Freda Bedi Cont'd (#2)

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Re: Freda Bedi Cont'd (#2)

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John Malcolm Forbes Ludlow
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 4/14/20

Image
John Malcolm Forbes Ludlow, CB
Born: 8 March 1821, Nimach, British India
Died: 17 October 1911 (aged 90), London, England
Occupation: Barrister journalist
Movement: Christian socialism

John Malcolm Forbes Ludlow CB (8 March 1821 – 17 October 1911) was an Anglo-Indian barrister. He led the Christian socialist movement and founded its newspaper of the same name.

Biography

He was born in Nimach,[1] British India, where his father worked for the East India Company.[2] He was educated at Merchant Taylors' School,[3] and called to the bar in 1843.[1] Ludlow was influenced by French socialism as he was educated in Paris.

In 1850, he founded and became editor of The Christian Socialist newspaper.[1]

LUDLOW, JOHN MALCOLM FORBES (1821-1911), English philanthropist, was born at Nimach, India, March 8 1821, and was called to the bar in 1843. Becoming associated with [Charles] Kingsley, [Thomas] Hughes and F. D. [Frederick Denison] Maurice, he helped to found the Working-Men's College in Great Ormond Street in 1854, having previously (1850) founded and become editor of The Christian Socialist newspaper. He was secretary to the royal commission on Friendly Societies (1870-4). From 1875 to 1890 he was chief registrar of Friendly Societies. He was one of the first members and subsequently president of the Labour Co-Partnership Association. He died in London Oct. 17 1911.

John Malcolm Forbes Ludlow, by 1922 Encyclopedia Britannica


He was also a co-founder of the Working Men's College. Most of his work focused on mission work to the poor in London. He promoted mutual cooperation via friendly societies. He was secretary to the royal commission on friendly societies from 1870 to 1874,[1] and served as England's chief registrar of friendly societies from 1875 to 1891.[4] He was one of the first members and subsequently president of the Labour Co-Partnership Association.[1] In 1867 Ludlow co-wrote The Progress of the Working Class, 1832–1867 with Lloyd Jones. He died in London in 1911.[1]

Deaconesses
Ludlow also advocated a higher place for deaconesses in the church, in his publication Woman's Work in the Church: Historical Notes on Deaconesses and Sisterhoods (1865).[5]

He was appointed a CB in the 1887 Golden Jubilee Honours.

References

1. Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1922). "Ludlow, John Malcolm Forbes" . Encyclopædia Britannica (12th ed.). London & New York.
2. Hans Schwarz, Theology in a Global Context: The Last Two Hundred Years, p. 149.
3. Minchin, J. C. G., Our public schools, their influence on English history; Charter house, Eton, Harrow, Merchant Taylors', Rugby, St. Paul's Westminster, Winchester (London, 1901), p. 195.
4. Description of the papers of John Ludlow[permanent dead link]
5. E. R. Norman/H. C. G. Matthew: "Ludlow, John Malcolm Forbes (1821–1911)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, UK) Retrieved 8 March 2018
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Re: Freda Bedi Cont'd (#2)

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Thomas Hughes
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 4/14/20

We now arrive at the birthday of the Fabian Society, and the minutes of that meeting must be copied in full:—

"Meeting held at 17 Osnaburgh Street, on Friday, 4th January, 1884.

"Present: Mrs. Robins, Miss Robins, Miss Haddon, Miss C. Haddon, Messrs. J. Hunter Watts, [Thomas] Hughes, Bland, Keddell, Pease, Stapleton, Chubb, Burns-Gibson, Swan, Podmore, Estcourt, etc....


The spring of 1886 was occupied with arrangements for the Conference, which was held at South Place Chapel on June 9th, 10th, and 11th.

Here again a quotation from Bernard Shaw's "Early History of the Fabian Society" is the best description available:—

"THE FABIAN CONFERENCE OF 1886.

"You will now ask to be told what the Fabians had been doing all this time. Well, I think it must be admitted that we were overlooked in the excitements of the unemployed agitation, which had, moreover, caused the Tory money affair to be forgotten. The Fabians were disgracefully backward in open-air speaking. Up to quite a recent date, Graham Wallas, myself, and Mrs. Besant were the only representative open-air speakers in the Society, whereas the Federation speakers, Burns, Hyndman, Andrew Hall, Tom Mann, Champion, Burrows, with the Socialist Leaguers, were at it constantly. On the whole, the Church Parades and the rest were not in our line; and we were not wanted by the men who were organizing them. Our only contribution to the agitation was a report which we printed in 1886, which recommended experiments in tobacco culture, and even hinted at compulsory military service, as means of absorbing some of the unskilled unemployed, but which went carefully into the practical conditions of relief works. Indeed, we are at present trying to produce a new tract on the subject without finding ourselves able to improve very materially on the old one in this respect. It was drawn up by Bland, [Thomas] Hughes, Podmore, Stapleton, and Webb, and was the first of our publications that contained any solid information. Its tone, however, was moderate and its style somewhat conventional; and the Society was still in so hot a temper on the social question that we refused to adopt it as a regular Fabian tract, and only issued it as a report printed for the information of members.


-- The History of the Fabian Society, by Edward R. Pease


Image
Thomas Hughes, QC
Thomas Hughes in The Law Gazette, c. 1893
Born: 20 October 1822, Uffington, Berkshire (now Oxfordshire), England
Died: 22 March 1896 (aged 73), Brighton, East Sussex, England
Pen name: Vacuus Viator[1]
Occupation: Lawyer, writer, reformer
Nationality: English
Period: Nineteenth century
Genre: Children's literature

Thomas Hughes QC (20 October 1822 – 22 March 1896) was an English lawyer, judge, politician and author. He is most famous for his novel Tom Brown's School Days (1857), a semi-autobiographical work set at Rugby School, which Hughes had attended. It had a lesser-known sequel, Tom Brown at Oxford (1861).

Hughes had numerous other interests, in particular as a Member of Parliament, in the British co-operative movement, and in a settlement in Tennessee, USA, reflecting his values.

Early life

Hughes was the second son of John Hughes, editor of the Boscobel Tracts (1830) and was born in Uffington, Berkshire (now Oxfordshire). He had six brothers, and one sister, Jane Senior who later became Britain's first female civil servant. At the age of eight he was sent to Twyford School, a preparatory public school near Winchester, where he remained until the age of eleven. In February 1834 he went to Rugby School, which was then under the celebrated Thomas Arnold, a contemporary of his father at Oriel College, Oxford.

Hughes excelled at sports rather than in scholarship, and his school career culminated in a cricket match at Lord's Cricket Ground.[2] In 1842 he went on to Oriel College, and graduated B.A. in 1845. At Oxford, he played cricket for the university team in the annual University Match against Cambridge University, also at Lord's, and a match that is still now regarded as first-class cricket.[3]

Legal career

Hughes was called to the bar in 1848, became Queen's Counsel in 1869 and a bencher in 1870. He was appointed to a county court judgeship in the Chester district in July 1882.[4]

Social interests

A committed social reformer, Hughes became involved in the Christian socialism movement led by Frederick Maurice, which he joined in 1848. In January 1854 he was one of the founders of the Working Men's College in Great Ormond Street, and was the College's principal from 1872 to 1883.[5]

Hughes gave evidence in 1850 to a House of Commons committee on savings.[4] In so doing he participated in a Christian Socialist initiative, which led shortly to the Industrial and Provident Societies Partnership Act 1852, and the emergence of the industrial and provident society.[6] The Act was the work of Robert Aglionby Slaney, with whom Hughes worked in alliance.[7][8]

The Industrial and Provident Societies Partnership Act 1852, also known (somewhat unjustifiably) as Slaney's Act, was a significant legislative landmark in the establishment of the Co-Operative movement in the United Kingdom.

Prior to 1852, co-operative societies had protected their members capital by registering under the Friendly Societies Act 1846.

A friendly society (sometimes called a mutual society, benevolent society, fraternal organization or ROSCA) is a mutual association for the purposes of insurance, pensions, savings or cooperative banking. It is a mutual organization or benefit society composed of a body of people who join together for a common financial or social purpose. Before modern insurance and the welfare state, friendly societies provided financial and social services to individuals, often according to their religious, political, or trade affiliations. These societies are still widespread in many parts of the developing world, where they are referred to as ROSCAs (rotating savings and credit associations), ASCAs (accumulating savings and credit associations), burial societies, chit funds, etc.

-- Friendly society, by Wikipedia


However the act specified protection only for purchases, not for sales; so the co-operative societies were forced to use a legal fiction of dubious merit to cover themselves when selling, and it was this that brought home the need for a new statute to regularise their position.

John Ludlow played an important role in promoting the Act of 1852. He had initially proposed a comparable Bill for Whig passage in 1851; but was blocked by Henry Labouchere at the Board of Trade. The following year Disraeli persuaded his colleagues that promoting such social reform would be politically advantageous for the Tories, as well as offering a route for working-class energies to be incorporated into society; and the Bill passed into law.

The Act not only provided a legal framework for the co-operative movement, but also specified much of its future direction - for example laying down the principle that up to 1/3rd of profits could be shared among members, the rest being used to build up the business.

-- Industrial and Provident Societies Partnership Act 1852, by Wikipedia


Hughes was involved also in the formation of some early trade unions, and helped finance the printing of Liberal publications; and acted as the first President of the Co-operative Congress in 1869, serving on the Co-operative Central Board.[9] He invested with William Romaine Callender in co-operative mills, in 1866.[10]

In politics

Image
Caricature by Adriano Cecioni published in Vanity Fair in 1872.

Hughes was elected to Parliament as a Liberal for Lambeth (1865–68), and for Frome (1868–74). He stood as candidate in 1874 for Marylebone in 1874, but dropped out just before the election, despite support from Octavia Hill.[4][11] The context for the end of his political career was the unpopularity with Hughes's Frome constituents of his support for the Elementary Education Act 1870.[12]

As an MP Hughes worked on trade union legislation, but was not in a position to have major changes passed.[4] He had greater success in improving the legal position of co-operatives, which in particular became able to operate as a limited company.[8] The issue of legal obstacles to the operation of labour unions was topical, and in 1867 Hughes was made a member of a Royal Commission set up to consider the matter. Initially he was the only one on the committee sympathetic to the union point of view; after some lobbying he was joined by Frederic Harrison, and a concession was made to union representatives, allowing them observer places in the proceedings.[13] Hughes then worked with Harrison and Robert Applegarth to diminish the effect of some of the testimony from employers.[14]

The outcome of this Commission was that Harrison, Hughes and Lord Lichfield produced a minority report (1869), recommending that all the legal restrictions should be dropped.[13] Then the matter was raised again in a second Commission, at the end of Hughes's time in Parliament. At that point Alexander Macdonald used a minority report to refer back to Hughes's earlier view; but Hughes signed the majority report. It advocated amendment of the Master and Servant Act 1867, but little substantive change to the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1871 and the law of conspiracy.[15]

Later life

In 1878–9 Hughes began writing The Manual for Co-operators (1881), with Vansittart Neale, for the Co-operative Congress. As a side-product he developed an interest in the model village.[16]

A model village is a type of mostly self-contained community, built from the late 18th century onwards by landowners and business magnates to house their workers. Although the villages are located close to the workplace, they are generally physically separated from them and often consist of relatively high quality housing, with integrated community amenities and attractive physical environments. "Model" is used in the sense of an ideal to which other developments could aspire.

-- Model village, by Wikipedia


In 1880, he acquired the ownership of Franklin W. Smith's Plateau City ...

The Long Depression of 1873–79 resulted in the unemployment of thousands of former industrial workers. Smith authored four articles which were published in the Boston Advertiser in 1877, and the Boston Board of Aid to Land Ownership was formed that year "to divert workers from surplus in manufacturing to Tillage of the Earth--the basis of all industries, and the primary source of all wealth". The board selected a committee to investigate possible locations for a settlement. After learning that the Cincinnati Southern Railroad was constructing a rail line to the area, they chose the Cumberland Plateau in Tennessee. Smith, who was president of the board, travelled to Tennessee in 1878 and selected a site, engaged a surveyor to plot the town, and an architect to design a hotel there. The location, which Smith named Plateau City, was the most beautiful he found. It overlooked river gorges, contained broad hills and had sweeping mountain vistas, but it was seven long miles from the railroad. By this time, the depression was ending, and unemployment was falling. A few Bostonians were reconsidering their investment in the venture, so Smith found additional investors through Thomas Hughes, the English social reformer. Hughes wanted to establish a utopian settlement for younger sons of English gentry which was classless, because class conventions in England prevented those born into high society from becoming tradesmen or farmers. In 1879, the London Board of Aid to Land Ownership became the primary investors in the Tennessee project and renamed the colony Rugby. Smith thought that the key to growth was to become a resort, where guests would buy land and settle there. Hughes disagreed and refused to spend time or money on tourist endeavors. When Smith realized that his ideas was being ignored, he divested himself of the project in 1880 and took another trip abroad.

-- Franklin W. Smith, by Wikipedia


and founded a settlement in America—Rugby, Tennessee—which was designed as an experiment in utopian living for the younger sons of the English gentry.

Rugby is an unincorporated community in Morgan and Scott counties in the U.S. state of Tennessee. Founded in 1880 by English author Thomas Hughes, Rugby was built as an experimental utopian colony. While Hughes's experiment largely failed, a small community lingered at Rugby throughout the 20th century....

The Rugby experiment grew out of the social and economic conditions of Victorian England, where the practice of primogeniture and an economic depression had left many of the "second sons" of the English gentry jobless and idle. Hughes envisioned Rugby as a colony where England's second sons would have a chance to own land and be free of social and moral ills that plagued late-19th-century English cities. The colony would reject late Victorian materialism in favor of the Christian socialist ideals of equality and cooperation espoused in Hughes's Tom Brown's School Days.

From the outset, however, the colony was beset with problems, namely a typhoid epidemic in 1881, lawsuits over land titles, and a population unaccustomed to the hard manual labor required to extract crops from the poor soil of the Cumberland Plateau. By late 1887, most of the original colonists had either died or moved away from Rugby. However, a few carried on into the 20th century and the village retained a small, continuous population.

-- Rugby, Tennessee, by Wikipedia


It followed closely on the failed colony Buckthorn (existing about 1872 to 1879), established by another Englishman Charles Lempriere, in western Virginia; this settlement had supposedly been suggested by Hughes.[17] Rugby was also unsuccessful on its own terms, but it still exists and is listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.

Hughes was also a prominent figure in the anti-opium movement, and a member of the Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade.[18]

At the end of the 1880s Hughes clashed with John Thomas Whitehead Mitchell of the Co-operative Wholesale Society, over the vertical integration Mitchell favoured for the Society.[19] Hughes died in 1896 aged 73, at Brighton, of heart failure, and was buried there.

Works

While living at Wimbledon, Hughes wrote his famous story Tom Brown's School Days, which was published in April 1857. He is associated with the novelists of the "muscular school", a loose classification but centred on the fiction of the Crimean War period.[20] Although Hughes had never been a member of the sixth form at Rugby, his impressions of the headmaster Thomas Arnold were reverent.

Image
Statue of Thomas Hughes at Rugby School

Hughes also wrote The Scouring of the White Horse (1859), Tom Brown at Oxford (1861), Religio Laici (1868), Life of Alfred the Great (1869) and the Memoir of a Brother. His brother, George Hughes, was the model for the Tom Brown character.

Family

In 1847, Hughes married Frances Ford, daughter of Rev. James Ford, and niece of Richard Ford, and they settled in 1853 at Wimbledon.[4] Their house there was built by the North London Working Builders' Association, a Christian Socialist co-operative; and was shared with J. M. F. Ludlow and his family;[21] Ludlow already shared barristers' chambers with Hughes, and the arrangement lasted four years.[4] There were five sons (Maurice, James, George, John, and Arthur) and four daughters (Lilian, Evie, Caroline and Mary) of the marriage.[22][23]

Lilian Hughes perished in the sinking of the RMS Titanic in 1912. The youngest child Mary Hughes was a well known Poor Law guardian and volunteer visitor to the local Poor Law infirmary and children's home.

Legacy

A Hughes Scholarship was founded at Oriel College, Oxford. It was a closed award, open only to members, or sons of members, of some co-operative organisations.[24] The first scholar was elected to Oriel in 1884.[25] It was later combined with an award honouring Vansittart Neale.[26]

A statue of Hughes (pictured) stands outside Rugby School Library: the sculptor was Thomas Brock, and the statue was unveiled in 1899.[27]

Bibliography

Fiction


• Tom Brown's School Days (1857)
• The Scouring of The White Horse (1859)
• Tom Brown at Oxford (1861)

Non-fiction

• Religio Laici (1861)
• A Layman's Faith (1868)
• Alfred the Great (1870). In the Sunday Library for Household Reading, this was a largely political work, and was history verging on fiction.[28]
• Memoir of a Brother (1873)
• The Old Church; What Shall We Do With It? (1878)
• The Manliness of Christ (1879)
• True Manliness (1880)
• Rugby Tennessee (1881)
• Memoir of Daniel Macmillan (1882)
• G.T.T. Gone to Texas (1884)
• Notes for Boys (1885)
• Life and Times of Peter Cooper (1886)
• James Fraser Second Bishop of Manchester (1887)
• David Livingstone (1889)
• Vacation Rambles (1895)
• Early Memories for the Children (1899)

References

1. Joseph F. Clarke (1977). Pseudonyms. BCA. p. 164.
2. "Scorecard: Marylebone Cricket Club v Rugby School". http://www.cricketarchive.com. 18 June 1840. Retrieved 11 March 2013.
3. "Scorecard: Oxford University v Cambridge University". http://www.cricketarchive.com. 9 June 1842. Retrieved 11 March 2013.
4. Lee, Sidney, ed. (1901). "Hughes, Thomas (1822-1896)" . Dictionary of National Biography (1st supplement). 3. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
5. J. F. C. Harrison ,A History of the Working Men's College (1854–1954), Routledge Kegan Paul, 1954
6. Arnold Bonner (1970). British Co-operation. Cooperative Union. p. 66.
7. Matthew, H. C. G. "Slaney, Robert Aglionby". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/25713. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
8. Mitchell, Charlotte. "Hughes, Thomas". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/14091. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
9. Congress Presidents 1869–2002 (PDF), February 2002, archived from the original (PDF) on 28 May 2008, retrieved 18 October 2007
10. Howe, A. C. "Callender, William Romaine". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/39657. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
11. Octavia Hill (23 December 2010). Life of Octavia Hill: As Told in Her Letters. Cambridge University Press. p. 262. ISBN 978-1-108-02457-0.
12. Paul Smith (1967). Disraelian Conservatism and Social Reform. Routledge & Kegan Paul. p. 178 note 3.
13. Paul Smith (1967). Disraelian Conservatism and Social Reform. Routledge & Kegan Paul. p. 46.
14. Saville, John. "Applegarth". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/37120. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
15. Paul Smith (1967). Disraelian Conservatism and Social Reform. Routledge & Kegan Paul. p. 215.
16. Edward R. Norman (3 October 2002). The Victorian Christian Socialists. Cambridge University Press. p. 91. ISBN 978-0-521-53051-4.
17. Lee, Sidney, ed. (1912). "Lempriere, Charles" . Dictionary of National Biography (2nd supplement). 2. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
18. Kathleen L. Lodwick (1996). Crusaders Against Opium: Protestant Missionaries in China, 1874-1917. University Press of Kentucky. pp. 55–66. ISBN 978-0-8131-1924-3. Retrieved 23 May 2012.
19. Arnold Bonner (1970). British Co-operation. Cooperative Union. pp. 134–5.
20. John Sutherland (1990). The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction. Stanford University Press. p. 453. ISBN 978-0-8047-1842-4.
21. Norman Vance (1985). The Sinews of the Spirit: The Ideal of Christian Manliness in Victorian Literature and Religious Thought. Cambridge University Press. pp. 138–9. ISBN 978-0-521-30387-3.
22. Oldfield, Sybil. "Hughes, Mary". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/38525. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
23. "gb1499-thl - Thomas and Mary Hughes Letters - Archives Hub". Retrieved 14 June 2014.
24. Oxford University Handbook (1912), p. 31; archive.org.
25. Charles Lancelot Shadwell, Registrum Orielense, an account of the members of Oriel College, Oxford vol. 2, (1893), pp. x–xi; archive.org.
26. Arnold Bonner (1970). British Co-operation. Cooperative Union. p. 499.
27. Public sculpture of Warwickshire, Coventry and Solihull by George Thomas Noszlopy, page 28–29
28. Donald Scragg; Carole Weinberg; Simon Keynes; Andy Orchard (2 November 2006). Literary Appropriations of the Anglo-Saxons from the Thirteenth to the Twentieth Century. Cambridge University Press. pp. 16–7. ISBN 978-0-521-03117-2.
• This entry incorporates some public-domain text originally from the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica but has been heavily edited.
• The Aftermath with Autobiography of the Author (John Bedford Leno published by Reeves & Turner, London, 1892)

Further reading

• Kidd, Bruce (2006). "Muscular Christianity and Value-centred Sport: the Legacy of Tom Brown in Canada". International Journal of the History of Sport. 23 (5): 701–713. doi:10.1080/09523360600673096.

External links

• Works by Thomas Hughes at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Thomas Hughes at Internet Archive
• Works by Thomas Hughes at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Thomas Hughes
• Historic Rugby, Tennessee
• Thomas Hughes correspondence collection is held at The National Co-operative Archive, Manchester.
• Details of Hughes family
• CricketArchive: Thomas Hughes
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Re: Freda Bedi Cont'd (#2)

Postby admin » Wed Apr 15, 2020 7:22 am

Rugby, Tennessee
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 4/15/20

Image
Rugby Colony
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
U.S. Historic district
Christ Church Episcopal at Rugby
Location TN 52
Rugby, Tennessee
Nearest city Huntsville, Tennessee
Coordinates 36°21′40″N 84°42′1″WCoordinates: 36°21′40″N 84°42′1″W
Area: 525 acres (212 ha)
Built: 1880
Architectural style: Gothic
NRHP reference # 72001249
Added to NRHP April 26, 1972

Rugby is an unincorporated community in Morgan and Scott counties in the U.S. state of Tennessee. Founded in 1880 by English author Thomas Hughes, Rugby was built as an experimental utopian colony. While Hughes's experiment largely failed, a small community lingered at Rugby throughout the 20th century. In the 1960s, residents, friends and descendants of Rugby began restoring the original design and layout of the community, preserving surviving structures and reconstructing others. Rugby's Victorian architecture and picturesque setting have since made it a popular tourist attraction. In 1972, Rugby's historic area was listed under the name Rugby Colony on the National Register of Historic Places as a historic district.[1]

The Rugby experiment grew out of the social and economic conditions of Victorian England, where the practice of primogeniture and an economic depression had left many of the "second sons" of the English gentry jobless and idle. Hughes envisioned Rugby as a colony where England's second sons would have a chance to own land and be free of social and moral ills that plagued late-19th-century English cities. The colony would reject late Victorian materialism in favor of the Christian socialist ideals of equality and cooperation espoused in Hughes's Tom Brown's School Days.[2]

From the outset, however, the colony was beset with problems, namely a typhoid epidemic in 1881, lawsuits over land titles, and a population unaccustomed to the hard manual labor required to extract crops from the poor soil of the Cumberland Plateau. By late 1887, most of the original colonists had either died or moved away from Rugby.[3] However, a few carried on into the 20th century and the village retained a small, continuous population.


