marx and Engels as excuses to push for his expulsion. Meanwhile the supporters of early Gay rights in the social democratic current were August Bebel and Ferdinand Lasalle, which given that Marx viewed Lasalle and his followers which included Schweitzer as major opponents makes this topic shaky ground for a fight over Marxist orthodoxy. Overall its a mixed bag and there was plenty of counter ammunition for Stalin to tap if he felt he could've bothered to respond to Whyte. 

Through the Darkest of Times

 

I've had some time on my hands and an old laptop which makes very alarming noises when it runs Fallout New Vegas, so I've been passing the time playing games that are less demanding technically. I tried Through the Darkest of Times: a Historical Resistance Strategy Game, and essentially stayed in my seat until the credits were rolling. 

Darkest of Times, is quite gripping once its stuck its claws into you. WWII is a saturated market in fiction, but a game about the activities of a civilian resistance cell in the heart of Nazi Germany is ground less trampled. The setting is Berlin with rare travels beyond, and the timeline is January 1933 to August 1945, the birth and death of Nazi Germany. There are two modes though they're the same at their core, Resistance is the games harder difficulty, there is more pressure from the police and members of the group will leave if morale collapses. Story mode, is the easier difficulty, it removes the members leaving the group if morale is too poor but you can still lose members and the game if your characters morale gets too low. Its a turn based strategy game, you pick your character who is the leader of a small resistance group, the maximum membership is five. Each turn lasts a week and the opportunities and risks for your group change constantly. Your character and the members can be very diverse, politically and economically, and these traits can alter gameplay and some of the random events of the story. 

For an example, my group was mostly a coalition of Anarchist manual workers, social democrat servants, and a Communist metal worker. This meant we found appealing for support from workers and unionists pretty easy but struggled when developing contacts in the Christian and conservative circles. Also the communist fled early in the game to escape the crackdowns on communists. In one of my playthroughs a member was a lesbian and we briefly explored the growing atmosphere of violent oppression against Weimar's homosexual subculture. The timeline of Germany is fixed, it follows the actual events very closely and each turn presents you with three headlines about events that happened in that week in history. 

Occasionally your character will take part in story events, and every turn your group will have a brief discussion about life in Berlin and sometimes these will have choices and consequences for your group and its members. The goal of the game is simple, survive and cause as much trouble for the Nazi regime as possible. You have many opportunities to do this, anti-Nazi meetings, book smuggling, leafleting, hiding persecuted citizens, exchanging information with journalists and intelligence services, prison breaks, sabotage, raiding SA and army supplies etc. The difficulties lie in both the repressive arms of the Nazi state, the SA, police, Gestapo etc, and even more in maintaining a balance of resources, morale and activity. 

The two main resources needed are money and supporters, money is used to buy goods and services from contacts, while support opens up new opportunities for action in Berlin's neighbourhoods. Morale, is the morale of your character and the group, the clever thing about this mechanic is that since you are a small group operating in the shadows of a strong and powerful totalitarian regime, morale is constantly draining. Your groups commentary and story segments make it clear that you are a tiny island in a growing sea of nationalist frenzy. To stem the tied of morale collapse you must engage in constant and effective action. Painting the walls of a workers district with anti-Nazi slogans won't bring down the Third Reich, but it'll cause a stir and make your partisans feel better.

Of course, defiance of Hitler is extremely dangerous, so the more your partisans act, the more surveillance and injuries they're likely to suffer, so you have to manage your team wisely, not just by assigning the best suited to the task but also have some members cool their heels for awhile or go into hiding overwise they become more of a hinderance than a help. 

A key feeling while playing Darkest of Times was frustration. That isn't a bug its a feature. Even in Story mode it is very difficult to carry out effective actions. Actions that could cause severe damage like sabotaging the Olympic propaganda campaign will require a lot of special equipment that can only be sourced from many difficult tasks, and the deadlines between chapters is tight. Often you can get trapped in this cycle of limited actions while staying out of the clutches of the Gestapo. The game is loosely based on the existence of German civilian resistance groups in Nazi Germany. They are overlooked in the great narratives of WWII because they found it very, very difficult to perform even token acts of resistance and often paid for these with their lives.

As far as I'm aware no matter what choices you make and how lucky the random events are to you, there is no ending where you successfully derail the Nazi party regime and its plans for conquest. You can sting them a little and intervene for the better in some small ways, and you pay dearly for these achievements. Its a frustrating game, and a sad game, but quite moving, I found myself bitterly disappointed when I couldn't talk the neighbours children out of joining the Hitler Youth, and felt elated when I managed to provide a refuge for a Jewish family, or assisted a strike of indentured labourers. Pick your battles and hope for the best.