Geography

Rugby is located atop the Cumberland Plateau near the junction of Morgan, Scott, and Fentress counties. While it straddles the two former counties, the majority of it lies in Morgan County. On the north side of Rugby, the Clear Fork joins White Oak Creek to form a natural pool known as "The Meeting of the Waters" that has been a popular hiking destination since the colony's early days. Beyond Meeting-of-the-Waters, the Clear Fork continues northeastward for another 9 miles (14 km) to where it joins New River to form the Big South Fork of the Cumberland River.

State Route 52 passed through the town, until December 2013 when the "Rugby Bypass" opened, connecting it with U.S. Route 127 in Jamestown to the west and U.S. Route 27 in the community of Elgin to the east. The area is relatively remote, with the 125,000-acre (510 km2) Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area dominating the area to the north, and sparsely-populated rolling hills stretching for miles to the south. Most of the historic district is located on or near Tennessee state highway 52. A more modern residential area is located in the Beacon Hill section on the north side of the community.

History

Establishment


Thomas Hughes was born in Uffington, Oxfordshire, England in 1822. In the 1830s, he attended the Rugby School in Rugby, Warwickshire, where he was greatly influenced by the school's progressive headmaster, Thomas Arnold. Both Rugby School and Arnold figured prominently in Hughes's 1857 novel, Tom Brown's School Days, and the school would eventually be the namesake for Hughes's utopian colony in Tennessee. In Tom Brown's School Days, Hughes espoused the ideals of Christian socialism, namely the cooperative ownership of community businesses. By the 1860s, Hughes had grown disenchanted with the materialism of late Victorian England. He was disheartened by the fact that the talents of many of England's younger sons were wasted due to an economic recession and the medieval system of primogeniture, in which the oldest son inherited all of the family's land.[2]

In 1870, Hughes travelled to America to meet his friend, the poet James Russell Lowell, and learned of the Boston-based Board of Aid to Land Ownership, which specialized in helping unemployed urban craftsmen relocate to rural areas.[4] Hughes indicated that such an operation might also be beneficial to young, unemployed English gentry. In 1878, Board of Aid president Franklin Webster Smith and an agent with the new Cincinnati Southern Railway, Cyrus Clarke, were travelling on the railroad's new tracks along the Cumberland Plateau when they identified the future site of Rugby, and were impressed with its virgin forests, clear air, and scenic gorges. Clarke secured options on hundreds of thousands of acres of Plateau land.[2] Knoxville attorney Oliver Perry Temple, who became the colony's legal and agricultural advisor, began the complicated process of securing land titles.[5]


Smith returned to Boston to recruit families to move to the newly acquired land on the Plateau, but economic conditions in the northeast had improved, and few families were interested in relocating. Smith then notified Hughes of the Board's new land acquisitions, and Hughes expressed interest in establishing a colony. Hughes formed a partnership with British lawyers Sir Henry Kimber and John Boyle, and bought the Board of Aid.[2]

Rugby Colony, 1880–1887

Image
Thomas Hughes Library, built 1882

Franklin W. Smith, who was primarily responsible for Rugby's early layout, chose the townsite for Rugby for its resort-like qualities, even though it was 7 miles (11 km) from the nearest railroad stop at Sedgemoor (modern-day Elgin, Tennessee). The colony's first frame structure, known as the "Asylum" (now the Pioneer Cottage), was erected in early 1880,[4] and the first wave of colonists constructed tennis and croquet courts, and built a walkway to "The Meeting of the Waters." Within a few months, several residences had been completed, along with the three-story Tabard Inn, which was named for the Southwark hostelry in Canterbury Tales.[2]

Thomas Hughes was on hand for the colony's "opening" on October 5, 1880, and gave a speech that laid out his plans for Rugby. All colonists would be required to invest $5 in the commissary, thus ensuring public ownership. Personal freedoms were guaranteed, although the sale of alcohol was banned. The colony would build an Episcopal church, but the building could be used by any denomination.[3] On opening day, Tennessee's Episcopal bishop, the Right Reverend Charles Quintard, chartered Christ Church and licensed colonist Joseph Blacklock as lay reader.[2]

American publications such as The New York Times and Harper's Weekly and London publications such as The Spectator, Saturday Review, and Punch, all followed the colony's progress. Rugby published its own newspaper, The Rugbeian, which was edited by Oxford graduate Osmond Dakeyne, and several colonists formed a Library and Reading Room Society, headed by Tübingen graduate Edward Bertz, who was a long term friend of the late nineteenth century English author George Gissing, with whom he corresponded over many years. In summer 1881, a typhoid outbreak killed seven colonists—including Dakeyne—and forced the Tabard Inn to close for cleansing, but the colony recovered. By 1884, the colony boasted over 400 residents, 65 frame public buildings and houses, a tennis team, a social club, and a literary and dramatic society. In 1885, Rugby established a university, Arnold School, named for Rugby School headmaster Thomas Arnold.[2]


Struggle and decline

Image
Laurel Dale Cemetery contains the graves of Rugby's 1881 typhoid victims along with Margaret Hughes and other early colonists

Throughout its early history, Rugby was beset with lawsuits over land titles. While Cyrus Clarke had obtained options on nearly 350,000 acres (140,000 ha) of land, many of the Plateau's Appalachian natives grew suspicious of Clarke and refused to sell their property. This slowed the colony's early development, and as the lawsuits dragged on, many colonists gave up and moved away. Furthermore, Smith, who had selected the townsite, had ignored the site's poor soil in favor of its potential as a mountain resort. Rugby's main resort hotel, the Tabard, was forced to close due to the typhoid outbreak in 1881, however, and burned down altogether in 1884, halting Rugby's burgeoning tourist economy and damaging the Board of Aid's credit.[2][4]

Frustrated by the colony's slow development, the Board of Aid's London backers replaced colony director John Boyle with Irish-born Cincinnati city engineer Robert Walton in May 1882. Rugby attempted to establish a tomato canning operation in 1883, but after the cannery was constructed, colonists failed to grow enough tomatoes to keep it operational. Newspapers began to ridicule Rugby, with London's Daily News accusing Hughes of creating a "pleasure picnic" rather than a functioning colony, and The New York Times claiming that Hughes was planning to abandon the colony altogether.[2]

In 1887, the deaths of a number of prominent colonists—including Hughes's mother, Margaret, and geologist Charles Wilson—led to the departure of most of Rugby's original settlers. That year, Hughes made his last annual visit to the colony, and The Rugbeian ceased publication.[2] In 1892, Sir Henry Kimber reorganized the Board of Aid as the Rugby Tennessee Company, which focused on harvesting the region's natural resources, all but abandoning the anti-materialistic ideals on which the colony was founded.[4] By 1900, the company had sold its Cumberland Plateau holdings.[2]

Preservation

Image
The reconstructed Board of Aid building (foreground) and the Rugby Commissary appear much as the originals did in the 1880s

Robert Walton's son, William (1887–1958), maintained the Thomas Hughes Library, the Christ Church Episcopal, and Kingstone Lisle until the mid-20th century. During the same period, Uffington House was maintained by the family of C.C. Brooks. Conservation efforts at Rugby began in the 1940s when logging practices were decimating the surrounding virgin forests. The efforts were publicized by The New York Times and The Washington Post, and gained federal support with the aide of Secretary of State Cordell Hull, but the state of Tennessee rejected the logging companies' offering price for the land, and the forest was cut right up to the community's boundaries.[2]

In 1966, preservationists formed Historic Rugby, a non-profit group dedicated to restoring and maintaining the community's surviving historic structures
, which include the Christ Church Episcopal, the Thomas Hughes Library, the Rugby School, Kingstone Lisle, Uffington House, and Newbury House. The group has also reconstructed several buildings based on their original designs, including the Board of Aid office, the Rugby Commissary, and Sir Henry Kimber's Percy Cottage. The Harrow Road Cafe, a restaurant built in the 1980s, was named for a restaurant that existed at Rugby in the 1880s, although its original design is unknown. The Rugby Printing Works, which originally stood at nearby Deer Lodge, was moved to Rugby in the 1970s.[6] Historic Rugby opened up the community's Beacon Hill area (originally planned to include residences and a park) to new home construction, with the condition that all new homes must be designed in accordance with the community's Victorian aesthetic.[7]

Notable buildings

Image
Christ Church (left) and Thomas Hughes Library in Rugby, Tennessee

Christ Church Episcopal

The Christ Church Episcopal was established on October 5, 1880, and initially used the original Rugby schoolhouse for services. The current building was built in the Carpenter Gothic style in 1887 by Cornelius Onderdonk, who constructed many of the original buildings in Rugby, and consecrated by Episcopal bishop Charles Quintard in 1888.[8] The church's alms basin was designed by English carpenter Henry Fry, who had previously done work for various churches in the London area. The church's reed organ, built in 1849, is one of the oldest in the United States.[9] The Christ Church parish has met here regularly since 1887.

Thomas Hughes Library

Built in 1882, the Thomas Hughes Library is the most unchanged of all the buildings in Rugby. The library's 7,000 volumes were collected primarily by Boston bookseller Estes & Lauriat, and donated to Rugby's Library and Reading Room Society with the stipulation they name the new library for Hughes. The library still contains most of its original collection, the oldest volume of which dates to 1687. German-born colonist Edward Bertz, Rugby's first librarian, published a book about his Rugby experiences, entitled Das Sabinergut, in 1896.[2]

Kingstone Lisle

Kingstone Lisle, a Queen Anne-style cottage, was built in 1884 as a residence for Thomas Hughes, although Hughes stayed at the cottage for just a very short period on one of his annual visits (he usually stayed at the Newbury House).[2] In the late 1880s, Hughes gave the house to Christ Church priest Joseph Blacklock for use as a rectory.[8] Historic Rugby restored the house in the 1960s, and has outfitted it with period furniture.

Comprehensive list of historical structures

[/b]Structure / Image / Originally constructed / reconstructed (if not original) / Principal original owner / Named for[/b]

Christ Church Episcopal / Image / 1887 / -- / --

Rugby School / Image / 1880/1907 / -- / --

Thomas Hughes Library / Image / 1882 / -- / Author Thomas Hughes (1822–1896)

Kingstone Lisle / Image / 1884 / Thomas Hughes / Community in Hughes's native Berkshire, England

Percy Cottage / Image / 1884/1970s / Sir Henry Kimber (1834–1923) / Kimber's son

Roslyn / Image / 1886 / Montgomery Boyle / Roslyn Castle in Scotland

Walton Court / Image / 1881/2007 / Robert Walton / Image
Walton family ancestral home in County Cork, Ireland

Harrow Road Cafe / Image / 1880s/1985 / -- / Harrow Road in London

Rugby Printing Works / Image / 1880s / Abner Ross / Originally located at Deer Lodge, a nearby resort founded by Ross in the 1880s

Board of Aid to Land Ownership office / Image / 1880/1970s / -- / --

Rugby Commissary / Image / 1880/1970s / Publicly owned / --

Ingleside / Image / 1884 / Russell Sturgis / --

Adena Cottage / Image / 1881 / Frederick Wellman / Adena Mansion in Ohio, built for Wellman's grandfather-in-law

Wren's Nest / Image / 1887 / Frederick Wellman / --

The Lindens / Image / 1880 / Nathan Tucker / Linden trees planted around the house

Newbury House / Image / 1880 / Ross Brown / --

Onderdonk House / Image / 1880s/2007 / -- / Rugby architect/builder Cornelius Onderdonk

Pioneer Cottage / Image / 1880 / -- / --

Martin's Roost / Image / 1880s/1960s / -- / --

Oak Lodge / Image / 1881 / T. Lyon White / --

Uffington House / Image / 1881 / Margaret Hughes / Uffington, England

The Clubhouse/Ruralia / Image / 1884 / Daniel Ellerby / --

Twin Oaks / Image / 1884 / Beriah Riddell / --


References

1. Sweeny-Justice, Karen. Thomas Hughes’ “Rugby”: Utopia on the Cumberland Plateau, Cultural Resources Management, No. 9 (2001), U.S. National Park Service. Accessed at the Internet Archive 1 September 2015.
2. Brian Stagg, The Distant Eden, Tennessee's Rugby Colony: A History of the English Colony at Rugby, Tennessee, With a Guide to the Remaining Original Buildings (Rugby, Tenn.: Paylor Publications, 1973), pp. 1-19.
3. Margaret McGehee, "Castle In the Wilderness: Rugby, Tennessee, 1880–1887." Journal of East Tennessee History, Vol. 70 (1998), pp. 62-89.
4. Benita Howell, "Rugby, Tennessee's Master Planner: Franklin Webster Smith of Boston." Journal of East Tennessee History, Vol. 73 (2001), pp. 23-28.
5. Fred Bailey, "Legalities, Agriculture, and Immigration: The Role of Oliver Perry Temple in the Rugby Experiment," East Tennessee Historical Society Publications, Vol. 44 (1972), pp. 90-103.
6. "Rugby, Tennessee: Guide to Buildings & Sites," onsite brochure published by Historic Rugby.
7. Scott Brooks, "A Short Vacation Idea Close to Knoxville: 40th Rugby Village Pilgrimage." Knoxnews.com, 30 August 2009. Retrieved: 19 March 2010.
8. Patricia Wichmann, Christ Church, Episcopal, Rugby, Tennessee: A Short History (Rugby, Tenn.: 1959).
9. Stagg, p. 26.

External links

• Christ Church Episcopal - Active parish of the Episcopal Church in Rugby
• Historic Rugby page
• The Rugbeian – digitized issues of a newspaper published in Rugby, 1881–1882
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Re: Freda Bedi Cont'd (#2)

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19th-century Anglo-Saxonism
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 4/15/20

19th-century Anglo-Saxonism, or racial Anglo-Saxonism, was a racial belief system developed by British and American intellectuals, politicians and academics in the 19th century. It is viewed by historians as an ideological successor to the earlier Alfredism and veneration for Anglo-Saxon institutions in the 17th and 18th centuries. Racialized Anglo-Saxonism contained both competing and intersecting doctrines, such as Victorian-era Old Northernism and the Teutonic germ theory which it relied upon in appropriating Germanic (particularly Norse) cultural and racial origins for the Anglo-Saxon "race".

Predominantly a product of certain Anglo-American societies, and organisations of the era:[1]

An important racial belief system in late 19th- and early 20th-century British and US thought advanced the argument that the civilization of English-speaking nations was superior to that of any other nations because of racial traits and characteristics inherited from the Anglo-Saxon invaders of Britain.


In 2017, Mary Dockray-Miller, an American scholar of Anglo-Saxon England, stated that there was an increasing interest in the study of 19th-century Anglo-Saxonism.[2] Anglo-Saxonism is regarded as a predecessor ideology to the later Nordicism of the 20th century,[3] which was generally less anti-Celtic and broadly sought to racially reconcile Celtic identity with Germanic under the label of Nordic.[4]

Background

In terminology, Anglo-Saxonism is by far the most commonly used phrase to describe the historical ideology of rooting a Germanic racial identity, whether Anglo-Saxon, Norse or Teutonic, into the concept of the English, Scottish or British nation, and subsequently founded-nations such as the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

In both historical and contemporary literature however, Anglo-Saxonism has many derivations, such as the commonly used phrase Teutonism or Anglo-Teutonism,[5] which can be used as form of catch-all to describe American or British Teutonism and further extractions such as English or Scottish Teutonism. It is also occasionally encompassed by the longer phrase Anglo-Saxon Teutonism, or shorter labels Anglism or Saxonism, along with the most frequently used term of Anglo-Saxonism itself.

American medievalist Allen Frantzen credits historian L. Perry Curtis's use of Anglo-Saxonism as a term for "an unquestioned belief in Anglo-Saxon 'genius'" during this period of history.[6] Curtis has pointed toward a radical change from 16th- and 17th-century adulation of Anglo-Saxon institutions towards something more racial and imperialist.[7] Historian Barbara Yorke, who specializes in the subject,[8] has similarly argued that the earlier self-governance oriented Anglo-Saxonism of Thomas Jefferson's era had by the mid-19th century developed into "a belief in racial superiority".[9]

According to Australian scholar Helen Young, the ideology of 19th-century Anglo-Saxonism was "profoundly racist" and influenced authors such as J. R. R. Tolkien and his fictional works into the 20th century.[10] Similarly, Marxist writer Peter Fryer has claimed that "Anglo-Saxonism was a form of racism that originally arose to justify the British conquest and occupation of Ireland".[11] Some scholars believe the Anglo-Saxonism championed by historians and politicians of the Victorian era influenced and helped to spawn the Greater Britain Movement of the mid-20th-century.[12] In 2019, the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists decided to change its name due to the potential confusion of their organization's name with racist Anglo-Saxonism.[13]

At the passing of the 19th-century Anglo-Saxonism era, progressive intellectual Randolph Bourne's essay Trans-National America reacted positively to integration ("We have needed the new peoples"), and while mocking the "indistinguishable dough of Anglo-Saxonism" in the context of very early 20th-century migration to the United States,[14] Bourne manages to express an anxiety at the American melting pot theory.[15]

Origins

Early references


In 1647, English MP John Hare, who served during the Long Parliament, issued a pamphlet declaring England as a "member of the Teutonick nation, and descended out of Germany". In the context of the English Civil War, this anti-Norman and pro-Germanic paradigm has been identified as perhaps the earliest iteration of "English Teutonism" by Professor Nick Groom, who has suggested the 1714 Hanoverian succession, where the German House of Hanover ascended the throne of Great Britain, is the culmination of this Anglo-Saxonist ideology.[16]

Teutonic germ theory

Racialized Anglo-Saxonism was largely founded on "Teutonic germ theory".[17] Many historians and political scientists in Britain and the United States supported it in the 19th-century. The theory supposed that American and British democracy and institutions had their roots in Teutonic peoples, and that Germanic tribes had spread this "germ" within their race from ancient Germany to England and on to North America. Advocacy in Britain included the likes of John Mitchell Kemble, William Stubbs, and Edward Augustus Freeman. Within the U.S., future president Woodrow Wilson, along with Albert Bushnell Hart and Herbert Baxter Adams were applying historical and social science in advocacy for Anglo-Saxonism through the theory.[1] In the 1890s, under the influence of Frederick Jackson Turner, Wilson abandoned the Teutonic germ theory in favor of a frontier model for the sources of American democracy.[18]

Ancestry and racial identity

Germanic and Teutonic


Anglo-Saxonism of the era sought to emphasize Britain's cultural and racial ties with Germany, frequently referring to Teutonic peoples as a source of strength and similarity. Contemporary historian Robert Boyce notes that many 19th-century British politicians promoted these Germanic links, such as Henry Bulwer, 1st Baron Dalling and Bulwer who said that it was "in the free forests of Germany that the infant genius of our liberty was nursed", and Thomas Arnold who claimed that "Our English race is the German race; for though our Norman fathers had learned to speak a stranger’s language, yet in blood, as we know, they were the Saxon’s brethren both alike belonging to the Teutonic or German stock".[19]

Norman and Celtic

Anglo-Saxonists in the 19th-century often sought to downplay, or outright denigrate, the significance of both Norman and Celtic racial and cultural influence in Britain. Less frequently however, some form of solidarity was expressed by some Anglo-Saxonists, who conveyed that Anglo-Saxonism was simply "the best-known term to denote that mix of Celtic, Saxon, Norse and Norman blood which now flows in the united stream in the veins of the Anglo-Saxon peoples".[20] Although a staunch Anglo-Saxonist, Thomas Carlyle had even disparagingly described the United States as a kind of "formless" Saxon tribal order, and claimed that Normans had given Anglo-Saxons and their descendants a greater sense of order for national structure, and that this was particularly evident in England.[21]

Northern European

Edward Augustus Freeman, a leading Anglo-Saxonist of the era, promoted a larger northern European identity, favorably comparing civilizational roots from "German forest" or "Scandinavian rock" with the cultural legacy of ancient Greece and Rome.[22] American scholar Mary Dockray-Miller expands on this concept to suggest that pre-World War I Anglo-Saxonism ideology helped establish the "primacy of northern European ancestry in United States culture at large".[2]

Lowland Scottish

During the 19th-century century in particular, Scottish people living in Lowland Scotland, near the Anglo-Scottish border, "increasingly identified themselves with the Teutonic world destiny of Anglo-Saxonism", and sought to separate their identity from that of Highland Scots, or the "inhabitants of Romantic Scotland".[23] With some considering themselves "Anglo-Saxon Lowlanders", public opinion of Lowland Scots turned on Gaels within the context of the Highland Famine, with suggestions of deportations to British colonies for Highlanders of the "'inferior Celtic race".[24] Amongst others, Goldwin Smith, a devout Anglo-Saxonist,[25] believed the Anglo-Saxon "race" included Lowland Scots and should not be exclusively defined by English ancestry within the context of the United Kingdom's greater empire.[26]

Thomas Carlyle, himself a Scot, was one of the earliest notable people to express a "belief in Anglo-Saxon racial superiority".[27] Historian Richard J. Finlay has suggested that the Scots National League, which campaigned for Scotland to separate from the United Kingdom, was a response or opposition to the history of "Anglo-Saxon teutonism" embedded in some Scottish culture.[28]

Mythology and religions

Nineteenth-century Anglo-Saxonism was largely aligned with Protestantism, generally perceiving Catholics as outsiders, and was orientated as an ideology in opposition to other "races", such as the "Celts" of Ireland and "Latins" of Spain.[29]

Charles Kingsley was particularly focused on there being a "strong Norse element in Teutonism and Anglo-Saxonism". He blended Protestantism of the day with the Old Norse religion, saying that the Church of England was "wonderfully and mysteriously fitted for the souls of a free Norse-Saxon race". He believed the ancestors of Anglo-Saxons, Norse people and Germanic peoples had physically fought beside the god Odin, and that the British monarchy of his time was genetically descended from him.[7]:76

Political aims

Expansion


Embedded in 19th-century Anglo-Saxonism was a growing sense that the "Anglo Saxon" race must expand into surrounding territories. This particularly expressed itself in American politics and culture in the form of Manifest Destiny.[30]

Shared citizenship

A persistent "Anglo-Saxonist" idea, Albert Venn Dicey believed in the creation of a shared citizenship between Britons and Americans, and the concept of cooperation, even federation, of those from the "Anglo-Saxon" race.[31]

See also

• Albion's Seed
• Anglosphere
• British Israelism
• Englishry
• White Anglo-Saxon Protestant

References

1. Kaufman, Will; Macpherson, Heidi Slettedahl (2005). Britain and the Americas: Culture, Politics, and History, Volume 2. ABC-CLIO. pp. 90–91. ISBN 978-1851094318.
2. Dockray-Miller, Mary (2017). "Introduction". Public Medievalists, Racism, and Suffrage in the American Women’s College(1st ed.). Springer Nature. ISBN 978-3-319-69705-5. This study, part of growing interest in the study of nineteenth-century medievalism and Anglo-Saxonism, closely examines the intersections of race, class, and gender in the teaching of Anglo-Saxon in the American women’s colleges before World War I, interrogating the ways that the positioning of Anglo-Saxon as the historical core of the collegiate English curriculum also silently perpetuated mythologies about Manifest Destiny, male superiority, and the primacy of northern European ancestry in United States culture at large.
3. Luczak, Ewa Barbara (2015). Breeding and Eugenics in the American Literary Imagination: Heredity Rules in the Twentieth Century (1st ed.). Palgrave Macmillan. p. 164. ISBN 978-1137545787. Nordicism replaced the older concepts of Anglo-Saxonism promulgated by David Starr Jordan and Aryanism espoused by Charles Woodruff.
4. Kassis, Dimitrios (2015). Representations of the North in Victorian Travel Literature. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. p. 28. ISBN 978-1443870849. In the Nordicist discourse, what can be noticed is the attempt to racially unite the English with the Celts, a rather pioneering element considering the earliest theories which were ideologically constructed on a strictly anti-Celtic basis.
5. Vucetic, Srdjan (2011). The Anglosphere: A Genealogy of a Racialized Identity in International Relations. Stanford University Press. p. 40. ISBN 978-0804772259. The more the Germans excelled in industry, commerce, science, and education, the more American and British elites fell under the spells of racial Teutonism or "Anglo-Teutonism".
6. Frantzen, Allen (2012). Anglo-Saxon Keywords (1st ed.). Wiley. pp. 13–14. ISBN 978-0-470-65762-1.
7. Horsman, Reginald (1976). Origins of Racial Anglo-Saxonism in Great Britain before 1850 (Journal of the History of Ideas - Vol. 37, No. 3 ed.). University of Pennsylvania Press. p. 387.
8. "Who was King Alfred the Great?". BBC History. 23 November 2018.
9. "Alfred the Great: The Most Perfect Man in History?". History Today. 10 November 1999.
10. "How Can We Untangle White Supremacy From Medieval Studies?". Pacific Standard. 9 October 2017.
11. Fryer, Peter (1992). ""History of English Racism"". Aspects of British Black History. INDEX Books. p. 30. ISBN 978-1871518047.
12. "The empire strikes back". New Statesman. 23 January 2017.
13. Utz, Richard (October 31, 2019). "Adventures in Anglalond: Angles, Saxons, and Academics". Medievally Speaking. Retrieved October 31, 2019.
14. "E Pluribus Unum, and Vice Versa". National Review. 10 September 2018.
15. "Against the Ideal of a 'Melting Pot'". The Atlantic. 12 September 2018.
16. Groom, Nick (2012). "6. Gothic Whiggery". The Gothic: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0199586790. John Hare had praised English Teutonism as early as 1647, insisting, "We are a member of the Teutonick nation, and descended out of Germany, a descent so honourable and happy, if duly considered, as that the like could not have been fetched from any other part of Europe, nor scarce of the universe.
17. Davis, Janet M. (2002). "Instruct the Minds of all Classes". The Circus Age: Culture and Society under the American Big Top. The University of North Carolina Press. pp. 216. ISBN 978-0807853993. The racial ideology of Anglo-Saxonism was founded upon nineteenth-century Teutonic germ theory, which posited that the seeds of democracy traveled westward with the Teutonic conquerors to Britain, and then North America.
18. Lloyd Ambrosius, "Democracy, Peace, and World Order" in y Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (2008). Reconsidering Woodrow Wilson: Progressivism, Internationalism, War, and Peace. Woodrow Wilson Center Press. p. 231.
19. Boyce, Robert (2011). The Persistence of Anglo-Saxonism in Britain and the origins of Britain's appeasement policy towards Germany. pp. 110–129.
20. Rich, Paul B. (1990). "Empire and Anglo-saxonism". Race and Empire in British Politics (Comparative Ethnic and Race Relations). Cambridge University Press. p. 25. ISBN 978-0-521-38958-7.
21. Modarelli, Michael (2018). "Epilogue". The Transatlantic Genealogy of American Anglo-Saxonism. Routledge. ISBN 978-1138352605.
22. Lake, Marilyn; Reynolds, Henry (2008). Drawing the Global Colour Line: White Men's Countries and the International Challenge of Racial Equality (Critical Perspectives on Empire). Cambridge University Press. p. 51. ISBN 978-0521707527. Freeman, a pre-eminent English historian of race, went to Oxford as a student in 1841, a time when ... 'the ingredients for the new racial interpretation of Anglo-Saxon destiny were all present' ... By the end of the 1840s, Freeman was writing of 'Teutonic greatness' and, comparing seeds planted in the 'German forest or on...Scandinavian rock' with the legacy of Greece and Rome, was able to declare confidently in favour of the former.
23. Pittock, Murray (2001). Scottish Nationality (British History in Perspective). Palgrave Macmillan. p. 7. ISBN 978-0333726631. In the late eighteenth and nine-teenth centuries, Scots living outwith the Highlands increasingly identified themselves with the Teutonic world destiny of Anglo-Saxonism and intensified the constructed images of bifurcation and division between themselves and the inhabitants of Romantic Scotland.
24. Fenyó, Krisztina (1996). Contempt, Sympathy and Romance: Lowland Perceptions of the Highlands and the Clearances during the Famine Years, 1845-1855. Glasgow University Press. p. 4. After the outbreak of the Highland famine ... public opinion firmly decided that the best route for the destitute Gaels lay outside the country ... they belonged to the 'inferior' Celtic race. Such as people was better sent to a remote colonial land instead of being a permanent burden and drain on the 'superior' and developed Anglo-Saxon Lowlanders.
25. Kohn, Edward P. (2004). This Kindred People: Canadian-American Relations and the Anglo-Saxon Idea, 1895-1903. McGill-Queen's University Press. p. 55. ISBN 978-0773527966. Chief among the movement's advocates was Goldwin Smith, former Oxford don, founder of the Commercial Union Club of Canada, and devout Anglo-Saxonist. Smith, an anti-imperialist, viewed Canada's connection to a distant colonial powers as unnatural and believed Canada's ultimate destiny was to unite with the United States.
26. Bueltmann, Tanja; Gleeson, David T.; MacRaild, Don (2012). Locating the English Diaspora, 1500-2010. Liverpool University Press. p. 125. ISBN 978-1846318191. Therefore, it was perhaps for want of the strengthening of Anglo-Saxon superiority that Anglo-Saxonism was not automatically defined as exclusively English. While, for Goldwin Smith, the Irish were certainly excluded, Anglo-Saxonism could be used more inclusively, at times embracing Welsh and (Lowland) Scots.
27. Frankel, Robert (2007). Observing America: The Commentary of British Visitors to the United States, 1890–1950 (Studies in American Thought and Culture). University of Wisconsin Press. p. 54. ISBN 978-0299218805. Thomas Carlyle was perhaps the first notable Englishman to enunciate a belief in Anglo-Saxon racial superiority, and, as he told Emerson, among the members of this select race he counted the Americans.
28. Finlay, Richard J. (1994). Independent and Free: Scottish Politics and the Origins of the Scot- tish National Party, 1918-1945. John Donald Publishers. p. 39. People who belonged to the League during this time were, above all, Celtic nationalists and there were many implicit criticisms of Scottish culture which had been tinged with 'Anglo-Saxon teutonism'.
29. Foster, Anne L.; Go, Julian (2003). The American Colonial State in the Philippines: Global Perspectives. Edinburgh University Press. p. 48. ISBN 978-0-8223-3099-8. Having begun as a British defense of the superiority of the Anglican church and having early confronted Catholic "others" - the "Celtic" race in Ireland and the "Latin" in Spain - Anglo-Saxonism was closely allied to Protestantism and was often said to share its virtues.
30. Magoc, Chris J.; Bernstein, David (2015). Imperialism and Expansionism in American History [4 volumes]: A Social, Political, and Cultural Encyclopedia and Document Collection. ABC-CLIO. p. 483. ISBN 978-1610694292. Late-19th-century Anglo-Saxonism was often pressed into the service of the United States' new global self-image as a nation in the vanguard of "civilization" ... By 1898, it provided the powerful racial and hereditary ideology that propelled U.S. statesmen into the acquisition of an empire in the Pacific and Caribbean.
31. Bowman, Stephen (2018). Pilgrims Society and Public Diplomacy, 1895–1945. Edinburgh University Press. p. 9. ISBN 978-1474417815. Some of these Anglo-Saxonist ideas - including those of legal theorist A.V. Dicey - called upon isopolitan ideas of common citizenship for Britons and Americans ... in particular the belief that, through cooperation and federation, the "Anglo-Saxon" race would help to bring peace, order and justice to the earth.
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Re: Freda Bedi Cont'd (#2)

Postby admin » Wed Apr 15, 2020 8:12 am

Franklin W. Smith
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 4/15/20

Image
Franklin Smith
Born: October 9, 1826, Boston, Massachusetts
Died: October 11, 1911 (aged 85), Cambridge, Massachusetts
Nationality: American
Occupation: Hardware Merchant
Political party: Republican
Spouse(s): Laura A. Smith
Children: Stuart, Nina
Parent(s): Benjamin & Mary O. Smith

Franklin Waldo Smith (1826–1911) was an American idealistic reformer who made his fortune as a Boston hardware merchant. He was an early abolitionist, defendant in a civilian court-martial in 1864, author, and architectural enthusiast who proposed transforming Washington, D.C. into a "capital of beauty and cultural knowledge".[1]

Early life

Franklin Smith was born into a prominent Beacon Hill family in Boston, Massachusetts on October 9, 1826.[2] His father, Benjamin,[3] was the Tax Collector for the Port of Boston, and his great-grandfather was president of Harvard University.[4]

Mary O. Smith was his mother, and he was the younger brother of Mary O. (Loud) and Benjamin O. Smith,[3] who became his partner in Smith Brothers & Company, a hardware business in Boston.

Smith was a moral and religious man and served as Sunday-school superintendent at his Baptist church, Tremont Temple, which he also helped renovate after a fire.[1][2][5]

YMCA

When Smith was young, his family's wealth permitted him to travel abroad. At age 25, he attended The Great Exhibition in London, where he marveled at the examples of architecture and culture from around the world. Upon his return home, he was asked to raise funds for a new organization, the Young Men's Christian Association. With the memory of his trip still fresh, he planned a world bazaar, which was staged at the Tremont Temple. Facades of famous buildings around the world were constructed and staffed by well-known local residents who dressed in authentic costumes and sold items imported for the event. The function was spectacularly successful,[6] and the YMCA of Boston was the first chapter of the organization in the United States. Smith was elected their first president in 1855.[1][7]

Politics and Family

Smith joined other abolitionists including Anson Burlingame to organize the Republican Party in Massachusetts.[1] He supported the 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln, and attended the inauguration on March 4, 1861, with his wife on their honeymoon.[6] Laura Bevan had been born in Baltimore, Maryland[8] and was several years younger than he. They had three children who lived to adulthood:[9] George Stuart, born in 1863; Lillian, born in 1865; and Nina, born in 1877.[10][11]

U.S. Navy vs Franklin W. Smith

Reformer


Smith Brothers did considerable trade with the military. Whenever Franklin observed dishonesty, he felt compelled to report it to authorities, then wrote an account of each offense, had it printed, and distributed the pamphlets throughout the city. He wrote to the chairman of the House Naval Affairs Committee in 1863 and testified before a Senate committee, resulting in the passage of a law simplifying honest bidding and making manipulation difficult. Smith identified the names of clerks who accepted bribes and created an Analysis of Certain Contracts for the United States Secretary of the Navy. The report showed how specific contractors were able to consistently bid low.

Item / Retail prices / Honest bidder / Other bidder

item A / 100 / 110 / 75
item B / 50 / 60 / 90
-- / === / === / ===
total / 160 / 170 / 165

The other bidder learns that very few or none of item A will be purchased, so he prices that article artificially low and can price item B ridiculously high as long as his total bid is below that of the honest bidder.


The naval bureau chiefs were angered that a civilian contractor questioned their integrity and embarrassed them by appearing before Congress and documenting the charges. Instead of eliminating the dishonesty in their subordinates, they targeted the Smith Brothers. Every transaction with the company was examined, and justification was demanded for every error or imperfect item supplied by the company. Despite the scrutiny, Smith was always able to provide a convincing explanation.[5]

Senate committee

In January 1864, a Senate committee chaired by John Parker Hale formed to investigate naval contract fraud. The Navy brass despised Hale since he helped convince Congress to ban flogging in 1850 and grog rations in 1862. Hearings lasted almost four months, with the Smith brothers providing key testimony. The committee's report was not released until June 29, but it was obvious from testimony that it would confirm Smith's accusations and dismiss the Navy's allegations against the Smith brothers.[5]

Arrest

On June 17, 1864, two weeks after the conclusion of the Hale hearings and two weeks before the report was to be made public, both the Smith brothers were arrested. The timing was not an accident; having the principal witnesses in jail would tend to discredit the Senate report when it was released. Early in the morning, a detail of marines grabbed Franklin and dragged him to a waiting boat, where he was transported across the harbor to Georges Island and Fort Warren. They had no warrant, only a telegraphed order from Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy. The marines broke down the door of Smith Brothers & Company, seizing records and correspondence, then did the same at his residence. Company clerks were arrested when they arrived for work the next morning; they were questioned and released. The business was forced to close because the company's books and papers had been taken. When family members went to post bail, they were told that bail had not been set. Next, no one claimed authority to accept bail for a military charge. When bail was finally set, it was an unbelievable half a million dollars. However, Smith was so highly regarded by his fellow businessmen that nearly $1 million was pledged in less than two days. Even then, Smith was denied counsel and visitors. The Massachusetts Congressional delegation, including Charles Sumner, Henry Wilson, Henry L. Dawes, George S. Boutwell, William B. Washburn, Thomas D. Eliot, John Denison Baldwin and John B. Alley went to the office of Navy Secretary Welles and offered to guarantee Smith's court appearance personally, but to no avail. Smith was finally released on July 1, two weeks after his arrest and two days after the Hale report was submitted to Congress. At the time, he still had not been charged with a specific crime, just "fraud upon the United States" and "wilful neglect of duty as a contractor" with the Navy. However, his bond was lowered to $20,000.[5]

Court martial

Smith expected to be tried in United States federal courts. Instead, he was ordered to report to a military general court-martial in Philadelphia, 266 miles (428 km) distant.

During the Civil War, such a surprising number of dishonest contractors had taken advantage of the Army and Navy's need for war material that a legal provision was enacted by Congress on July 17, 1862 which stated that any civilian who supplied material under contract to the military became a member of the military and was subject to court-martial.[5][12]

Once again, the Massachusetts Congressional delegation talked to Welles, but got nowhere. They appealed to President Abraham Lincoln, who read a tribute to Smith's reputation that Senator Sumner had written and the other congressmen had endorsed, then scanned the testimonial to Smith's business integrity, signed by ninety prominent Boston merchants. Lincoln offered to have the case dismissed. Senator Sumner replied,

Mr. President, we trust you will do nothing of the sort. To do that would leave a stigma on a good man's name. Smith Brothers want it never to be said that this charge was fixed up through influence. They challenge the fight but want protection against a conspiracy and a court chosen by their enemies. We only come to ask you that when the court convicts, as it is evident it means to do, you will personally review the case.[5]


Lincoln agreed and pledged, "If I find that men have been pursuing the Smiths, I will lay my long hand upon them, no matter who they are."[5] He then ordered that the court-martial be conducted in Boston and asked Navy Secretary Welles to send him the trial record at the conclusion for his review. Welles was told to delay execution of the sentence until the president gave his approval.

Trial

The trial began September 15, 1864 and lasted four months, with the Navy questioning fewer than a dozen transactions among 12,554 items totalling $1.2 million in government purchases from the Smith Brothers. Only one article — a delivery of Revely Tin metal was supplied instead of the Banca variety — shorted the Navy, by $100–200. Predictably, the trial ended in judgment against the defendants, who were sentenced to two years in prison and fined $25,000. The judgment and sentence were approved by the Secretary of the Navy; all that remained was a presidential sanction.[5]

Presidential action

Charles Sumner again met with President Lincoln on the Smiths' behalf. The president asked Sumner to review the lengthy report from the Navy Secretary which identified the key elements in the court-martial, then render an opinion. Senator Sumner studied the document overnight and wrote an opinion which summarized the treatment of Franklin Smith:

It is hard that citizens enjoying a good name, who had the misfortune to come into business relations with the Government, should be exposed to such a spirit; that they should be dragged from their homes, and hurried to a military prison; that, though civilians, they should be treated as military offenders; that they should be compelled to undergo a protracted trial by courtmartial, damaging their good name, destroying their peace, breaking up their business, and subjecting them to untold expense,—when, at the slightest touch, the whole case vanishes into thin air, leaving behind nothing but the incomprehensible spirit in which it had its origin. Of course, the findings and sentence of the Court ought, without delay, to be set aside. But this is only the beginning of justice. Some positive reparation should be made to citizens who have been so deeply injured.[12]


After reflection, the president wrote his decision to Welles, the court-martial board and the Navy:

I am unwilling for the sentence to stand and be executed, to any extent, in this case. In the absence of a more adequate motive than the evidence discloses, I am wholly unable to believe in the existence of criminal or fraudulent intent on the part of one of such well-established good character as is the accused. If the evidence went as far toward establishing a guilty profit of one or two hundred thousand dollars, as it does of one or two hundred dollars, the case would, on the question of guilt, bear a far different aspect. That on this contract, involving from one million to twelve hundred thousand dollars, the contractors should attempt a fraud which at the most could profit them only one or two hundred, or even one thousand dollars, is to my mind beyond the power of rational belief. That they did not, in such a case, strike for greater gains proves that they did not, with guilty or fraudulent intent, strike at all. The judgment and sentence are disapproved and declared null, and the accused ordered to be discharged.[5][12]


Lincoln never got the opportunity to "lay my long hand upon them" who pursued the Smiths. A few short weeks after the president vacated the sentence, he was killed by an assassin's bullet.

Aftermath

After he was freed by Lincoln, Smith spent some time restoring his business. When the city mourned the death of the president, Smith was asked to lead the gathering at Tremont Temple. He then decided to go abroad and left for Europe.[13][14]

There were three issues at the center of these events: The first was control of the military. The secretary of the Navy is a civilian, but he was manipulated by his assistant secretary, a career officer, into persecuting an innocent man, thereby allowing the military to follow its own agenda. Lincoln's actions shifted the power back to civilian control.[5]

Second was the attempt by Congress to suspend the constitutional rights of individual citizens in defiance of the Bill of Rights. The basic constitutional rights of habeas corpus, a jury of peers, and a grand jury hearing before being charged, were not accorded those facing military court-martial. The 1862 Military Contractor Court-Martial act that was the basis for Smith's trial was declared unconstitutional by a federal circuit court in Kentucky in 1866 when considering a case similar to that of Franklin Smith.[5]

Finally, the president upheld the rights of an individual against the nearly unlimited resources and power of a federal government agency, which Lincoln called, "a fight between a department and a citizen, and the citizen has no fair show".[5] Lincoln was protecting an honest man from retribution by those in power.

Utopia

Main article: Rugby, Tennessee

The Long Depression of 1873–79 resulted in the unemployment of thousands of former industrial workers. Smith authored four articles which were published in the Boston Advertiser in 1877, and the Boston Board of Aid to Land Ownership was formed that year "to divert workers from surplus in manufacturing to Tillage of the Earth--the basis of all industries, and the primary source of all wealth".[7] The board selected a committee to investigate possible locations for a settlement. After learning that the Cincinnati Southern Railroad was constructing a rail line to the area, they chose the Cumberland Plateau in Tennessee. Smith, who was president of the board, travelled to Tennessee in 1878 and selected a site, engaged a surveyor to plot the town, and an architect to design a hotel there. The location, which Smith named Plateau City, was the most beautiful he found. It overlooked river gorges, contained broad hills and had sweeping mountain vistas, but it was seven long miles from the railroad. By this time, the depression was ending, and unemployment was falling. A few Bostonians were reconsidering their investment in the venture, so Smith found additional investors through Thomas Hughes, the English social reformer. Hughes wanted to establish a utopian settlement for younger sons of English gentry which was classless, because class conventions in England prevented those born into high society from becoming tradesmen or farmers.[7] In 1879, the London Board of Aid to Land Ownership became the primary investors in the Tennessee project and renamed the colony Rugby. Smith thought that the key to growth was to become a resort, where guests would buy land and settle there. Hughes disagreed and refused to spend time or money on tourist endeavors. When Smith realized that his ideas was being ignored, he divested himself of the project in 1880 and took another trip abroad.[7]

St. Augustine

Travel


As a prosperous man, Smith enjoyed traveling throughout Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, studying architecture and the history of past civilizations. During his lifetime, he took more than a dozen trips across the Atlantic, and purchased numerous works of art and artifacts.[7][13][14]

Smith's in-laws were Quakers, but they were financially able to construct and travel to a winter home near St. Augustine, Florida after the Civil War. Following a trip to Florida to visit his wife's family, Smith decided to build his own winter residence there, but wanted his house to stand out, both in design and composition. On his next tour abroad in 1882, Smith traveled through southern Spain and found his inspiration when he toured the 12th-century Moorish Alhambra Palace in Granada, Spain. The remainder of the excursion was spent searching Spain, Egypt and Morocco for decorations and furniture.[15] On Lake Geneva in Switzerland, Smith observed the construction of a Château which used sand from the lake bottom to make concrete; thus he solved his question of building material.[16]

Image
Villa Zorayda in the 1900s

Residence

Main article: Villa Zorayda

In December 1883, Smith engaged a Boston mason to come to Florida to help build a special structure. They experimented making concrete blocks that used crushed coquina along with Portland cement. Satisfied with the results, they began to construct the Villa Zorayda cast in courses ten inches (254 mm) tall. After 48 hours, the concrete had hardened enough to pour the next course. The process was repeated until the desired height was reached, and the resulting structure was nearly monolithic. The material grew harder with age; after one month, it was as hard as building stone. The outside of the Villa Zorayda appears as three separate sections. To maintain structural integrity, there are railroad rails within the walls that extend the entire width of the erection.[16] The Zorayda was not a copy of the Alhambra; it was an amalgamation of Moorish style.[17]

Revolution

Moorish Revival architecture became the style of choice in St. Augustine. Across the country, building construction utilizing poured concrete became all the rage and replaced more costly brick in many applications.

In 1883, Henry Morrison Flagler and his new, young wife traveled to St. Augustine for their honeymoon and were impressed with Villa Zorayda. Flagler offered to buy it for his bride, but Smith would not sell. However, he planted the seed of St. Augustine's and Florida's future in Flagler's mind.[18]

Flagler returned to St. Augustine in 1885 and made Smith an offer. If Smith could raise $50,000, Flagler would invest $150,000 and they would build a hotel together. Perhaps fortunately for Smith, he couldn't come up with the funds,[19] so Flagler began construction of the 540-room Ponce de León Hotel by himself, but spent several times his original estimate. Smith helped train the masons on the mixing and pouring techniques he used on Zorayda.[20]

Image
Casa Monica Hotel, renamed the Cordova Hotel c. 1891

Hotel

Main article: Casa Monica Hotel

Henry Flagler sold Smith the land on which Smith built the Casa Monica Hotel in 1887. The Casa Monica is an impressive five-story structure, 400 feet (120 m) wide with towers on each end rising 100 feet (30 m), topped with tiled roofs. There are architectural features including turrets, balconies, parapets, ornate railings, cornices, arches, and battlements on the exterior, all composed of poured concrete and coquina.[16] The flagpole in the center of the building serves a dual purpose: it is also a lightning rod. The hotel contained 138 guest rooms, including 14 suites. Several suites are located in the towers, with up to 3 bedrooms, and occupy 2 to 4 floors. The hotel opened on January 1, 1888 but Smith had financial troubles and was forced to sell it to Flagler after the winter season ended[21] for $325,000. Smith built a shopping arcade across from the hotels where the hotel guests could spend money.[22]

Pompeia

After selling the Casa Monica, Smith left St. Augustine and moved to Saratoga Springs, New York. He wanted to create something educational to add culture to the town instead of gambling and horse racing for which it was known. Beginning in 1888, Smith built a full-scale reconstruction of a compilation of villas described in Edward Bulwer-Lytton's novel, The Last Days of Pompeii. The structure was 75 feet (23 m) wide and 200 feet (61 m) deep, for a total of 15,000 square feet (1,400 m2).[23] It was completed in 1889 and named Pompeia, or House of Pansa and furnished in the style of that era, 79 A.D. Smith commissioned artists and historians to copy the architecture, statues and paintings that would present a picture of the lifestyle of a Roman nobleman nearly two thousand years ago. Many of the artifacts and sculptures he purchased in Europe were displayed in the Pompeia.

The structure became a popular attraction for visitors, drawing over 60,000 people in the first four years.[14] Smith wanted all schools in the region to visit Pompeia each year. His plan for the Acropolis and National Galleries was refined during his time there.[13]

Stupendous scheme

Franklin Smith travelled Europe extensively during his lifetime, studying the great architectural achievements and art from bygone eras. For one hundred years, the United States had directed its efforts toward industrial and commercial development while neglecting cultural development. Because America had no equivalent to the great national museums abroad, Smith began to form a plan for Washington, D.C. that would include the best work from eight major civilizations in history.

Image
Design & Prospectus for the National Gallery

In the Spring of 1890, noted architect James Renwick, Jr. was in Florida working on the bell tower design for the Cathedral Basilica of St. Augustine. One evening, he and his wife listened to Smith deliver a speech to garner support for his Design and Prospectus for a National Gallery of History of Art at Washington. Renwick endorsed the idea and offered to provide drawings, plans and illustrations for the project. Smith gratefully accepted and the firm of 'Renwick, Aspinwall & Russell' spent six months completing their contribution.[24]

In 1891, Smith paid to print his Design and Prospectus... and distributed it widely at major cities in the northeast. Smith delivered a series of lectures, beginning at the Boston Art Club, then the Maryland Institute College of Art at Baltimore, Philadelphia's Drexel Institute, and finally New York University on December 17, 1892.[1][14] However, the Panic of 1893 and depression that followed forced Smith to delay his plan until the world's economies began to recover in 1898.

Smith took every opportunity to talk about his grand scheme wherever he was, and he travelled constantly. He was a charming, enthusiastic speaker, and he made his lectures interesting. He was able to persuade many influential people to endorse his vision, and gained widespread support. Smith insisted that all he needed was $10 million and 70 acres (280,000 m2) of land.[14]

He lobbied both the House and the Senate, and made certain every member had a copy of his Design and Prospectus. He kept a file of 225 newspaper articles from 51 cities in 25 states that endorsed his plan. Another file held letters of support from politicians, educators, businessmen, scholars, museums and architects.

Image
Halls of the Ancients in 1907

Prototype

Smith designed a museum in Washington D.C. and Samuel Walter Woodward, founder of the Woodward & Lothrop department store chain, financed the construction at 1312 New York Avenue.[1] It was built as an example of the historical and cultural displays that Smith advocated in his "Design and Prospectus". The Halls of the Ancients opened on February 4, 1899, with the entrance based on Great Hypostyle Hall, Karnak. Besides Egypt, the museum contained Greek and Roman sections that included furnishings and works of art that were historically accurate reproductions. The New York Times called it "A novel, artistic and educational institution".[25][26]

Petition

Smith found a like-minded man in Massachusetts Senator George Frisbie Hoar, who presented Smith's petition to Congress on February 12, 1900. It was identified as Senate document number 209 by the 56th Congress, First Session, and 5,000 copies were printed.[1] Unfortunately for Smith, the United States was engaged in the Philippine–American War, and Senator Hoar was one of President William McKinley's strongest critics. The majority of politicians were so preoccupied with the war that they paid scant attention to an issue of culture. When Hoar died in 1904, Smith's plan died with him.[27] With no lawmaker to shepherd the legislation, it never made it out of committee.

Image
Artist Conception of the National Gallery

Laura Smith separated from her husband during the 1890s. In the 1900 census, Franklin Smith's marital status was listed as "widowed",[28] but Laura Smith did not die until 1915.[9] The year 1906 ended Smith's dreams when the banks foreclosed on his properties in St. Augustine, Washington, D.C. and Saratoga Springs. Smith died in anonymity and poverty five years later,[1] disowned by his family and residing with his older sister Mary in Boston.[29] He was buried in the Smith family plot of Mount Auburn Cemetery at Cambridge, Massachusetts.[9]

The Halls of the Ancients eventually was demolished and the site became a parking garage.[27] During Prohibition, Villa Zorayda was a speakeasy with casino gambling, but today it is a museum.[17] Pompeia was partially destroyed by a fire in 1926, became a Shriners Hall, and today is occupied by an advertising agency.[13] The Casa Monica Hotel was purchased in 1997, renovated to its original grandeur, and re-opened in 1999.[30]

In 2000, Franklin Smith was designated a Great Floridian by the Florida Department of State for his contributions in the development of Florida. His Great Floridian plaque is located at the Casa Monica Hotel in St. Augustine.[2]

Publications

• The Conspiracy In The U. S. Navy Department Against Franklin W. Smith Of Boston, 1861-1865 ISBN 1-141-49341-1 Nabu Press (1865)
• Wooden ships superseded by iron: Cheap Iron Indispensable For The Revival Of American Commerce ISBN 1-120-95925-X A. Mudge & Son (1869)
• The Hard Times; Agricultural Development The True Remedy ISBN 1-148-94976-3 (1877)
• The Pompeia: A Reproduction Of The House Of Pansa, In Pompeii, Buried By Vesuvius ISBN 1-104-32226-9 Kessinger Publishing (1889)
• Design & Prospectus for the National Gallery of Art and History ASIN 110497374X Gibson Brothers (1891)
• National Galleries Of History And Art: Descriptive Handbook Of The Halls Of The Ancients ISBN 1-104-97374-X Kessinger Publishing (1900)

References

1. Dahl, Curtis: "Mr. Smith’s American Acropolis" Archived 2008-12-01 at the Wayback Machine American Heritage Magazine, June 1956
2. "Franklin Waldo Smith" Archived August 24, 2006, at the Wayback Machine State of Florida, Division of Historical Resources
3. "1830 United States Federal Census" Ancestry.com, Franklin W. Smith
4. Nolan, David: Fifty Feet in Paradise, Harcourt Brace, Jovanovich Publishers, 1984, page 84
5. Dahl, Curtis: "Lincoln Saves a Reformer" Archived 2008-11-21 at the Wayback Machine American Heritage Magazine, October 1972
6. Nolan, David: Fifty Feet in Paradise, Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich Publishers, 1984, page 85
7. Howell, Benita J.: "Franklin Webster Smith of Boston: Architect of Tourism in Rugby, Tennessee" Border States: Journal of the Kentucky-Tennessee American Studies Association, 2003
8. "Great Floridians 2000 Franklin Waldo Smith" City of St. Augustine
9. "Eglantine Path, Lot 2284"[permanent dead link] Mount Auburn Cemetery
10. "1870 Census records" United States Census
11. "Duryea-Smith" Baltimore Sun (May 31, 1898): 10. via Newspapers.com
12. Sumner, Charles: The Works of Charles Sumner, Volume 9" OCLC 634014456, page 357-361
13. Berry, Jo: "Reconstructing the history of the Pompeia, Saratoga Springs" Blogging Pompeii, August 16, 2009
14. "FOR A NATIONAL GALLERY; OUTLINE OF FRANKLIN W. SMITH'S STUPENDOUS SCHEME" New York Times, December 17, 1892
15. Nolan, David: Fifty Feet in Paradise, Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich Publishers, 1984, page 87
16. "Franklin W. Smith" Dr. Bronson's St. Augustine History
17. "History of the Villa Zorayda" Archived 2008-08-19 at the Wayback Machine Villa Zorayda Museum
18. Nolan, David: Fifty Feet in Paradise, Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich Publishers, 1984, page 95
19. Nolan, David: Fifty Feet in Paradise, Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich Publishers, 1984, page 101
20. Nolan, David: Fifty Feet in Paradise, Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich Publishers, 1984, page 105
21. "Casa Monica Hotel History" Casa Monica Hotel
22. Nolan, David: Fifty Feet in Paradise, Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich Publishers, 1984, page 117
23. Smith, Franklin W.: "Design and Prospectus for a National Gallery of History of Art at Washington" Page 12, Gibson Brothers 1891
24. Smith, Franklin W.: "Design and Prospectus for a National Gallery of History of Art at Washington" Page 10, Gibson Brothers 1891
25. "Nucleus of a National Institution Opened in Washington" New York Times, February 5, 1899
26. Baedeker, Karl: "Halls of the Ancients" The United States: with an excursion into Mexico, 1904, pages 322-323
27. Williams, Paul Kelsey: "Scenes from the Past…" InTowner magazine, December 2004
28. "1900 United States Federal Census" Ancestry.com, Franklin W. Smith
29. "1910 United States Federal Census" Ancestry.com, Franklin W. Smith
30. Treen, Dana: "Grande opening" Florida Times-Union, December 6, 1999
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Re: Freda Bedi Cont'd (#2)

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Model village
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 4/15/20

This article is about full size villages, typically built for factory workers. For miniature model villages, see miniature park. For the place in Ireland, see Model Village, County Cork.

Image
Almshouses in Saltaire, Yorkshire, typical of the architecture of the whole village

A model village is a type of mostly self-contained community, built from the late 18th century onwards by landowners and business magnates to house their workers. Although the villages are located close to the workplace, they are generally physically separated from them and often consist of relatively high quality housing, with integrated community amenities and attractive physical environments. "Model" is used in the sense of an ideal to which other developments could aspire.

British Isles

Image
An example of houses at Port Sunlight.

Image
Typical local shopping parade in Bournville village

The term model village was first used by the Victorians to describe the new settlements created on the rural estates of the landed gentry in the eighteenth century. As landowners sought to improve their estates for aesthetic reasons, new landscapes were created and the cottages of the poor were demolished and rebuilt out of sight of their country house vistas.[1] New villages were created at Nuneham Courtenay when the village was rebuilt as plain brick dwellings either side of the main road, at Milton Abbas the village was moved and rebuilt in a rustic style and Blaise Hamlet in Bristol had individually designed buildings, some with thatched roofs.[2]

The Swing Riots of 1830 highlighted poor housing in the countryside, ill health and immorality and landowners had a responsibility to provide cottages with basic sanitation. The best landlords provided accommodation but many adopted a paternalistic attitude when they built model dwellings and imposed their own standards on the tenants charging low rents but paying low wages.[3]

As the Industrial Revolution took hold, industrialists who built factories in rural locations provided housing for workers clustered around the workplace. An early example of an industrial model village was New Lanark built by Robert Owen.[4] Philanthropic coal owners provided decent accommodation for miners from the early nineteenth century. Earl Fitzwilliam, a paternalistic colliery owner provided houses near his coal pits in Elsecar near Barnsley that were "...of a class superior in size and arrangement, and in conveniences attached, to those of working classes."[5] They had four rooms and a pantry, and outside a small garden and pig sty.[6]

Others were established by Edward Akroyd at Copley between 1849 and 1853 and Ackroyden 1861-63. Akroyd employed Giles Gilbert Scott. Titus Salt built a model village at Saltaire.[7] Henry Ripley, owner of Bowling Dyeworks, began construction of Ripley Ville in Bradford in 1866.[8] Industrial communities were established at Price's Village[9] by Price's Patent Candle Company and at Aintree by Hartley's, who made jam, in 1888.[10] William Lever's Port Sunlight had a village green and its houses espoused an idealised rural vernacular style.[7] Quaker industrialists, George Cadbury and Rowntrees built model villages by their factories. Cadbury built Bournville between 1898 and 1905 and a second phase from 1914 and New Earswick was built in 1902 for Rowntrees.[11]

As coal mining expanded villages were built to house coal miners. In Yorkshire, Grimethorpe, Goldthorpe, Woodlands, Fitzwilliam and Bottom Boat were built to house workers at the collieries. The architect who designed Woodlands and Creswell Model Villages, Percy B. Houfton was influential in the development of the garden city movement.

In the 1920s Silver End model village in Essex was built for Francis Henry Crittall. Its houses were designed in an art deco-style with flat roofs and Crittall windows.[12] The more recent development of Poundbury, a model village in rural Dorset has been supported by the Prince of Wales.

England

Image
Almshouses at Ripley Ville, Yorkshire. Built 1881 and now the only remaining example of the architecture of the village

(Chronological order)

• Trowse, Norfolk (1805)
• Blaise Hamlet, Gloucestershire (1811)
• Selworthy, Somerset (1828)
• Barrow Bridge, Bolton (1830s)[13]
• Snelston, Derbyshire (1840s)
• Swindon Railway Village, Wiltshire (1840s)
• Withnell Fold, Lancashire (1844)
• Meltham, Yorkshire (1850)
• Bromborough Pool ("Price's Village") (1853)
• Saltaire, Yorkshire (1853)
• Akroydon, Yorkshire (1859)
• Nenthead, Cumberland (1861)
• New Sharlston Colliery Village, Yorkshire (1864)[14]
• Ripley Ville, Yorkshire (1866)
• Copley, Yorkshire (1874)
• Howe Bridge, Lancashire (1873–79)
• Bournville, Worcestershire (1879)
• Barwick Hertfordshire (1888)
• Port Sunlight, Cheshire (1888)[15]
• Creswell Model Village, Derbyshire (1895)[16]
• New Bolsover model village, Derbyshire (1896)[17]
• Vickerstown, Lancashire (1901)
• New Earswick, Yorkshire (1904)[18]
• Woodlands, Yorkshire (1905)[19]
• Whiteley Village, Surrey (1907)
• The Garden Village, Kingston upon Hull, Yorkshire (1908)
• Silver End, Essex (1926)
• Stewartby, Bedfordshire (1926)
• Poundbury, Dorset (construction started 1993; ongoing)

Ireland

• Milford, County Armagh, Northern Ireland (1800s)
• Portlaw, County Waterford, Republic of Ireland (1825)
• Sion Mills, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland (1835)
• Bessbrook, County Armagh, Northern Ireland (1845)
• Laurelvale, County Armagh, Northern Ireland (1850s)
• Model Village, County Cork (1910s; usually called Tower, the name of the pre-existing hamlet)

Scotland

• New Lanark, Lanarkshire (1786)

Wales

• Tremadog, Caernarfonshire (1798)
• Elan Village, Powys (1892)
• Portmeirion, Merioneth (1925)

Europe

Germany


• Stadt des KdF-Wagens was built for the Volkswagen factory.

Italy

• Crespi d’Adda in the Lombardy region, is a well-preserved model workers' village, and World Heritage Site since 1995. It was built from scratch, starting in 1878, to provide housing and social services for the workers in a cotton textile factory on the banks of the river Adda.[citation needed]

Image
Crespi d’Adda

Spain

• Nuevo Baztán outside Madrid dates from the mercantilist and entrepreneurial ambitions of an industrialist from the early-eighteenth century.

Australasia

New Zealand


• Barrhill was laid out by its Scottish owner for the workers on his large sheep farm[20]

See also

• Company town
• New Towns in the United Kingdom
Garden city movement

References

Citations


1. Burchardt 2002, p. 58
2. Burchardt 2002, p. 59
3. Burchardt 2002, p. 60
4. Burchardt 2002, p. 61
5. Thornes 1994, p. 78
6. Thornes 1994, p. 79
7. Burchardt 2002, p. 62
8. Walker, R L (2008) When was Ripleyville Built? SEQUALS, ISBN 0 9532139 2 7
9. Historic England, "Prices Village (1560975)", PastScape, retrieved 10 May 2014
10. Hartley's jam village made a conservation area, BBC News, 16 December 2011
11. Burchardt 2002, p. 63
12. Silver End - a window on the past, BBC, 22 July 2009, retrieved 20 June 2015
13. Barrow Bridge Conservation Area (PDF), bolton.gov.uk, archived from the original (PDF) on 25 August 2012, retrieved 28 July 2011
14. Sharlston Colliery Model Village, Heritage Gateway, retrieved 13 August 2015
15. Historic England, "Port Sunlight (1362582)", PastScape, retrieved 10 May 2014
16. Historic England, "The Model Village (929805)", PastScape, retrieved 10 May 2014
17. Historic England, "New Bolsover Model Village (613327)", PastScape, retrieved 10 May 2014
18. The garden village of New Earswick (PDF), Joseph Rowntree Housing Trust, p. 2, archived from the original (PDF) on 4 October 2013, retrieved 10 May 2014
19. A study of Woodlands Model Colliery Village 1907-1909, Royal Institute of British Architects, retrieved 10 May 2014
20. Pawson, Eric. "Wason, John Cathcart". Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Ministry for Culture and Heritage. Retrieved 31 July 2010.

Bibliography

• Burchardt, Jeremy (2002), Paradise Lost: Rural Idyll and Social Change Since 1800, I. B. Tauris, ISBN 1860645143
• Thornes, Robin (1994), Images of Industry: Coal, Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England, ISBN 1-873592-23-X

Further reading

• Gillian Darley's 'Villages of Vision: A Study of Strange Utopias' first published 1975 (Architectural Press, pb 1978 Paladin) and republished with fully revised gazetteer 2007 (Five Leaves Publications)

External links

• Media related to Planned communities at Wikimedia Commons
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Re: Freda Bedi Cont'd (#2)

Postby admin » Wed Apr 15, 2020 8:58 am

Transcendentalism
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 4/15/20

What is popularly called Transcendentalism among us, is Idealism; Idealism as it appears in 1842....mankind have ever divided into two sects, Materialists and Idealists; the first class founding on experience, the second on consciousness; the first class beginning to think from the data of the senses, the second class perceive that the senses are not final, and say, the senses give us representations of things, but what are the things themselves, they cannot tell. The materialist insists on facts, on history, on the force of circumstances, and the animal wants of man; the idealist on the power of Thought and of Will, on inspiration, on miracle, on individual culture....Every materialist will be an idealist; but an idealist can never go backward to be a materialist.

The idealist, in speaking of events, sees them as spirits....He does not deny the presence of this table, this chair, and the walls of this room, but he looks at these things as the reverse side of the tapestry, as the other end, each being a sequel or completion of a spiritual fact which nearly concerns him. This manner of looking at things, transfers every object in nature from an independent and anomalous position without there, into the consciousness....

The idealist takes his departure from his consciousness, and reckons the world an appearance...which is metaphysical....Mind is the only reality, of which men and all other natures are better or worse reflectors. Nature, literature, history, are only subjective phenomena.... His experience inclines him to behold the procession of facts you call the world, as flowing perpetually outward from an invisible, unsounded centre in himself, centre alike of him and of them, and necessitating him to regard all things as having a subjective or relative existence, relative to that aforesaid Unknown Centre of him.

From this transfer of the world into the consciousness, this beholding of all things in the mind, follow easily his whole ethics. It is simpler to be self-dependent. The height, the deity of man is, to be self-sustained, to need no gift, no foreign force. Society is good when it does not violate me; but best when it is likest to solitude. Everything real is self-existent. Everything divine shares the self-existence of Deity. All that you call the world is the shadow of that substance which you are, the perpetual creation of the powers of thought, of those that are dependent and of those that are independent of your will. Do not cumber yourself with fruitless pains to mend and remedy remote effects; let the soul be erect, and all things will go well. You think me the child of my circumstances: I make my circumstance. Let any thought or motive of mine be different from that they are, the difference will transform my condition and economy. I — this thought which is called I, — is the mould into which the world is poured like melted wax. The mould is invisible, but the world betrays the shape of the mould. You call it the power of circumstance, but it is the power of me....

The Transcendentalist adopts the whole connection of spiritual doctrine. He believes in miracle, in the perpetual openness of the human mind to new influx of light and power; he believes in inspiration, and in ecstasy. He wishes that the spiritual principle should be suffered to demonstrate itself to the end, in all possible applications to the state of man, without the admission of anything unspiritual... the spiritual measure of inspiration is the depth of the thought, and never, who said it?...

[H]e, who has the Lawgiver, may with safety not only neglect, but even contravene every written commandment....

Jacobi, refusing all measure of right and wrong except the determinations of the private spirit, remarks that there is no crime but has sometimes been a virtue. "I," he says, "am that atheist, that godless person who, in opposition to an imaginary doctrine of calculation, would lie as the dying Desdemona lied; would lie and deceive, as Pylades when he personated Orestes; would assassinate like Timoleon; would perjure myself like Epaminondas, and John de Witt; I would resolve on suicide like Cato; I would commit sacrilege with David; yea, and pluck ears of corn on the Sabbath, for no other reason than that I was fainting for lack of food. For, I have assurance in myself, that, in pardoning these faults according to the letter, man exerts the sovereign right which the majesty of his being confers on him; he sets the seal of his divine nature to the grace he accords."

In like manner, if there is anything grand and daring in human thought or virtue, any reliance on the vast, the unknown; any presentiment; any extravagance of faith, the spiritualist adopts it as most in nature. The oriental mind has always tended to this largeness. Buddhism is an expression of it....

[O]f a purely spiritual life, history has afforded no example. I mean, we have yet no man who has leaned entirely on his character, and eaten angels' food; who, trusting to his sentiments, found life made of miracles; who, working for universal aims, found himself fed, he knew not how; clothed, sheltered, and weaponed, he knew not how, and yet it was done by his own hands. Only in the instinct of the lower animals, we find the suggestion of the methods of it, and something higher than our understanding. The squirrel hoards nuts, and the bee gathers honey, without knowing what they do, and they are thus provided for without selfishness or disgrace....

Nature is transcendental, exists primarily, necessarily, ever works and advances, yet takes no thought for the morrow....

It is well known to most of my audience, that the Idealism of the present day acquired the name of Transcendental, from the use of that term by Immanuel Kant, of Konigsberg, who replied to the skeptical philosophy of Locke, which insisted that there was nothing in the intellect which was not previously in the experience of the senses, by showing that there was a very important class of ideas, or imperative forms, which did not come by experience, but through which experience was acquired; that these were intuitions of the mind itself; and he denominated them Transcendental forms....whatever belongs to the class of intuitive thought, is popularly called at the present day Transcendental....

[T]hese seething brains, these admirable radicals, these unsocial worshippers, these talkers who talk the sun and moon away....

They are lonely; the spirit of their writing and conversation is lonely; they repel influences; they shun general society; they incline to shut themselves in their chamber in the house, to live in the country rather than in the town, and to find their tasks and amusements in solitude....they are not stockish or brute, — but joyous; susceptible, affectionate; they have even more than others a great wish to be loved. Like the young Mozart, they are rather ready to cry ten times a day, "But are you sure you love me?"...

[A]nd what if they eat clouds, and drink wind, they have not been without service to the race of man.

With this passion for what is great and extraordinary, it cannot be wondered at, that they are repelled by vulgarity and frivolity in people. They say to themselves, It is better to be alone than in bad company. And it is really a wish to be met, — the wish to find society for their hope and religion, — which prompts them to shun what is called society. They feel that they are never so fit for friendship, as when they have quitted mankind, and taken themselves to friend. A picture, a book, a favorite spot in the hills or the woods, which they can people with the fair and worthy creation of the fancy, can give them often forms so vivid, that these for the time shall seem real, and society the illusion....

[U]nwillingly they bear their part of the public and private burdens; they do not willingly share in the public charities, in the public religious rites, in the enterprises of education, of missions foreign or domestic, in the abolition of the slave-trade, or in the temperance society. They do not even like to vote....

On the part of these children, it is replied, that life and their faculty seem to them gifts too rich to be squandered on such trifles as you propose to them. What you call your fundamental institutions, your great and holy causes, seem to them great abuses, and, when nearly seen, paltry matters. Each 'Cause,' as it is called, — say Abolition, Temperance, say Calvinism, or Unitarianism, — becomes speedily a little shop, where the article, let it have been at first never so subtle and ethereal, is now made up into portable and convenient cakes, and retailed in small quantities to suit purchasers. You make very free use of these words 'great' and 'holy,' but few things appear to them such. Few persons have any magnificence of nature to inspire enthusiasm, and the philanthropies and charities have a certain air of quackery. As to the general course of living, and the daily employments of men, they cannot see much virtue in these, since they are parts of this vicious circle; and, as no great ends are answered by the men, there is nothing noble in the arts by which they are maintained. Nay, they have made the experiment, and found that, from the liberal professions to the coarsest manual labor, and from the courtesies of the academy and the college to the conventions of the cotillon-room and the morning call, there is a spirit of cowardly compromise and seeming, which intimates a frightful skepticism, a life without love, and an activity without an aim....

It is the quality of the moment, not the number of days, of events, or of actors, that imports....

I can sit in a corner and perish, (as you call it,) but I will not move until I have the highest command....

[M]ine is a certain brief experience, which surprised me in the highway or in the market, in some place, at some time...and made me aware that I had played the fool with fools all this time, but that law existed for me and for all; that to me belonged trust, a child's trust and obedience, and the worship of ideas, and I should never be fool more....My life is superficial, takes no root in the deep world; I ask, When shall I die, and be relieved of the responsibility of seeing an Universe which I do not use? I wish to exchange this flash-of-lightning faith for continuous daylight, this fever-glow for a benign climate....

What am I? What but a thought of serenity and independence, an abode in the deep blue sky?...

But this class are not sufficiently characterized, if we omit to add that they are lovers and worshippers of Beauty. In the eternal trinity of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty, each in its perfection including the three, they prefer to make Beauty the sign and head....We call the Beautiful the highest, because it appears to us the golden mean, escaping the dowdiness of the good, and the heartlessness of the true. — They are lovers of nature also, and find an indemnity in the inviolable order of the world for the violated order and grace of man....

Their heart is the ark in which the fire is concealed, which shall burn in a broader and universal flame. Let them obey the Genius then most when his impulse is wildest; then most when he seems to lead to uninhabitable deserts of thought and life; for the path which the hero travels alone is the highway of health and benefit to mankind....

[T]here must be a few persons of purer fire kept specially as gauges and meters of character; persons of a fine, detecting instinct, who betray the smallest accumulations of wit and feeling in the bystander. Perhaps too there might be room for the exciters and monitors; collectors of the heavenly spark with power to convey the electricity to others....

But the thoughts which these few hermits strove to proclaim by silence, as well as by speech, not only by what they did, but by what they forbore to do, shall abide in beauty and strength, to reorganize themselves in nature, to invest themselves anew in other, perhaps higher endowed and happier mixed clay than ours, in fuller union with the surrounding system.

-- A Lecture Read at the Masonic Temple, Boston: The Transcendentalist, from Lectures, published as part of Nature; Addresses and Lectures, by Ralph Waldo Emerson


Transcendentalism is a philosophical movement that developed in the late 1820s and 1830s in the eastern United States.[1][2][3] A core belief is in the inherent goodness of people and nature.[1] and while society and its institutions have corrupted the purity of the individual, people are at their best when truly "self-reliant" and independent.

Transcendentalism emphasizes subjective intuition over objective empiricism. Adherents believe that individuals are capable of generating completely original insights with little attention and deference to past masters. It arose as a reaction, to protest against the general state of intellectualism and spirituality at the time.[4] The doctrine of the Unitarian church as taught at Harvard Divinity School was closely related.

Transcendentalism emerged from "English and German Romanticism, the Biblical criticism of Johann Gottfried Herder and Friedrich Schleiermacher, the skepticism of David Hume",[1] and the transcendental philosophy of Immanuel Kant and German Idealism. Miller and Versluis regard Emanuel Swedenborg as a pervasive influence on transcendentalism.[5][6] It was also strongly influenced by Hindu texts on philosophy of the mind and spirituality, especially the Upanishads.

Origin

Transcendentalism is closely related to Unitarianism, the dominant religious movement in Boston in the early nineteenth century. It started to develop after Unitarianism took hold at Harvard University, following the elections of Henry Ware as the Hollis Professor of Divinity in 1805 and of John Thornton Kirkland as President in 1810. Transcendentalism was not a rejection of Unitarianism; rather, it developed as an organic consequence of the Unitarian emphasis on free conscience and the value of intellectual reason. The transcendentalists were not content with the sobriety, mildness, and calm rationalism of Unitarianism. Instead, they longed for a more intense spiritual experience. Thus, transcendentalism was not born as a counter-movement to Unitarianism, but as a parallel movement to the very ideas introduced by the Unitarians.[7]

Transcendental Club

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Ralph Waldo Emerson

Transcendentalism became a coherent movement and a sacred organization with the founding of the Transcendental Club in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on September 8, 1836, by prominent New England intellectuals, including George Putnam (1807–1878), the Unitarian minister in Roxbury,[8] Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Frederic Henry Hedge. Other members of the club included Amos Bronson Alcott, Orestes Brownson, Theodore Parker,[2] Henry David Thoreau, William Henry Channing, James Freeman Clarke, Christopher Pearse Cranch, Convers Francis, Sylvester Judd, and Jones Very.[3] Female members included Sophia Ripley, Margaret Fuller, Elizabeth Peabody,[4] Ellen Sturgis Hooper, and Caroline Sturgis Tappan.[5]From 1840, the group frequently published in their journal The Dial, along with other venues.

Second wave of transcendentalists

By the late 1840s, Emerson believed that the movement was dying out, and even more so after the death of Margaret Fuller in 1850. "All that can be said," Emerson wrote, "is that she represents an interesting hour and group in American cultivation."[9] There was, however, a second wave of transcendentalists, including Moncure Conway, Octavius Brooks Frothingham, Samuel Longfellow and Franklin Benjamin Sanborn.[10] Notably, the transcendence of the spirit, most often evoked by the poet's prosaic voice, is said to endow in the reader a sense of purposefulness. This is the underlying theme in the majority of transcendentalist essays and papers—all of which are centered on subjects which assert a love for individual expression.[11] Though the group was mostly made up of struggling aesthetes, the wealthiest among them was Samuel Gray Ward, who, after a few contributions to The Dial, focused on his banking career.[12]

Beliefs

Transcendentalists are strong believers in the power of the individual. It is primarily concerned with personal freedom. Their beliefs are closely linked with those of the Romantics, but differ by an attempt to embrace or, at least, to not oppose the empiricism of science.

Transcendental knowledge

Transcendentalists desire to ground their religion and philosophy in principles based upon the German Romanticism of Johann Gottfried Herder and Friedrich Schleiermacher. Transcendentalism merged "English and German Romanticism, the Biblical criticism of Herder and Schleiermacher, the skepticism of Hume",[1] and the transcendental philosophy of Immanuel Kant (and of German Idealism more generally), interpreting Kant's a priori categories as a priori knowledge. Early transcendentalists were largely unacquainted with German philosophy in the original and relied primarily on the writings of Thomas Carlyle, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Victor Cousin, Germaine de Staël, and other English and French commentators for their knowledge of it. The transcendental movement can be described as an American outgrowth of English Romanticism.[citation needed]

Individualism

Transcendentalists believe that society and its institutions—particularly organized religion and political parties—corrupt the purity of the individual.[13] They have faith that people are at their best when truly "self-reliant" and independent. It is only from such real individuals that true community can form. Even with this necessary individuality, transcendentalists also believe that all people are outlets for the "Over-soul." Because the Over-soul is one, this unites all people as one being.[14][need quotation to verify] Emerson alludes to this concept in the introduction of the American Scholar address, "that there is One Man, - present to all particular men only partially, or through one faculty; and that you must take the whole society to find the whole man."[15] Such an ideal is in harmony with Transcendentalist individualism, as each person is empowered to behold within him or herself a piece of the divine Over-soul.

Indian religions

Transcendentalism has been directly influenced by Indian religions.[16][17][note 1] Thoreau in Walden spoke of the Transcendentalists' debt to Indian religions directly:

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Henry David Thoreau

In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagavat Geeta, since whose composition years of the gods have elapsed, and in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seem puny and trivial; and I doubt if that philosophy is not to be referred to a previous state of existence, so remote is its sublimity from our conceptions. I lay down the book and go to my well for water, and lo! there I meet the servant of the Brahmin, priest of Brahma, and Vishnu and Indra, who still sits in his temple on the Ganges reading the Vedas, or dwells at the root of a tree with his crust and water-jug. I meet his servant come to draw water for his master, and our buckets as it were grate together in the same well. The pure Walden water is mingled with the sacred water of the Ganges.[18]

In 1844, the first English translation of the Lotus Sutra was included in The Dial, a publication of the New England Transcendentalists, translated from French by Elizabeth Palmer Peabody.[19][20]

Idealism

Transcendentalists differ in their interpretations of the practical aims of will. Some adherents link it with utopian social change; Brownson, for example, connected it with early socialism, but others consider it an exclusively individualist and idealist project. Emerson believed the latter; in his 1842 lecture "The Transcendentalist", he suggested that the goal of a purely transcendental outlook on life was impossible to attain in practice:

You will see by this sketch that there is no such thing as a transcendental party; that there is no pure transcendentalist; that we know of no one but prophets and heralds of such a philosophy; that all who by strong bias of nature have leaned to the spiritual side in doctrine, have stopped short of their goal. We have had many harbingers and forerunners; but of a purely spiritual life, history has afforded no example. I mean, we have yet no man who has leaned entirely on his character, and eaten angels' food; who, trusting to his sentiments, found life made of miracles; who, working for universal aims, found himself fed, he knew not how; clothed, sheltered, and weaponed, he knew not how, and yet it was done by his own hands. ...Shall we say, then, that transcendentalism is the Saturnalia or excess of Faith; the presentiment of a faith proper to man in his integrity, excessive only when his imperfect obedience hinders the satisfaction of his wish.


Importance of nature

Transcendentalists have a deep gratitude and appreciation for nature, not only for aesthetic purposes, but also as a tool to observe and understand the structured inner workings of the natural world.[4] Emerson emphasizes the Transcendental beliefs in the holistic power of the natural landscape in Nature:

In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, — no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground, — my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, — all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.[21]


The conservation of an undisturbed natural world is also extremely important to the Transcendentalists. The idealism that is a core belief of Transcendentalism results in an inherent skepticism of capitalism, westward expansion, and industrialization.[22] As early as 1843, in Summer on the Lakes, Margaret Fuller noted that "the noble trees are gone already from this island to feed this caldron,"[23] and in 1854, in Walden, Thoreau regards the trains which are beginning to spread across America's landscape as a "winged horse or fiery dragon" that "sprinkle[s] all the restless men and floating merchandise in the country for seed."[24]

Influence on other movements

Part of a series of articles on New Thought

Further information: History of New Thought

Transcendentalism is, in many aspects, the first notable American intellectual movement. It has inspired succeeding generations of American intellectuals, as well as some literary movements.[25]

Transcendentalism influenced the growing movement of "Mental Sciences" of the mid-19th century, which would later become known as the New Thought movement. New Thought considers Emerson its intellectual father.[26] Emma Curtis Hopkins "the teacher of teachers", Ernest Holmes, founder of Religious Science, Charles and Myrtle Fillmore, founders of Unity, and Malinda Cramer and Nona L. Brooks, the founders of Divine Science, were all greatly influenced by Transcendentalism.[27]

Transcendentalism also influenced Hinduism. Ram Mohan Roy (1772–1833), the founder of the Brahmo Samaj, rejected Hindu mythology, but also the Christian trinity.[28] He found that Unitarianism came closest to true Christianity,[28] and had a strong sympathy for the Unitarians,[29] who were closely connected to the Transcendentalists.[16] Ram Mohan Roy founded a missionary committee in Calcutta, and in 1828 asked for support for missionary activities from the American Unitarians.[30] By 1829, Roy had abandoned the Unitarian Committee,[31] but after Roy's death, the Brahmo Samaj kept close ties to the Unitarian Church,[32] who strived towards a rational faith, social reform, and the joining of these two in a renewed religion.[29] Its theology was called "neo-Vedanta" by Christian commentators,[33][34] and has been highly influential in the modern popular understanding of Hinduism,[35] but also of modern western spirituality, which re-imported the Unitarian influences in the disguise of the seemingly age-old Neo-Vedanta.[35][36][37]

Major figures

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Margaret Fuller

Major figures in the transcendentalist movement were Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, and Amos Bronson Alcott. Some other prominent transcendentalists included Louisa May Alcott, Charles Timothy Brooks, Orestes Brownson, William Ellery Channing, William Henry Channing, James Freeman Clarke, Christopher Pearse Cranch, John Sullivan Dwight, Convers Francis, William Henry Furness, Frederic Henry Hedge, Sylvester Judd, Theodore Parker, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, George Ripley, Thomas Treadwell Stone, Jones Very, and Walt Whitman.[38]

Criticism

Early in the movement's history, the term "Transcendentalists" was used as a pejorative term by critics, who were suggesting their position was beyond sanity and reason.[39] Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote a novel, The Blithedale Romance (1852), satirizing the movement, and based it on his experiences at Brook Farm, a short-lived utopian community founded on transcendental principles.[40]

Edgar Allan Poe wrote a story, "Never Bet the Devil Your Head" (1841), in which he embedded elements of deep dislike for transcendentalism, calling its followers "Frogpondians" after the pond on Boston Common.[41] The narrator ridiculed their writings by calling them "metaphor-run" lapsing into "mysticism for mysticism's sake",[42] and called it a "disease." The story specifically mentions the movement and its flagship journal The Dial, though Poe denied that he had any specific targets.[43] In Poe's essay "The Philosophy of Composition" (1846), he offers criticism denouncing "the excess of the suggested meaning... which turns into prose (and that of the very flattest kind) the so-called poetry of the so-called transcendentalists."[44]

See also

• Dark romanticism
• Immanentism
• Self-transcendence
• Transcendence (religion)
• Fruitlands
• The Machine in the Garden

Notes

1. Versluis: "In American Transcendentalism and Asian religions, I detailed the immense impact that the Euro-American discovery of Asian religions had not only on European Romanticism, but above all, on American Transcendentalism. There I argued that the Transcendentalists' discovery of the Bhagavad-Gita, the Vedas, the Upanishads, and other world scriptures was critical in the entire movement, pivotal not only for the well-known figures like Emerson and Thoreau, but also for lesser known figures like Samuel Johnson and William Rounsville Alger. That Transcendentalism emerged out of this new knowledge of the world's religious traditions I have no doubt."[17]

References

1. Goodman, Russell (2015). "Transcendentalism". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. "Transcendentalism is an American literary, political, and philosophical movement of the early nineteenth century, centered around Ralph Waldo Emerson."
2. Wayne, Tiffany K., ed. (2006). Encyclopedia of Transcendentalism. Facts On File's Literary Movements. ISBN 9781438109169.
3. "Transcendentalism". Merriam Webster. 2016."a philosophy which says that thought and spiritual things are more real than ordinary human experience and material things"
4. Finseth, Ian. "American Transcendentalism". Excerpted from "Liquid Fire Within Me": Language, Self and Society in Transcendentalism and Early Evangelicalism, 1820-1860, - M.A. Thesis, 1995. Archived from the original on 16 April 2013. Retrieved 18 April 2013.
5. Miller 1950, p. 49.
6. Versluis 2001, p. 17.
7. Finseth, Ian Frederick. "The Emergence of Transcendentalism". American Studies @ The University of Virginia. The University of Virginia. Retrieved 9 November 2014.
8. "George Putnam", Heralds, Harvard Square Library, archived from the original on March 5, 2013
9. Rose, Anne C (1981), Transcendentalism as a Social Movement, 1830–1850, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, p. 208, ISBN 0-300-02587-4.
10. Gura, Philip F (2007), American Transcendentalism: A History, New York: Hill and Wang, p. 8, ISBN 978-0-8090-3477-2.
11. Stevenson, Martin K. "Empirical Analysis of the American Transcendental movement". New York, NY: Penguin, 2012:303.
12. Wayne, Tiffany. Encyclopedia of Transcendentalism: The Essential Guide to the Lives and Works of Transcendentalist Writers. New York: Facts on File, 2006: 308. ISBN 0-8160-5626-9
13. Sacks, Kenneth S.; Sacks, Professor Kenneth S. (2003-03-30). Understanding Emerson: "The American Scholar" and His Struggle for Self-reliance. Princeton University Press. ISBN 9780691099828. institutions.
14. Emerson, Ralph Waldo. "The Over-Soul". American Transcendentalism Web. Retrieved 13 July 2015.
15. "EMERSON--"THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR"". transcendentalism-legacy.tamu.edu. Retrieved 2017-10-14.
16. Versluis 1993.
17. Versluis 2001, p. 3.
18. Thoreau, Henry David. Walden. Boston: Ticknor&Fields, 1854.p.279. Print.
19. Lopez Jr., Donald S. (2016). "The Life of the Lotus Sutra". Tricycle Magazine (Winter).
20. Emerson, Ralph Waldo; Fuller, Margaret; Ripley, George (1844). "The Preaching of Buddha". The Dial. 4: 391.
21. Emerson, Ralph Waldo. "Nature". American Transcendentalism Web. Retrieved 2019-04-15.
22. Miller, Perry, 1905-1963. (1967). Nature's nation. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. ISBN 0674605500. OCLC 6571892.
23. "The Project Gutenberg eBook of Summer on the Lakes, by S. M. Fuller". http://www.gutenberg.org. Retrieved 2019-04-15.
24. "Walden, by Henry David Thoreau". http://www.gutenberg.org. Retrieved 2019-04-15.
25. Coviello, Peter. "Transcendentalism" The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature. Oxford University Press, 2004. Oxford Reference Online. Web. 23 Oct. 2011
26. "New Thought", MSN Encarta, Microsoft, archived from the original on 2009-11-02, retrieved Nov 16, 2007.
27. INTA New Thought History Chart, Websyte, archived from the original on 2000-08-24.
28. Harris 2009, p. 268.
29. Kipf 1979, p. 3.
30. Kipf 1979, p. 7-8.
31. Kipf 1979, p. 15.
32. Harris 2009, p. 268-269.
33. Halbfass 1995, p. 9.
34. Rinehart 2004, p. 192.
35. King 2002.
36. Sharf 1995.
37. Sharf 2000.
38. Gura, Philip F. American Transcendentalism: A History. New York: Hill and Wang, 2007: 7–8. ISBN 0-8090-3477-8
39. Loving, Jerome (1999), Walt Whitman: The Song of Himself, University of California Press, p. 185, ISBN 0-520-22687-9.
40. McFarland, Philip (2004), Hawthorne in Concord, New York: Grove Press, p. 149, ISBN 0-8021-1776-7.
41. Royot, Daniel (2002), "Poe's humor", in Hayes, Kevin J (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Edgar Allan Poe, Cambridge University Press, pp. 61–2, ISBN 0-521-79727-6.
42. Ljunquist, Kent (2002), "The poet as critic", in Hayes, Kevin J (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Edgar Allan Poe, Cambridge University Press, p. 15, ISBN 0-521-79727-6
43. Sova, Dawn B (2001), Edgar Allan Poe: A to Z, New York: Checkmark Books, p. 170, ISBN 0-8160-4161-X.
44. Baym, Nina; et al., eds. (2007), The Norton Anthology of American Literature, B (6th ed.), New York: Norton.

Sources

• Harris, Mark W. (2009), The A to Z of Unitarian Universalism, Scarecrow Press
• King, Richard (2002), Orientalism and Religion: Post-Colonial Theory, India and "The Mystic East", Routledge
• Kipf, David (1979), The Brahmo Samaj and the shaping of the modern Indian mind, Atlantic Publishers & Distri
• Miller, Perry, ed. (1950). The Transcendentalists: An Anthology. Harvard University Press. ISBN 9780674903333.
• Rinehart, Robin (2004), Contemporary Hinduism: ritual, culture, and practice, ABC-CLIO
• Sharf, Robert H. (1995), "Buddhist Modernism and the Rhetoric of Meditative Experience" (PDF), Numen, 42 (3): 228–283, doi:10.1163/1568527952598549, hdl:2027.42/43810, archived from the original (PDF) on 2019-04-12, retrieved 2013-11-01
• Sharf, Robert H. (2000), "The Rhetoric of Experience and the Study of Religion" (PDF), Journal of Consciousness Studies, 7 (11–12): 267–87, archived from the original (PDF) on 2013-05-13, retrieved 2013-11-01
• Versluis, Arthur (1993), American Transcendentalism and Asian Religions, Oxford University Press
• Versluis, Arthur (2001), The Esoteric Origins of the American Renaissance, Oxford University Press
Further reading[edit]
• Dillard, Daniel, “The American Transcendentalists: A Religious Historiography,” 49th Parallel (Birmingham, England), 28 (Spring 2012), online
• Gura, Philip F. American Transcendentalism: A History (2007)
• Harrison, C. G. The Transcendental Universe, six lectures delivered before the Berean Society (London, 1894) 1993 edition ISBN 0 940262 58 4 (US), 0 904693 44 9 (UK)
• Rose, Anne C. Social Movement, 1830–1850 (Yale University Press, 1981)
• Versluis, Arthur (2001), The Esoteric Origins of the American Renaissance, Oxford University Press

External links

Topic sites


• The web of American transcendentalism, VCU
• The Transcendentalists
• "What Is Transcendentalism?", Women's History, About
• The American Renaissance and Transcendentalism

Encyclopediae

• "American Transcendentalism". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
• "Transcendentalism", Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Stanford}

Other

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Meeting of Top CPI and CPSU Comrades: Representatives of the CC CP India General Secretary Cde. [Chandra] Rajeshwar Rao, members of the Politbureau Comrades [Shripad Amrit] Dange and [Ajoy Kumar] Ghosh, and member of the CC CP India Cde. [Makineni Basava] Punnaiah.
Present: Comrades G.M. [Georgy Maximilianovich] Malenkov, M.A. [Mikhail Andreyevich] Suslov, P.F. [Pavel Fyodorovich] Yudin, and V.G. Grigorian.
Original Language: Russian
Translated by Tahir Asghar. http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/119262
February 04, 1951

Summary: Delegation representing the Indian Communist Party, including Rao, Ghosh, and Dange, discusses the internal disagreements within the ICP following the party's Second Congress, stemming largely over the question of armed struggle. Also touches on how the ICP should react to foreign policy issues, including US involvement in the Korean War.

Original Language: Russian

Present: Comrades G.M. Malenkov, M.A. Suslov, P.F. Yudin, and V.G. Grigorian.

Representatives of the CC CP India, General Secretary Cde. Rajeshwar Rao, members of the Politbureau Comrades Dange and Ghosh, and member of the CC CP India Cde. Punnaiah.

After mutual introductions by the participants of the discussion, the representatives of the CC CPI spoke about the aim of their visit.

Rao: We are very privileged to have the opportunity to come to the USSR so as to be able to get suggestions directly from the AUCP(b), the vanguard of international communism. After the publication of the editorial in the newspaper ‘For A Lasting Peace, For A People’s Democracy’ and the speech of Cde. Liu Shaoqi at the conference of trade unions of the countries of Asia in Beijing, serious differences have emerged among us regarding the political line of the party. The disagreements have resulted in a situation wherein the work of the party has come to a standstill. Everyone is expecting help and guidance from the AUCP(b). The masses are also looking for guidance. In India at present, many parties and groups are emerging, [and] each of these is trying to mobilize the masses and draw the masses to their side. Our party is demoralized, which creates a grave situation. All of us agree that we will not be able to resolve the crisis on internal strength alone. If we don’t get help, the Communist Party of India might fall apart. The party as a whole is looking for guidance from the AUCP(b). I want the other comrades to also speak. I have just stated my point of view.

Ghosh: I have nothing to add to what Cde. Rao has said. Serious differences have surfaced in the party. What these are I’ll mention later, but for now I would like to say the following: for us it is clear that without the help of the AUCP(b), we will not be able to move the party forward. We expect help from the international Communist movement and its vanguard—the AUCP(b). I join Cde. Rao in saying that the suggestions of the AUCP(b) will be acceptable to the whole party.

Dange: It is not for the first time that the AUCP(b) is giving us directions and guidance. The AUCP(b) gave us instructions in September 1947 when I was here and when Cde. Zhdanov as a representative of the CC AUCP(b) heard what I had to say about the Indian Question. It is well known that the AUCP(b) has always been a guiding force for all the parties, including the Communist Party of India.

Perhaps the question need not be explained in general terms as it has been done already in the documents that have been sent. Undeniably, the article in the newspaper ‘For a Lasting Peace, For a People’s Democracy’ served as the starting point in our differences. Maybe we misunderstood the article, so we request that we be given advice on how to interpret this article.

Punnaiah: There is an uncompromising split in the party. In order to avoid the split, we have reached a compromise. In December 1950 a meeting of the CC was held where a discussion took place on how to preserve the unity of the party till such time that we receive the suggestions from the AUCP(b). Factually, the party is split already. The provincial units are functioning independently. Centralism has been compromised. The members of the party have great trust in the AUCP(b) as the vanguard of the international communist movement. And all the left forces in the country also have trust in the leadership of the international communist movement–the Informbureau. We need to unite our party as it would give us new strength.

Rao: It has so happened that we have developed the habit of writing documents about our differences that run into hundreds of pages but have no idea of how this tradition began. It would be best if we put down our differences in writing and mention only the most serious questions, more so as, personally, I am not very fluent in English and when speaking can only with great difficulty express my opinion. Apart from this, I am insufficiently settled in my thoughts and need to think through before I can put forward my opinion. I would like to have some more time for this. We want suggestions and assistance on a number of questions both political and organizational, and we want to put together here with your help two draft resolutions on political and organizational questions, which we would take back with us, subsequently discuss, and approve in the conference.

(After exchanging opinions about the procedure of the discussion, the Indian comrades expressed their preference to speak about their views.)

Ghosh: I was arrested immediately after the Second Congress [i] of the party and let out of jail only 5 months ago. I do not have full firsthand information about what happened. Evidently, a dangerous organizational failure in the party has occurred, and the situation today is such that none of us know about the real state of affairs in the party. Repressions against the party are so severe that nobody has any knowledge about the party units in the provinces.

What is my opinion? The policy of the party before the Second Congress was a reformist one. It was severely criticized at the Second Congress. The Political Theses approved by the Congress were broadly correct, but there were a few mistakes also. In particular, there was no mention there about the stage of our revolution, and it was projected as if our revolution combined the features of two revolutions–a democratic and a socialist one. This was due to the influence of the delegate from Yugoslavia present at the Congress who tried to force this viewpoint on us.

The Congress elected the Central Committee, but the CC never met even once until May 1950. The General Secretary Cde. Ranadive conducted an ultra-left and sectarian policy that constituted a deviation from the line of the ‘Political Theses.’ In December 1948, he had drafted the documents that were approved by the Politburo. An ultra-left sectarian political line was propounded in these documents. I will not talk about them here. They are well known.

This political line was put into practice until the publication of the editorial of the newspaper ‘For a Lasting Peace, For a People’s Democracy.’ After this, the comrades began to openly criticize Ranadive’s political line. In May 1950, a meeting of the CC, the first since the Congress, was held in which 19 of the 31 members of the CC were present.

The CC approved a letter to party members in which the new political line of the party was spelled out. It was mentioned there that this political line has been formulated on the basis of the principles outlined in the editorial of the newspaper ‘For A Lasting Peace, For A People’s Democracy’ and the manifesto of the trade union conference held in Peking.

After the formulation of this new line of the party, the differences did not disappear. Instead they intensified. In December 1950, another meeting of the CC elected by the Second Congress was held, but even this meeting failed to iron out the differences. It was then that we decided to set up a unified Central Committee and Politburo in order to represent all political trends. Our CC and Politburo cannot be considered united in the sense of a unity of views. We had to take this step so as to prevent the party from breaking up.

In my opinion, the mistakes of the party after the Second Congress were of two kinds. The party made a mistake in determining the stage of our revolution and incorrectly considered that our revolution would be a combination of two revolutions.

Secondly, the party made the mistake while evaluating the situation in the country, exaggerated the maturity of the situation and the revolutionary fervor amongst the masses, and issued risky slogans thinking that the party would put these into practice and that the masses would follow them. These were the two errors.

When the masses began to get disenchanted with the Congress Party, the party failed to give concrete slogans and instead went ahead with slogans for rebellion and capturing power. As a result, though the Congress Party has been losing people these three years, we cannot say that the CP has increased its strength on the Congress’s account. On the contrary, other parties, say the Socialist Party, have benefited at the Congress’s expense.

The party could not extend its influence over the radical masses. The party just could not take up such vital questions as the increase of the government’s budget and peace movement so as to take the masses ahead step by step.

In August, the representative of the Indian government, or perhaps Nehru himself, declared that general elections were to be held on the basis of universal franchise. Until now, only about 12-13 percent of the people could vote. Every party came forward with its own program that created a great stir. The only party that had nothing to say was our party. If it had at that time come forward with a concrete program and demanded that the election be held, it would have led to success and intensified the influence of the party, but the party kept silent. The elections were postponed by one year. If the party had come forward then, it would have been able to direct the anger of the masses against the government.

The party documents state that India is in the midst of a civil war, and in one place it is stated that one who cannot see this civil war occurring does not understand the situation. According to me, this is an absolute over-estimation of the situation. A civil war as I understand takes place when there is an armed struggle between the armed masses and the army of the government on a large territory. Precisely on the basis of this over-estimation, the concrete demands of the masses were ignored.

We were unable to build up the peace movement. Why? Is it because we do not have enough hatred among the masses for English and American imperialism? Wrong. Even the Congress newspapers were against American aggression in Korea. The sympathies of our people for the Korean people are well known.

Nehru came out with a statement on the Korean question. All the newspapers responded, but our party did not. This shows that we were unable to show our sympathies for the Korean people and thus got isolated from the people.

One more critical observation. Our CC does not give sufficient importance to the industrial workers. India, undoubtedly, is a colony, but a relatively developed colony with a large working class which occupies an important place in the economy. Therefore, the working class can play a significant role in the life of the country and not only in the agricultural regions. Apart from this, it is carrying on its own struggle against the imperialists and their adherents.

The documents reflect attempts at a blind imitation of the Chinese path. The comrades cannot see the great potential that the working class presents. I consider that our differences are mainly on the questions about the armed struggle and the democratic united front. In our documents, we have tried to outline the essence of our differences. The arguments come back to the question of to what extent has the revolutionary situation matured in our country. The different forms of struggle acquire dominance in different situations. The May meeting of the CC acknowledged that at present, an armed struggle is the main form of struggle and all [other] forms must be secondary. I think this is true in general for the colonies, but I also think that the conditions for this to happen have not yet matured. For the party, it would be wrong to approve this assertion formally without taking into account concrete conditions.

I consider that the party has become substantially weak due to repressions and our differences. The influence of the party amongst the workers has declined. The last strike by the textile workers was held under the leadership of the socialists.

I consider the main task of the CC CPI to be establishing the widest possible unity of the Indian people against English imperialism, feudalism and the collaborationist bourgeoisie. This democratic front must also be an anti-war front. At present, an armed struggle cannot be the main form of struggle, as the party has lost its influence among the masses. However, where the conditions have matured for an armed struggle, we need to carry it on but present it as selfdefense. Such an armed struggle must be a part of the peasant struggle for land. Consequently, we should take recourse to an armed struggle where the conditions for it are present.

Dange: I want to make some additional observations. The differences revolve around the question of how to interpret the Chinese path. I don’t want to speak about how the party line kept changing. Our party could never work out its own line without the help of other parties. Whenever the line of the party was wrong, other fraternal parties have helped us in correcting it. After the Second Congress, the differences started after the speeches of the comrades from Andhra. Discussions were going on whether India would follow the Chinese path. Some people thought one should follow the Chinese path, especially after the speech of Liu Shaoqi at the Peking conference which proposed armed struggle as the main form of struggle. A significant number thought that we are already following the Chinese path and, in every case, emphasis was placed on armed struggle and all other forms of struggle were ignored (strikes, meetings, campaigns for peace etc.). In all cases it was stated: take up arms!

Coordination of all forms of struggles was absent. It was not taken into account that in a democratic front, the essence of which is the peasant struggle for land, armed struggle must be present. But it should be consistent with other forms of struggle. Overlooking of this aspect was what I criticized as the new ultra-left sectarian politics.

The second difference cropped up in the interpretation of the Chinese path. How [are we to] coordinate the semi-legal and legal methods of struggle with a partisan war? I do not have experience in coordination of such forms of struggle. According to the directives of the CC, practically small armed units received the orders to fight against landlords which can hardly be viewed as a partisan war. Such directives were also extended to cities where workers were given the orders to kill police officers.

In one of the letters in May 1950, it is said that the beginning of the revolution in India is just a matter of days. This is adventurism, and I speak out against such an interpretation of the Chinese path.

The question of interpretation of the Chinese path is a difficult one, and I want to clarify this issue.

Ghosh: Cde. Dange thinks that the question of the Chinese path must be explained in detail. I would want to clarify the question of what a partisan war is.

In Andhra, a partisan war is being conducted against the landlords. Partisan units kill landlords and take away their belongings. Does such a struggle lead to liberation of the territories and prevent the partisan war from degenerating into terrorist actions against individual landlords? How [are we] to accomplish the task of transforming a partisan struggle into a genuine struggle against the armed forces of the reactionary government?

The next question is about Nehru’s government. How [do you] judge its policy? How [are we to] correlate it with the struggle for peace? These are the questions on which we would like to receive a response.

Punnaiah: As our secretary said, insufficient knowledge of English is a serious handicap for us. Comrades Dange and Ghosh have worked in the province of Bombay where people usually write and speak English. We have worked in the provinces where English is not used. Therefore, I would like to be excused for an insufficient knowledge of English. [It is possible that] we will not be able to always correctly convey our thoughts.

If we were to make our remarks on the opinions of Comrades Dange and Ghosh, it would amount to repeating what was said in our earlier documents. I have difficulty; I do not know how to explain a number of questions. Before coming to the question of the ‘Chinese path’ and other theoretical questions, I want to remind ourselves of some facts.

At the time of the Second Congress, we were carrying out an armed struggle over a territory that included 3000 villages. The struggle had been going on for about 10 months. This struggle was being stalled by General Secretary Ghosh and his reformist tactics: ‘be cautious and leave a loophole for retreat.’ The struggle practically had to be conducted in Telengana against the directives of the CC whose representatives demanded that it be stopped.

But the situation forced us to continue moving ahead. During the Second Party Congress, sufficient attention was not paid to the question of the agrarian revolution in Telengana. The delegation from Andhra and Telengana (more than 180 persons) had to carry out propaganda work among the delegates of the Congress in favor of the Telengana movement. The main speaker Cde. Ranadive made all attempts to avoid the question of the struggle in Telengana and Andhra. Our delegation managed to push through a strong resolution at the Congress and thus draw the attention of all the delegates to this problem.

Many problems that were not clear before the Congress have not become any clearer after the Congress. Such questions as the question of the balance of class forces, of the stage and prospects of the revolution, of unity of classes [and] of the armed struggle surfaced, and we could discuss these. On all-India questions, we put forward a draft of a speech and asked the CC to allow it to be discussed in the Party units. The CC did not meet. The Politburo discussed and rejected the draft. We again demanded that our draft be discussed. Then the Politburo came out with the document ‘On Strategy and Tactics,’ which was a reply to our document.

We stopped all discussions. But in the provinces we continued the armed struggle in the form of a defensive struggle. Subsequently, the Peking Conference of trade unions of Asia[ii] took place, and the editorial was published in the journal, ‘For a Lasting Peace, For a People’s Democracy.’

After this, the differences existing in the Party emerged with greater force. Such are the facts to which I wanted to draw attention.

In May 1950, the Plenum of the CC took place. In the CC, only 19 out of 31 members were left. The rest were in jail [and] two were removed on allegations of immoral behavior. The first discussions that took place were very strange. Those comrades who earlier defended Trotskyite positions such as carrying out a single-phase revolution now started to say that we should begin all over again. Earlier, they asserted that there is no imperialism in India and that the Indian bourgeoisie is leading the reactionary forces. Now these comrades say that nothing at all has happened and that the Indian bourgeoisie is a lackey of imperialism. In the Second Congress, a shift from revisionism to sectarianism has occurred. All the members of the Politburo and the CC came out against the earlier positions. At the same time, Joshi[iii] published his brochure, ‘Views,’ where he defends his consistently reformist line that was totally rejected by the Second Congress. Joshi argued against the armed struggle in Telengana, beckoned us to support Nehru’s government, and proposed putting an end to the struggle in Telengana when the Indian forces enter Hyderabad. Within the party there were comrades who shared Joshi’s views. At the December plenum, some members of the CC supported Joshi.

In these conditions, the new party line was worked out. The armed struggle was put forward as the main form of struggle with the aim to show that the Party needs to utilize existing reserves.

When Cde. Dange declares that the CC said ‘take rifles and shoot,’ it is slander against the party. In many provinces, different forms of struggle are present. To oversimplify the issue means to prevent its resolution. The CC approved the new political line after the provinces, where armed struggle was in progress, had presented their comprehensive documents in which it was shown how the landlords’ land was divided, how our rule was organized, etc. Only after a thorough scrutiny of these documents did the CC make its decision.

The question that we did not create a peace movement and that we did not participate in the elections I’ll touch upon later. The CC started its work in June. There was a shortage of cadres, as only 9 persons were elected to the CC, of which 4 had to leave the provinces. The rest of the members were demoralized and were in no situation to draft a resolution. The comrades who had been released from jail did not appear in the CC for 6 months. How was it possible in those conditions to demand that the CC must do this and this and that? It is not right to accuse the CC that it did not organize a movement for peace and did not call for an election campaign.

The people who are accusing us say that we got carried away by the idea of an armed struggle to the detriment of all other forms of struggle. I do not understand why they accuse us of rejecting elections because in Hyderabad, where the armed struggle was being conducted, we participated in the election campaigns, but the elections were cancelled.

I believe that we need to come to an agreement on a number of questions. Nobody is objecting to a united National Front, but there are questions regarding the form of this front [and] about the Chinese path. All in the leadership of the party are in agreement with the editorial in the journal ‘For a Lasting Peace, For a People’s Democracy’ about the Chinese path. Comrades Dange and Ghosh say that we want to mechanically apply the Chinese path, but we believe that they have a mechanical understanding of the question of the Chinese path. They say that India is an economically advanced country. They emphasize this aspect in order to prove that India is more developed than China and say that there was an army in China whereas there is none in India and make a reference to Cde. Stalin who has supposedly said that the Chinese path cannot be applied to India.

Regarding the foreign policy of Nehru. How do we expose this policy? Cde. Ghosh said that all the parties have made their statements on Nehru’s policies but our party has not. We did not know how to expose the duplicitous policy of Nehru.

It is clear to me that as a result of our discussions, we need to put together such documents that would put an end to all factional struggles.

In the past our party has committed many mistakes, and these impair party unity. It is also important that you also give your criticism about our mistakes, as this would help us in correcting them and unite the party.

Rao. Comrades, in the beginning I would like to make some observations regarding the communication of Comrades Dange and Ghosh. They have simplified our line by typifying it by a formula ‘take to guns and shoot.’ This is a simplification that does not help our cause in any way. I will demonstrate later on that Dange is an opportunist. He accuses us of not understanding the role of the working class. I’ll talk later about why a range of questions were not raised earlier. We have articulated our communications in the document of over 100 pages. The question of election campaign is also mentioned there.

I will dwell on what is central, on the question that the armed struggle is the main form of struggle. I will talk of how we understand this question. When it is declared that we speak of the necessity of conducting an armed struggle everywhere, it is not our views that are being spoken about. We conducted an armed struggle in two regions—in Telengana and Andhra—and in other areas we employed other forms of struggle. In Telengana, we conducted armed struggle in only 2 out of 8 districts, [and] in Andhra only 4 out of 11. That is how we expanded the scale of the armed struggle. What do we understand by armed struggle? In present times, whatever form of struggle we may start, everywhere you will encounter a fascist type repression. That is why we advance the question that the masses with arms in hand should defend their right to struggle. That is why we should directly tell the people that without armed struggle they cannot protect their right of voicing their demands. Our opponents now say the armed struggle can become the main form of struggle in just a few of the regions, but they are not prepared to tell the people in the face the fact that without an armed struggle they cannot protect themselves.

There are three trends regarding this question: we–the CC; second–Joshi. Even though he is not in the party, this trend is present in the party. The third trend is represented by Cde. Ghosh. I do not know where Dange stands. As he has changed his stand so frequently, let him ascertain where he stands himself. After his release from jail he made a declaration that was in spirit very close to our view. Later he published another statement totally contrary in nature. The document put forward by Cde. Ghosh contains many contradictions. In this manner, there are three trends: us, Joshi and Ghosh.

Should we speak about the position of Ranadive?

After the publication in ‘For a Lasting Peace, For a People’s Democracy,’ he continued to adhere to his own positions and later plunged into a totally opposite direction. He declares that he supports the position of the CC, but I am not sure if he does.

Our assessment of the situation regarding the level of the consciousness of the people? As we have pointed out in our document, the Congress Party which plays the central role in the political life of the country enjoyed widespread influence among the people but has been losing it since 1947, and to the masses who have started to understand the reactionary nature of the Congress, all that the CC with Joshi at its head has to say is that it is necessary to support the Congress party. Seventy-five percent of the agricultural workers in Andhra, a majority of which consists of the ‘untouchables’, understood the betrayal by the Congress party [and] tell us, ‘if you do not accept us, then who will?’

Before the Second Congress we called for a united front of all forces—from the Congress Party to the communists excluding only the small faction led by Patel and others. After the Second Congress we have been saying that though Ranadive has been making a call for a rebellion, in reality he has been obstructing us in a number of regions where the masses were ready for an armed resistance.

During the war we refused to organize the agricultural workers as we were afraid of disrupting peasants’ unity.

When Gandhi was assassinated,[iv] clashes between the organization that perpetrated the killing and other chauvinistic organizations erupted. The government used these as an excuse to liquidate the peasant movement in the regions of Telengana and Andhra.

Our delegation arrived at the Second Congress illegally. In the Andhra party organization, a debate on the Chinese path and armed struggle etc. was going on. In response to the draft document presented by the Andhra provincial committee, a Trotskyite document ‘On Strategy and Tactics’ was put forward.

A peasant movement was also rife in the province of Kerala. The CC did not come to the support of this movement too, taking the plea that [they must] ‘first create a democratic movement and only then start to organize armed resistance.’ There are numerous such instances.

Much has been written in the newspapers regarding use of arms in the cities, but this is not true. In many places arms are simply not available. In Bengal where arms were available, Ranadive took them out of circulation. It would be untrue to say that Ranadive organized an armed struggle in the towns. He promoted terrorism in which only one policeman was killed.

We assert that our movement was on the verge of transforming into an armed struggle. In Bengal, 19 regions were in the grip of the peasant movement. But the arms taken away from the police were returned.

The leadership of the party in the past has been avoiding the question of the armed struggle. The Congress has not fulfilled even a single promise. The masses are looking towards other parties, and we have not made use of this situation. We called for a general strike and nobody supported us, and in places where the peasantry was switching to armed struggle, they were dissuaded from doing so.

The majority of the people are moving away from the Congress, which can now lean only on the armed forces. The Congress party certainly has other means, but the fascist style repression is the main method that we encounter.

Even though we carried out left-wing factional tactics that led to a decline in our influence, the people still are looking towards our party for leadership. Our party is a major force, and in some of the provinces the influence of the party is increasing. If we use correct tactics, we will be able to attract the wide masses that are moving away from the Congress party to our side. We cannot remain inactive. We are to act and act fast.

Regarding the assessment of the policy of the government, I do not know if it is possible to talk about the progressive nature of the government that was proclaimed to be reactionary by us.

Continuation of the Discussions (6 February)

Dange: Our country has come to the stage of an agrarian revolution. The landless peasants and the agricultural wage earners constitute the majority of the population of the country. Impoverishment of the peasantry is leading to a decline of production, and the money-lenders that are being helped by the Congress and the police are robbing the peasants. This is the source of the deep agricultural crisis which the government is not capable of resolving. The influence of the Congress [Party] is declining. In these conditions, a proper solution to the agrarian question must be found.

Many party organizations view the party line formulated in May 1950 in this light: create small armed groups from among the bold party members, kill the landlords, and then go into hiding in the jungles. Those landlords that survive will out of fear satisfy the demands of the peasants, or alternatively they will call the police. As a result, the peasants will learn how to offer resistance to state terror; the police will rule by the day and we by the night. And when the whole of the country is in the grip of such a struggle, we will accomplish the agrarian revolution. We will have a liberation army and be in control of liberated areas.

My objections were that an armed struggle as the main form of struggle under present circumstances is nothing but political adventurism and that we should also pay attention to other forms of struggle necessary for uniting the people that would reinforce our armed struggle. The line of the CC of our party is ultra-left adventurism in a new form. Many amongst us talk in terms that it is a matter of days or months before we start our revolution. The question that is being totally ignored is whether the party has the strength to accomplish the charted line regarding the armed struggle as the main form of struggle. And when I criticize this line of the CC, I am branded as an opportunist as the existence of fascist-style terror in the country justifies the armed struggle. It is not correct to state that the whole of the country is in the grip of a fascist-style terror, that conditions for a civil war are present in India and that under such circumstances our participation in the elections is unnecessary and we should simply arm ourselves. I think this is not correct.

I have always spoken in favor of the armed struggle in Telengana. I think that the economic crisis in the country would help in organizing such forms of struggle as in Telengana— the most backward feudal princely state under the rule of the Muslims. One should take to arms at the appropriate time, and a mechanical generalization of the experience in Telengana and Andhra would lead us to an untimely insurrection. We know of what has been done in Telengana and Andhra only in very general terms. Those regions are characterized by many comrades as regions of peoples’ democracy. We must also, at the same time, not underestimate the successes achieved in these regions.

I also want to state that the CC should put an end to the bureaucratic practice of its organizational units and move on a democratic path. I have been unjustly accused. A factional campaign has been initiated against me while simultaneously supporters of left-wing politics have been accommodated in the party. We have been wrongly accused of freezing party funds, of passing on party property to the government, etc. Some of the differences that have emerged can be resolved, but many serious ones still remain.

I want to get clarification on the following questions:

1. How should we pose the question of nationalization of land in colonial and semi-colonial countries?

2. What is the nature of Nehru’s government and its foreign policy? Can Nehru be viewed as a puppet in the same manner as Jiang Jieshi and the French government and seen as puppets of American imperialism?

3. How are we to exploit the differences and vacillations in the government circles, particularly on the Korean problem?

4. Should we have the practice of passing the death penalty to communists as proposed by some comrades if in relation to these comrades doubts remain taking into account their integrity and loyalty towards the party? Recently such a proposal was made but the punishment was not put into effect as it subsequently turned out that the comrade was an honest communist. There are fears that such a punishment can be used for a factional purpose.

5. Should the communists in India during the course of an armed partisan struggle expropriate the property of the landlords and traders for the needs of the revolutionary struggle even before creating our own organs of power?

Rao: The Congress Party is disintegrating and is losing influence among the people. Anti-Soviet and anti-Chinese sentiments are also declining among the middle class. The Socialist Party has increased its influence among the people who have been moving away from the Congress and has been forced to lead the strikes, though organizing these within the limits of Gandhian non-violence and forcing this tactic on the working class. The left parties are ready to form a coalition with the communists on the question of struggle for peace, the Korean question, and coordination of trade union activities. We cannot move ahead without making the partisan struggle the main form of struggle. Our country has reached the stage of agrarian revolution. It would be wrong to think that we need to first build a party and a democratic front and then begin the armed struggle. Our experience speaks otherwise. In view of ruthless repression, a democratic front can be created through an armed struggle, and in the process our party organizations will get established and strengthened. Life has demonstrated that an armed struggle should be continued with, as recently this struggle has spread to some other regions. We ourselves were surprised when we came to know about the strong support that the peasants offer to the units that were sent by us to these regions. They give them provisions and all other help that they need for their activities. With the help of the masses we must crush the fascist bands and only then we will be able to win the trust of the masses. Outside of the armed struggle we will be forced to do only propaganda work without undertaking any other mass activities.

I think that our struggle in the country must pass, sequentially, through three stages:

1. Partisan action on a wide scale

2. Creation of liberated areas (in Telengana and other areas)

3. Liberation of the whole of India.

Dange and Ghosh oppose the armed struggle. This is a reformist path. We do not exclude partisan resistance in any part of the country. The masses are the main factor, and if the people are marching ahead then we should support them and not wait until a large party is established.

It would be wrong to negate the international significance of the Chinese revolution. The fall of Mukden [Shenyang] was celebrated by all Indians. Dange and Ghosh do not want to bring out the question of an armed struggle before the masses for discussion.

I want to pose the following questions to comrades Dange and Ghosh:

1. Are you willing to put up the question of the armed struggle before the people?

2. Do you exclude having an armed struggle in the near future in a number of provinces where such a struggle does not yet exist?

3. What tactics do you support in those regions where the government has established a particularly ruthless regime of terror and where we are strong, in Kerala for example?

4. In which provinces does the possibility of an armed struggle exist?

Cde. Dange did not pay attention to leading the general strike in Bombay. This was wrong, and this allowed the other parties to attract the striking workers to their fold. I think that the tactics of an armed revolt and a general political strike in the cities is ruled out for us at present.

(The representatives of the CC Communist Party [of India] gave their response to the questions that we asked during the discussions.)

Question: We know from our French and Italian comrades that a special case was made against Cde. Dange. What was he accused of, how did this case end and is there any concluding document that you can make available for us?

Rao: The question regarding Cde. Dange was considered at the last meeting of the CC. Many people thought that Ranadive had links with the Yugoslavs. Refuting the charges, Ranadive declared that if there is anyone who can be accused of having links with the Yugoslavs, then it is Dange who had links with an English girl sent to work on recommendation from Dange. Ranadive also put forward a series of other accusations against Dange. An inquiry committee of the CC was set up that investigated the accusations against Dange and found that these accusations were baseless. This girl is not working in the Yugoslavian but in the Czechoslovakian embassy in Delhi. Regarding the addresses mentioned by Ranadive, the accusations were also found to be baseless as no addresses were found in the diary referred to by Ranadive.

Punnaiah: I will add something as I was a member of this committee. The question regarding the infiltration of Titoites in the CPI was being considered as was the question that the links of the Bombay committee of the party persisted even after Tito was exposed. Ranadive contended that these links were encouraged by Cde. Dange. The committee investigated these accusations and found that these accusations were groundless.

Question: We know that CC CPI, while considering armed struggle against the government to be its task, has at the same time given a call for supporting the foreign policy of this government in relation to China. This was communicated in the Indian newspapers. Maybe you are right, but we ask you to clarify how you reconcile such a call with your general line.

Dange: In relation to Truman’s statement about the use of the nuclear bomb, before our departure, a draft statement was prepared by us in Bombay endorsing Nehru’s policy on the question of condemning China as an aggressor. But we did not discuss this statement or take any decision regarding its publication. Possibly the comrades in Bombay independently decided to publish it. We were not in India already. We need to further think about the contents of this statement.

(Comrades Rao, Ghosh and Punnaiah agreed with the answer given by Cde. Dange.)

Question: You told us about the serious differences among you and at the same time in the December Plenum of the CC where these differences crystallized, [and when] Comrades Dange and Ghosh were admitted to the Politburo. We wanted to know on what principle these changes were made in the constitution of the Politburo?

Ghosh: The CC, consisting of 9 persons, was unanimous about the need to bring changes in the constitution of the Politburo. When we came out of jail, we wrote a document criticizing the political line of the CC. Factually two tendencies came to be formed. Then it was decided, in order to avoid a split in the party, to have a CC and Politburo consisting of representatives of both the tendencies.

(Comrades Rao, Dange and Punnaiah agreed with the answer.)

Question: Does the Communist Party of India have its own program and constitution [charter]?

Dange: Our party does not have a program of its own.

In 1929, the Communist Party of India, at the time of its joining the Comintern, presented a ‘Draft Platform of Actions of the Communist Party of India’ on the basis of which the Communist Party of India was allowed to join the Comintern. However, at present we do not consider that Platform as our program.

What concerns the constitution—in 1943, during the First Congress of the Party, a constitution of the Party was adopted. In 1948, at the Second Congress of the party, the constitution [charter] was reviewed and approved with certain changes.

(Comrades Rao, Ghosh and Punnaiah confirmed this.)

Question: Can you in greater detail inform us about the partisan movement in India? In which regions is the partisan movement taking place, and against whom is it directed? What is the scale —are there any regions of substantial scale that have been liberated by the partisans? Where have the partisans consolidated themselves, and if so, [where have] organs of peoples’ democratic power been created? What is the factual state of affairs in Telengana and Andhra, where, as you conveyed, the partisan movement is most developed and what kind of arms do the partisans possess?

Rao: The partisan movement is taking place mainly in the provinces of Telengana and Andhra.

In Telengana, until 1948, before the arrival of the Indian army in Hyderabad, regular partisan units were active, the total number of which was two thousand armed men. They were poorly armed and possessed 30 automatic [weapons], 200 rifles and the rest were armed with spears, swords, and hunting weapons. After the strong measures taken by the armed forces against the partisan units, the number of partisans dropped significantly. At present these units have about 500 men. The units operate in small groups at night. They are divided into groups of 5 men. The party has sent 400 political workers who do not participate in the armed raids but conduct political work among the people to support them.

There never was a liberated region with its own organs of power in the past, and there are none now.

In Andhra in 1949, there were about 1,000 persons in the partisan units. As a result of government repression, part of the armed partisans moved into Telengana, and at present there are no regular armed partisan units in Andhra.

Cde. Ghosh, making an observation regarding the answer given by Cde. Rao, said that in assessing the scale of the partisan movement, there exists a tendency to exaggerate and view any incident in the rural areas as a revolt.

Responding to this observation, Cde. Punniah said that he used the figures from foreign media, as the CC CPI does not have any information from the provincial party committees.

Question: What work is being conducted by the Communist Party of India in the army and what is its influence in the army?

Rao: The party has not done any work in the army and has no influence there. The party has a little bit of influence in the air force and the navy.

The government, in order to suppress the peasants’ actions, sends in the army units from other provinces that are as a rule not acquainted with the language of the populations where the incidents take place. A significant part of the army is recruited in Nepal under a special agreement between the Nehru government and the government of Nepal.

_______________

Notes:

[i] The Second Congress of the Communist Party of India took place in Calcutta, opening on 28 February 1948. It was highly critical of “right-wing reformism” ready to compromise with the new Nehru government and called for armed struggle in a Political Thesis authored by General Secretary Bhalchandra Trimbak Ranadive.

[ii] Liu Shaoqi’s report designating China as the model for Asian revolution was presented in December 1949 to the Trade Union Conference of Asian and Australasian Countries of the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) in Beijing. The speech during Mao’s visit to Stalin in January 1950 was not published in Russian.

[iii] P. C. Joshi was General Secretary of the Indian Communist Party in the 1930s and into the 1940s. He was purged from the Politburo in 1948 and forced to perform “self-criticism” at the Second Congress.

[iv] Gandhi was assassinated on 29 January 1948.
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Indian Communist Party Strategy Since 1947
by John H. Kautsky
University of Rochester
April, 1955

EVER SINCE its beginning, the Communist Party of India has sought to adhere to international Communist strategy as determined in Moscow, though it has not at all times been equally prompt or successful in making the required changes. It has always attempted to give the same answers as Moscow to the three main questions determining Communist strategy: who was, at any time, the main enemy and consequently what classes and groups were eligible as allies of Communism and what type of alliance was to be formed with them. A study of CPI strategy thus throws light on the development of international Communist strategy in general, particularly in the period since the end of World War II when changes in the CPI line have been much more clearly marked than some of the corresponding shifts in Moscow.1

Organized as an all-India party as late as 1933, the Communist Party of India began its career following the "left" strategy of Communism as it had been laid down by the 6th Congress of the Communist International in 1928. This strategy characteristically considered capitalism and the native bourgeoisie as enemies at least as important as feudalism and foreign imperialism and therefore looked forward to an early "socialist" revolution merging with, or even skipping, the "bourgeois-democratic" revolution. It sought a united front "from below" by appealing to workers and also the poor peasantry and petty bourgeoisie as individuals or in local organizations to leave nationalist, labor and bourgeois parties and work with the Communists. Though it thereby isolated itself from the great Indian nationalist movement, the CPI, according to this "left" strategy, denounced the National Congress as "a class organization of the capitalists" and the Congress Socialist Party as "Social Fascists.'"

When Moscow finally recognized the danger posed by German Fascism and changed its foreign policy and, correspondingly, the strategy of international Communism, the CPI, too, after some delays, obediently switched to the "right" strategy as it had been ordered to do at the 7th Comintern Congress of 1935. This strategy regarded imperialism and feudalism (or, in Western countries, Fascism) as the Communists' main enemies and therefore envisaged first a "bourgeois-democratic" and only later a "proletarian-socialist" revolution. It called for an alliance of the Communist Party with anti-imperialist and anti-feudal (or anti-Fascist) parties, both labor and bourgeois, a united front "from above" or popular front. Accordingly, the CPI began to seek unity with the Indian Socialists and the Congress, now referred to as "the principal anti-imperialist people's organization," although, it may be noted, these groups, unlike the Communists' new popular front allies in the West, were much more anti-British than anti-Nazi or anti-Japanese.

Although it was rather unnecessary (because of this last-mentioned peculiar Indian situation), the CPI, like all Communist parties at that time, shifted back from the "right" to the "left" strategy after the conclusion of the Stalin-Hitler Pact of August 1939, once again "unmasking" its erstwhile allies as "reformists" and "agents of imperialism" and denouncing the war against the Axis as "imperialist." While this line proved not unpopular in India, the return to the "right" after the German invasion of Russia in June 1941, which eventually resulted in such growth in Communist strength and prestige in the West and in Southeast Asia, proved disastrous for the CPl's reputation in India, for the Party's new ally was to be Britain, still widely regarded as India 's main enemy. Only under great pressure, especially from the Communist Party of Great Britain, long the CPI's mentor, could the Party be prevailed upon to shift from the line of "imperialist war" to that of "people's war."

In accordance with the continuing wartime alliance of the Great Powers and the participation of Communists in Western coalition governments, Moscow apparently expected the CPI, too, to persist in the postwar period in its adherence to the "right" strategy of cooperation not only with the Congress and Socialists but also the Moslem League, and even to combine this, at least until the end of 1945, with a relatively friendly attitude toward the British. Emerging from the war isolated and demoralized and receiving little or no guidance from Moscow (which was then preoccupied with Europe rather than Asia), the CPI could, in view of these utterly unrealistic expectations, only follow a hesitant, bewildered "right" course,3 for the groups with which it was expected to form a united front were strongly opposed both to the Communists and to each other. For a period in 1946 a faction gained the upper hand in the leadership of the frustrated CPI which, as was especially indicated in the Central Committee resolution "Forward to Final Struggle for Power" (People's Age, Bombay, August 11, 1946), even switched its strategy temporarily back to the "left." This was a fact of some importance because it was during this period that the Communists seized the leadership of a peasant uprising in the backward Telengana district of Hyderabad, which was destined to continue for five years and to play a crucial part in CPI strategy discussions. This "left" anti-Congress line was not, however, acknowledged by Moscow which, though clearly anti-British by now, remained uncertain in its attitude toward the Congress. By the end of 1946, the CPI had returned to the "right" strategy of attempted cooperation with the "progressive" wing of the Congress and also the Moslem League, and when the Mountbatten Plan of 1947 announced the forthcoming division of India as well as during the subsequent communal riots, the CPI repeatedly pledged its support to Nehru and "the popular Governments" of India and Pakistan, notably in its so-called Mountbatten Resolution (People's Age, June 29, 1947).

In the meantime, however, Moscow, along with its policy of more conciliatory relations with the West, was giving up the "right" strategy for international Communism. In June 1947 a session on India of the USSR Academy of Sciences (in Moscow) strongly denounced -- at the very time when the CPI was praising part of it -- the entire Congress, including Nehru, as an ally of imperialism and advocated instead an anti-imperialist movement led by the Communists. While thus agreeing on the abandonment of the "right" strategy of cooperation with the Congress "from above," this session also marked the beginning of a striking disagreement in Moscow (hardly even noticed by outside observers at the time) on the strategy to be substituted for it. V. V. Balabushevich and A.N. Dyakov, the two chief Soviet experts on India, identified the entire bourgeoisie with imperialism and thus, by implication, favored a return from the "right" to the "left" strategy with its proletarian, anti-capitalist approach.5 E. M. Zhukov, the head of the Academy's Pacific Institute, on the other hand, condemned only the "big" bourgeoisie,6 thus leaving the way open to cooperation by the "working class" (i.e., the Communists) not only with peasants and the petty bourgeoisie, as under the "left" strategy, but also with the so-called "medium" or "progressive" capitalists. This was to be accomplished, not as under the "right" strategy through a united front "from above" with the capitalists' parties, but rather through the united front "from below" against these parties, an approach hitherto associated only with the "left" strategy.

Zhukov thus introduced the essential element of a strategy until then unknown to international Communism, but destined to become within only a few years its almost universally applied line. This strategy had first been developed in China by Mao Tse-tung during World War II as the anti-imperialist and anti-feudal strategy of the "bloc of four classes" leading to the "new democracy" rather than immediately to the "socialist" revolution. It implied that the Communist Party itself, not in alliance with the major bourgeois and labor parties, was now considered the true representative of the interests not only of the exploited classes but also of the capitalists. The "left" Dyakov-Balahushevich line and the new Zhukov line existed side by side in Moscow for about two years, strongly suggesting that the differences between them and the general import of the new strategy were not yet appreciated there and perhaps also that Moscow at that time seriously underestimated the Chinese Communists' prospects of victory.

Far from explaining its switch of strategy, Moscow, less interested then in Asian affairs than later, did not even inform the CPI of it, but let it continue its reluctant adherence to the unsuccessful "right strategy." Only through the much more publicized speech by Zhdanov on "The International Situation" (For a Lasting Peace, for a People's Democracy!, November 10, 1947) to the founding meeting of the Cominform in September 1947 did the CPI become aware of the change in the international line. That speech, expounding the thesis of the division of the world into two camps, did not, however, clearly favor either the "left" or the new alternative to the "right" strategy. It was almost exclusively concerned with the situation in Europe and the role of the United States, though its general anti-imperialist (rather than anti-capitalist) tenor could be interpreted as favoring the new strategy, a possibility generally overlooked at the time, when any abandonment of the "right" strategy of international Communism was widely regarded as necessarily tantamount to a return to the "left." At any rate, the Zhdanov thesis was interpreted as calling for a turn to the new strategy in an important article by Zhukov on "The Growing Crisis of the Colonial System" (Bolshevik, December 15, 1947), which, this time, expressly included the "middle bourgeoisie" in the Communist united front "from below." Nevertheless, both Balabuchevich and Dyakov continued to champion the "left" strategy for India; the uncertainty between the two strategies in Moscow had apparently not yet been resolved or perhaps even recognized.

Weakened by lack of guidance from abroad, by factionalism and by internal discontent with the "right" strategy, the CPI leadership eagerly executed what it interpreted to be the change of line desired by Moscow. In December 1947, soon after the full text of Zhdanov's speech had become available to it, the Central Committee of the CPI met and adopted a resolution, "For Full Independence and People's Democracy" (World News and Views, January 17, 1948), signaling the abandonment of the "right" strategy and containing all the essential elements of the "left" strategy. It sharply attacked both the entire Congress (thus turning from the "right" strategy) and the entire bourgeoisie (thus failing to follow the new strategy) as allies of imperialism, favored a united front "from below" against them, looked forward to an early anti-capitalist revolution (another characteristic of the "left" strategy alone) and implied that the use of violent methods was in order, as Zhdanov's speech, too, had done with reference to the colonial areas.

B. T. Ranadive, who at the December meeting took over effective control of the CPI from P. C. Joshi, its General Secretary, was clearly convinced that the formation of the Cominform and Zhdanov's report to it heralded Moscow's return to the "left" strategy.7 That he should have remained unaware of the uncertainty actually prevailing on this point in Moscow is not surprising when it is considered that he had only Zhdanov's vague and largely inapplicable language to guide him. He must have felt sure, however, that he was expected to discard the "right" strategy, and, like many of the CPI leaders, he was in any case inclined to be "leftist" and had never known any but the "left" alternative to the "right" strategy. Even when Zhukov's application of the Zhdanov thesis to the colonial areas must have become known in India, Ranadive, like Balabushevich and Dyakov in Moscow, persisted in giving that thesis a "left" interpretation, probably not so much in reliance on those two Soviet experts and in defiance of the Zhukov view as simply in ignorance of the difference between them. Moscow apparently neither supported nor rebuked Ranadive, who is likely to have emerged as the CPI's new leader more because he had long been the outstanding "left" rival of Joshi, whose "right" policy was discredited by the Zhdanov speech, than as a result of any direct intervention by Moscow.

The switch from "right" to "left" in the CPI's line through the little-publicized December 1947 resolution was publicly confirmed at its Second Congress held in February-March 1948 in Calcutta. This, following immediately upon the Moscow-sponsored Southeast Asia Youth Conference in the same city, has often mistakenly been regarded as the turning point in CPI strategy. The Second Congress formally replaced Joshi by Ranadive as General Secretary and adopted a Political Thesis (Bombay, 1949) which was essentially an elaboration of the December resolution, though somewhat more explicit on the use of violent methods and making even clearer Ranadive's fantastic belief, derived from Zhdanov's two-camp thesis, in the imminent outbreak of revolution in India and throughout the world. It is only on the basis of this expectation that CPI policy during the next two years can be understood.

There was a striking absence of comment in Moscow on the Second CPI Congress. Throughout 1948 the international Communist leaders neither clearly approved nor disapproved of the CPI's new "left" strategy. As yet the new strategy as it had been advocated by Zhukov and earlier developed by Mao had not become dominant in Moscow, for Balabushevich and others continued to include statements in their writings implying adherence to the "left" strategy. While they now sometimes confined their condemnations to the "big" bourgeoisie, thus approaching Zhukov's line, they did not, like the latter, take the crucial step of including any section of the bourgeoisie among the forces led by the Communist Party.

Thus again left without clear direction from Moscow but no doubt in the belief that it enjoyed Soviet support, the CPI, following its Second Congress, embarked on a policy of violent strikes and terrorism, especially in large urban areas. This resulted in heavy loss of support for the Party and growing dissatisfaction and factionalism within it, but this merely led Ranadive to engage in further adventures and intra-Party repression, bringing the CPI close to complete collapse. Only the Telengana uprising was fairly successful during this period. It was led by the Andhra provincial committee of the CPI, which had long enjoyed considerable autonomy and now, because of its independence and the relative success of its program of rural violence, became the most dangerous rival of Ranadive whose policy of urban violence was failing. The ensuing conflict between the two reflected in an extreme fashion the uncertainty between the "left" and the new strategy then prevailing in Moscow.

In June 1948 the Andhra Committee submitted an anti-Ranadive document to the CPI Politburo advocating adherence to the new strategy.8 Basing themselves completely on the Chinese Communist example, as was only natural for Asian Communists engaged in armed clashes and leaning on peasant support mobilized through a program of agrarian reform, the Andhra Communists stood for both the specifically Chinese elements of that strategy (rural guerrilla warfare and chief reliance on the peasantry) as well as its essential elements (concentration on imperialism and feudalism, rather than capitalism, as the main enemies; a "democratic" but not "socialist" revolution in the near future; and the inclusion of a section of the bourgeoisie as well as the "middle" and even the "rich" peasantry in the united front "from below").

Just as the Andhra document had gone well beyond Zhukov's analysis in its adherence to the new strategy, so Ranadive's reply to this challenge, formulated at a Politburo session lasting from September to December 1948 and published in the form of four statements appearing between January and July 1949,9 reached a point in its uncompromising advocacy of the "left" strategy never approached by Dyakov and Balabushevich in Moscow. The native Indian bourgeoisie, rather than foreign imperialism and feudalism, was now depicted as the main enemy, not only in the cities but (in the role of the rich peasantry) even in the countryside. The united front "from below" against the Congress, therefore, could be based only on the urban and rural proletariat and poor peasantry and could include some middle peasant and petty bourgeois elements, but in no case any part of the bourgeoisie or the rich peasantry. Correspondingly, the coming revolution would be a "socialist" one. The issue between the "left" and the new strategy was thus joined in the conflict between Ranadive and the Andhra Communists and the differences between the two were clearly brought out, while their similarities  -- the reliance on the approach of the united front "from below" against the Congress and the possible use of violent tactics -- also emerged by implication from the discussion.

However, Ranadive went further and, no doubt, in order to ingratiate himself in Moscow, where he apparently expected an early shake-up of the international Communist leadership, he sharply accused various unnamed "advanced" Communist parties for having been guilty of "revisionism" since the end of World War II. By this he meant all forms of cooperation with bourgeois elements, whether "from above" with bourgeois parties, as applied in the "right" strategy in Western Europe: in the immediate postwar years, or "from below", as used in the new strategy of Mao Tse-tung in China against the Kuomintang (hitherto considered the principal bourgeois party) -- two very different approaches which, as a doctrinaire "leftist," Ranadive was unable to distinguish. Finally, in the last of the four Politburo statements, Ranadive went even beyond this point and, relying heavily on Zhdanov's Cominform speech, attacked Mao Tse-tung by name, ridiculing the assertion that he was an authoritative source of Marxism, mentioning him in one breath with Tito and Browder and describing some of his passages advocating the promotion of capitalism as "in contradiction to the world understanding of the Communist Parties," "horrifying" and "reactionary and counterrevolutionary."10 Whether Ranadive actually enjoyed the support in Moscow as he, the leader of a small and unsuccessful Communist Party, must have believed before he would have made such an attack on the powerful Mao and whether Moscow or one faction in Moscow, such as one representing the now dead Zhdanov, was opposed to Mao and approved of or even encouraged Ranadive's step are questions on which it is fascinating to speculate11 but on which no evidence is available.

Whatever Moscow's attitude toward Mao, it was Ranadive's misfortune that by the time he had reached the high point of his opposition to the new strategy Moscow had finally, after two years of uncertainty, given its support to the latter. Quite apart from any influence the Chinese Communist victories may have had, the Soviet leaders no doubt realized that the "left" line, by regarding capitalism as an enemy, unduly limited the range of the Communists' potential supporters in their cold war with the United States to the so-called exploited classes and thus entailed the serious danger that each Communist party would concentrate on the bourgeoisie in its own country as its main enemy, to that extent ignoring Moscow's main enemy, the United States. It is even possible that both Ranadive's practical course in 1948 and 1949 and his theoretical formulations in his conflict with the Andhra Committee contributed to this realization in Moscow and to the recognition that the new strategy with its willingness to cooperate with virtually everyone regardless of class against its main enemy, foreign imperialism, was far better suited to the needs of the Soviet Union's anti-American foreign policy.

The adoption of the new strategy in Moscow was marked by two concurrent events in June 1949. One was the publication in Pravda of a pamphlet (Internationalism and Nationalism12) by the foremost Chinese Communist theoretician, Liu Shao-chi, written as early as November 1948. The cause of the delay in its appearance in Moscow could hardly have been its main contents, which, being directed against Tito, would have been welcomed earlier, but is likely to have been a passage at its very end in which the Communists in colonial and semi-colonial countries, including India, were expressly told that they would be committing "a grave mistake" if they did not "enter into an anti-imperialist alliance with that section of the national bourgeoisie which is still opposing imperialism." At the very time when this vigorous directive to the Asian Communist parties to adopt the new strategy appeared in the pages of Pravda, a meeting of the Soviet Academy of Sciences on the colonial movement was taking place. It differed sharply from the similar meeting held two years earlier. The reports delivered (as well as another set of reports presented to the Academy later in 1949 13) showed that not only Zhukov but also the former champions of the "left" strategy, Balabushevich and Dyakov, who dealt specifically with India, favored the inclusion of some bourgeois elements in the united front "from below," though it is interesting to note how much more grudgingly and reluctantly the latter two took this step than Zhukov and some other Soviet writers represented in these reports. During the months following June 1949, the Cominform journal and Pravda also showed clearly that the new strategy now had Moscow's approval by featuring pronouncements of Mao Tse-tung and Chu Teh advocating it.

A showdown between Moscow and the CPI now became inevitable. The situation, in which Ranadive, who had always thought of himself as a faithful follower of Moscow, was now hopelessly doomed, did not lack elements of drama. The end, however, was not to come for several months. Ranadive seems to have long remained unaware of the most recent change in Moscow; in fact his most violent attack on the new strategy appeared in print a month after Moscow had publicly embraced it. In November 1949 Moscow utilized the meeting in Peking of one of its international front organizations, the World Federation of Trade Unions, to dramatize and publicize to the Asian Communist parties the fact that Moscow's and Peking's views on Communist strategy now coincided. Sounding the keynote of this meeting and, indeed, of the subsequent history of Asian Communism, Liu Shao-chi in a speech reprinted in the Cominform journal of December 30, 1949, directed the various colonial Communist parties in the most unequivocal language to take "the path" of China and of Mao Tse-tung and defined this path as union of the "working class ... with all other classes, parties, groups, organizations and individuals who are willing to oppose the oppression of imperialism" in a broad united front, but as requiring "armed struggle" only "wherever and whenever possible." That India was not considered a country where armed struggle was possible (a fact of crucial importance in the next phase of the CPI's history) was implied in the Manifesto issued by the Peking meeting and printed in the Cominform journal of January 6, 1950, and had already been suggested earlier in Zhukov's reports to the Academy of Sciences.

Even the clear call of the Peking WFTU Conference was ignored by the CPI. Ranadive seemed too blindly convinced of the correctness of his "left" strategy to understand any but the most direct orders from Moscow and was, in any case, by now too deeply committed to that strategy to be able to give it up without admitting that his intra-Party rivals had been right and thus losing power to them. More immediate intervention by Moscow finally came in the form of an editorial in the Cominform journal of January 27, 1950, entitled "Mighty Advance of National Liberation Movement in the Colonial and Dependent Countries," telling the CPI to take the Chinese "path" of forming the broadest united front with all anti-imperialist classes and elements, but again pointedly omitting India from the list of countries where the use of armed violence was appropriate. The editorial thus did substantially no more than repeat the message of the WFTU Conference, but it was addressed directly to the CPl and, above all, it emanated not from Peking, which Ranadive despised as a source of Communist strategy, but from the very Cominform on which he had placed his main reliance. Thus publicly abandoned by Moscow, Ranadive's fate was sealed and his Party rivals began to close in on him, which they had not ventured to do (in spite of the utter failure of his policies) as long as he could claim Moscow's support. Still he sought desperately to cling to his authority. Instead of issuing a statement of abject "self-criticism" called for by Communist ritual in this situation, Ranadive, writing in the February-March issue of Communist, hailed the Cominform editorial but subtly reinterpreted it to justify and even praise his own strategy. It is not clear whether this was the result of his inability to understand the import of the editorial or a desperate gamble to gain time, but in any case Moscow did not accept his statement and, by remaining silent, allowed the Andhra faction to press its attack against the hated Ranadive. On April 6 Ranadive issued one more statement, far more self-critical than its predecessor but apparently still an attempt to remain in power. This, too, failed to regain Moscow's support and, at a meeting held in May and June 1950, the Central Committee "reconstituted" itself and the Politburo and replaced Ranadive as General Secretary with Rajeshwar Rao, the leader of the Andhra faction. A CPI Central Committee statement (appearing half a year after the Cominform editorial had initiated the shake-up) announcing the change in both leadership and policy was published in Pravda and Izvestia of July 23, 1950,14 and was thus given Moscow's stamp of approval.

The leadership of the CPI had fallen into the Andhra Communists' hands because they had long been the foremost champions of the new strategy in India and the only well-organized opposition to Ranadive within the Party and not because they had been selected by Moscow for their clear understanding of what was desired there. In a series of statements published after their assumption of the CPI's leadership in the July-August 1950 issue of Communist, they not only mercilessly criticized Ranadive's "left" strategy and restated the fundamentals of their own new strategy but also made it clear that, deeply committed as they were to the type of peasant guerrilla warfare they had been carrying on in Telengana, they (wrongly) interpreted Moscow's and Peking's references to the "Chinese path" as including the specific Chinese Communist tactics of such warfare, as well as the essential four-class element of the new strategy. The continuation by the Andhra leaders of Ranadive's emphasis on violent methods, though their focus was now being shifted entirely from urban to rural areas, led to further disintegration of a Party already on the brink of ruin and to what a September 1950 circular of their Politburo called "a state of semi-paralysation."15


Three months earlier, a Chinese Communist statement, "An Armed People Opposes Armed Counterrevolution," had appeared in the Peking People's Daily of June 16, 1950, and in English in People's China of July 1, 1950, thus being available to the CPI. After referring to the WPTU Conference and the Cominform editorial and specifically to the Indian Communists, it had pointed out that "armed struggle ... can by no means be conducted in any colony or semi-colony at any time without the necessary conditions and preparations." However, this pointed warning was ignored by the CPI, for even its Andhra leadership, though it took the Chinese Communists as its example, looked to Moscow alone for directives. Yet Moscow, in spite of the admittedly disastrous situation within the CPI, seemed again in no hurry to provide specific guidance on how its order to adopt the new strategy was to be implemented.

Finally, in December 1950, such guidance arrived in the form of an open letter, published in the CPI's Cross Roads on January 19, 1951, from R. Palme Dutt, the British Communist leader of Indian descent who had in years past often served as Moscow's voice for the CPI. The Party was now told in some detail that its "present paramount task is ... the building of the peace movement and the broad democratic front." Here it was also suggested that Nehru's neutralism, again and again "unmasked" by the CPI since December 1947 as subservience to "Anglo-American imperialism," was "a very important development." In the same month the CPI's Central Committee met to enlarge itself and reconstitute the Politburo by adding adherents of the new strategy in its peaceful form to its violent followers in the Andhra faction. While it was openly admitted that "differences on vital tactical issues have yet to be resolved" (Cross Roads, December 29, 1950, p. 5), a number of statements made at this meeting and in subsequent months emphasized the themes struck in Dutt's letter and thus underlined the ascendancy of the peaceful over the violent form of the new strategy in the CPI. This shift in policy, unlike the earlier ones from Joshi's "right" to Ranadive's "left" and from the "left" to Rajeshwar Rao's new strategy, was a gradual one. The leaders of both factions shared power, an arrangement inconceivable in the earlier cases, which indicates that the differences between violent and peaceful tactics, though more spectacular, are far less fundamental than those among the three strategies of Communism.

In April 1951, the CPI leadership published a new Party program (reprinted in the Cominform journal of May 11, 1951) which, in strict accordance with the new Communist strategy, did not demand a united front with the Congress as had the "right" strategy, and explicitly rejected the antibourgeois revolution called for by the "left" line. It called for replacing "the present anti-democratic and anti-popu1ar Government by a new Government of People's Democracy, created on the basis of a coalition of all democratic anti-feudal and anti-imperialist forces in the country." The May Day Manifesto of the same period defined these forces as consisting of Socialists who oppose their anti-Communist leaders, "other Leftists, honest Congressmen, and above all, the lakhs of workers, peasants, middle classes, intellectuals, non-monopoly capitalists and other progressives,"16 a perfect statement of the new strategy's united front "from below" uniting workers and capitalists. By April 1951, however, the Party's leadership was also sufficiently consolidated around the Moscow line not merely to reaffirm its adherence to the new strategy but also to issue an authoritative Statement of Policy17 on the tactics by which this strategy was to be achieved. Both Ranadive's urban insurrections and the Andhra Communists' guerrilla warfare were specifically rejected and "the correct path" was now proclaimed, "a path which we do not and cannot name as either Russian or Chinese." The view which Moscow and Peking had been hinting at for well over a year, that armed violence on the Chinese model was not applicable in India, was then elaborated at some length, though the use of violence in principle in the more distant future was not rejected.18 The immediate tasks of the Party were again described as the formation of the broadest possible united front against the Congress and Socialist Parties and the building up of the peace movement, both of which were intimately related to the essential element of the new strategy, its "four-class" appeal.

The Statement of Policy marked the defeat of the violent application of the new strategy as advocated by the Andhra faction, a fact confirmed when the Central Committee in the following month replaced Rajeshwar Rao with Ajoy Ghosh as the Party's new leader and when, after the failure of efforts at negotiations with the government, the Party in October 1951 nevertheless called off the fighting in Telengana.19 The changes in leadership and the Party's documents setting forth the new line were finally ratified by an All- India Conference of the CPI in October 1951 and, in a Politburo statement appearing in the Cominform journal of November 2, 1951, were hailed as settling all differences and disputes that had torn the Party during the preceding years. Though harmony was now by no means established among the CPI leaders, the Party leadership has, ever since 1951, been firmly settled on the new strategy in its peaceful form and, most important for its stability since then, was for the first time in at least two (and possibly four) years successful in comprehending Moscow's wishes concerning both strategy and its violent or peaceful execution.


That the CPI's strategy has, since 1951, enjoyed Moscow's approval is indicated by the publication in the Cominform and Soviet press of CPI documents, which had been strikingly absent during the preceding years, and of five major articles (within two and a half years) in the Cominform journal by Ghosh, the present General Secretary,20 an honor not once accorded to Ranadive or Rajeshwar Rao. Palme Dutt and several Soviet writers also praised the CPI's new line in the year following its adoption. Finally, at a session of the Soviet Academy of Sciences in November 1951, which offered the clearest indication up to that time of the Soviet view of Communist strategy in underdeveloped countries in general and in India in particular,21 both Zhukov and Balabushevich very clearly distinguished between the essential four-class element of the new strategy, which was applicable everywhere, and its specific Chinese element of armed violence, which was applicable in some countries but was explicitly and vigorously rejected for India.

Since this agreement on the new strategy in its peaceful form was reached in 1951, only differences on tactics have remained to plague the CPI leadership. A full discussion of these would be beyond the scope of this article,22 but some of the difficulties the CPI has faced in executing the new strategy during the past four years may be briefly noted. One of the most pervasive of these seems to be "sectarianism," i.e. the reluctance of party members to cooperate with the many non-Communist elements who must be drawn into the united front of the new strategy. Another is the tendency to form that united front primarily from above by entering into alliances with various relatively small "left" parties, in which the CPI's identity is in danger of being submerged, rather than from below by winning members away from the major anti-Communist parties, the Congress and the Socialists. Still another problem, related to that of sectarianism, is the continued hostility on the part of wide circles in the CPI toward the broad non-party peace movement which the Communists have sought to build up since 1951.

All these difficulties were aired at the CPI's Third Congress held in January 1954 in Madurai. The last mentioned issue appeared in the form of a conflict over whether Britain or the United States was to be regarded as the main enemy.23 Those who hold the primarily anti-British view, notably the Andhra Communists, are also the ones who wish to emphasize the "national liberation movement" and to concentrate on building a strong Party and who, being "sectarians," tend to look down on the peace movement where they are expected to cooperate with non-Communists. The anti-American attitude, on the other hand, is closely associated with emphasis on the peace movement and would definitely seem to be closer to Moscow's desires. Why, then, could the conflict between the two not be resolved clearly in favor of the latter, but was in fact treated with the greatest caution by the leadership? The answer is suggested by Ghosh's reports on the Third Congress, when he said that the anti-American position would lead to "full support" of the Nehru government, which the CPI seems to regard as basically pro-British and anti-American. Such a step, the CPI leadership recognized, would involve another shift in strategy back to the "right" line of a united front "from above" with the Congress. Moscow, however, does not (at any rate not yet) seem to regard the Nehru government as sufficiently anti-American and pro-Soviet to warrant CPI efforts at cooperation with it. Obviously, Nehru's neutralist foreign policy poses a dilemma for the Indian Communists.24 This was recently confirmed when their Central Committee, perhaps in response to an editorial in Pravda praising Nehru, blamed the CPI's disastrous defeat in the Andhra elections of February 1955 primarily on the Party's failure to emphasize sufficiently the "important part India was playing in recent times in the international arena in favor of world peace and against imperialist warmongers."25

The new strategy of international Communism is essentially the Soviet Union's reaction to the cold war, an adjustment of Communist policy to a situation where the major parties in a country, both bourgeois and labor, are relatively pro-American and anti-Soviet and yet where the Communists want to unite all the classes represented by these parties against the United States. This situation prevails throughout most of the non-Soviet world, and the new strategy has in recent years been applied throughout it, not only in the underdeveloped areas of Asia and Latin America, but even in the West. In countries, however, where the governments and some major parties are neutralists, difficulties of the type just mentioned as besetting the CPI may arise. Whether Moscow and the Communist parties will be able to adjust to such a situation remains to be seen. Guatemala under the Arbenz regime and Indonesia, where the united front "from below" was given up for that "from above" with anti-American parties, point one way, whereas Burma, where the Communists have for years fought a civil war against a neutralist government, suggests another direction.

_______________

Notes:

1. This article is based on research done by the author at the Center for International Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in 1953-43. Its complete and documented results are available in his CENIS paper, shortly to be published as a book, “Moscow and the Communist Party of India: A Study in the Postwar Evolution of Communist Strategy,” Cambridge, Mass., 1954. The general concept of Communist strategy on which this case study is based is set forth in the author’s article, “The New Strategy of International Communism,” to appear in the June or September 1955 issue of “The American Political Science Review.” The author wishes to express his deep appreciation of the advice he has received from Morris Watnick and Bernard Morris.

2. For a short history of the CPI during the prewar and war periods, with many quotations from Communist documents illustrating the Party’s attitude, see Madhu Limaye, “Communist Part, Facts and Fiction,” Hyderabad: Chetana Prakashan, 1951, pp. 18-50. For a fuller treatment of these periods, also useful for its quotations and notes, see M.R. Masani, “The Communist Party of India, A Short History,” London: Derek Verschoyle; New York: Macmillan, 1954, chapters 1-5.

3. See the draft and final versions of the CPI’s election manifesto, “For a Free and Happy India,” “World News and Views,” December 1, 1945, p. 391, and “Final Battle for Indian Freedom,” ibid., March 10, 1946, p. 78.

4. For a very useful analysis, with many quotations of Soviet statements on India during the postwar years, see Gene D. Overstreet, “The Soviet View of India, 1945-1948,” Columbia University (unpublished M.A. thesis in Political Science), 1953.

5. Akademia Nauk SSSR, Uchenye zapiski tikhookcanskogo institute, Moscow, 1949, Vol. II.

6. E. Zhukov, “K polozheniiu v Indii,” Morovoe Khoziaystvo I Mirovaya Politika, July 1947.

7. See P.C. Joshi, “Views,” Calcutta, May 1950, p. 27. This first and only issue of Joshi’s periodical is an extremely revealing collection of anti-Ranadive statements made by him after his ouster from the CPI.

8. The text of this document has not been available to the author but its main features can be reconstructed from “Struggle for People’s Democracy and Socialism – Some Questions of Strategy and Tactics,” “Communist,” Bombay, June-July 1949, pp. 21-89; and from “Statement of Editorial Board of “Communist” on Anti-Leninist Criticism of Comrade Mao Tse-tung,” ibid., July-August 1950, pp. 6-35.

9. “On People’s Democracy,” Ibid., January 1949, pp. 1-12; “On the Agrarian Question in India,” ibid., pp. 13-53; “Struggle Against Revisionism Today in the Light of Lenin’s Teachings,” ibid., February 1949, pp. 53-66; “Struggle for People’s Democracy and Socialism,” loc. cit.

10. “Struggle for People’s Democracy and Socialism,” loc. cit., pp. 77-79. It is fascinating to note that Ranadive also attacked Maoism for placing its entire reliance on the Communist Party instead of the working class, ibid., p. 88, partly quoted in Robert C. North, “Moscow and the Chinese Communists,” Stanford, 1953, p. 242. He thus puts his finger on a real weak spot (from the point of view of Marxian theory) of Maoism. What Ranadive remained unaware of is that he was here attacking the very basis of Leninism, that it was Lenin, not Mao, who first “deviated” from Marx on this fundamental point and that Maoism, being an adjustment of Marxism to an even more undeveloped country than Tsarist Russia, is but Leninism in a more developed form. Both Leninism and Maoism seek to obscure their perversion of Marxism by defining the working class, in a most un-Marxian manner, in terms of its adherence to Communist ideology, thus generally identifying the Party and the class, a trick which Ranadive by distinguishing between the two very uncautiously laid bare in his attack on Maoism.

11. See Franz Borkenau, “The Chances o a Mao-Stalin Rift,” “Commentary,” August 1952, pp. 117-123; Ruth Fischer, “The Indian Communist Party,” “Far Eastern Survey,” June 1953, pp. 79-84.

12. Pravda, June 7, 8 and 9, 1949, in “Soviet Press Translations,” July 15, 1949, pp. 423-489; also Liu Shao-chi, “Internationalism and Nationalism,” Peking: Foreign Languages Press, no date.

13. “Colonial Peoples’ Struggle for Liberation,” Bombay: People’s Publishing House, 1950; also condensed from Voprosy Ekonomiki, August and September 1949, in “Current Digest of the Soviet Press,” January 3, 1950, pp. 3-10; and “Crisis of the Colonial System, National Liberation Struggle of the Peoples of East Asia,” Reports presented in 1949 to the Pacific Institute of the Academy of Sciences, USSR, Bombay: People’s Publishing House, 1951.

14. “Current Digest of the Soviet Press,” September 9, 1950, p. 31.

15. Quoted in Limaye, op. cit., p. 75.

16. “May Day Manifesto of Communist Party of India,” “Cross Roads,” April 27, 1951, p. 3. A lakh is one hundred thousand.

17. Bombay, 1951; also “Cross Roads,” June 8, 1951, pp. 3, 6, and 16. Most of the important passages are reprinted in “Communist Conspiracy in India,” Democratic Research Service, Bombay: Popular Book Depot, (distributed in the U.S. by the Institute of Pacific Relations, N.Y.) 1954, pp. 20-23.

18. See “Tactical Line,” in “Communist Conspiracy in India, op cit.,” pp. 35-48 and in Masani, op cit., pp. 252-263. This supposedly secret document on which the “Statement of Policy” was based makes the last-mentioned point more frankly but in essence does not differ substantially from the published Policy Statement.

19. “C.P.I. Ready for Negotiated Settlement in Telengana,” “Cross Roads,” June 15, 1951, p. 3; “C.P.I. States Basis for Telengana Settlement,” ibid., July 27, 1951, pp. 1-2; “Congress Game in Telengana,” ibid., August 10, 1951, p. 8; “C.P.I. Advises Stoppage of Partisan Action in Telengana,” ibid., October 24, 1951, pp. 1, 3.

20. On October 19, 1951; March 28, 1952; November 7, 1952; February 5, 1954; May 21, 1954.

21. Izvestia Akademii Nauk SSSR, History and Philosophy Series, Vol. IX, No. 1, January-February 1952, pp. 80-87, in “Current Digest of the Soviet Press,” June 28, 1952, pp. 3-7 and 43; and in “Labour Monthly,” January 1953, pp. 40-46; February 1953, pp. 83-87; March 1953, pp. 139-144.

22. The present divisions of the CPI are well summarized in Marshall Windmiller, “Indian Communism Today,” “Far Eastern Survey,” April 1954, pp. 49-56.

23. “Communist Conspiracy in India,” op. cit., pp. 12-19 and 51-52; Ajoy Ghosh, “On the Work of the Third Congress of the Communist Party o India,” “For a Lasting Peace, for a People’s Democracy!,” February 5, 1954, p. 5; “Political Resolution,” New Delhi: Jayant Bhatt, 1954.

24. See the very interesting discussion of the CPI’s attitude toward Nehru in Madhu Limaye, “Indian Communism: The New Phase,” “Pacific Affairs,” September 1954, pp. 195-215, 205-207 and 212-213.

25. Quoted in A.M. Rosenthal, “Indian Reds Admit Error in Andhra,” New York Times, March 31, 1955. The CPI’s failure to pursue “correct” united front tactics before the election also was criticized by the Central Committee.
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Re: Freda Bedi Cont'd (#2)

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Record of Conversations between G.M. Malenkov and M.A. Suslov with the Representatives of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of India
Translated by Vijay Singh.
February 21, 1951

Summary: G.M. Malenkov speaks with representatives of the Indian Communist Party, including [Shripad Amrit] Dange, Ghosh, and Rao. The ICP delegation asks for Soviet advice on party organization and composition. Malenkov responds, warning the ICP to take care not to come off as a Soviet puppet. Malenkov's main suggestion is to determine a firm party line, and publish a singular and clear program for the party, so as to unite disputing factions.

Original Language: Russian

Record of the Discussions of Comrades G.M. Malenkov and M.A. Suslov with the Representatives of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of India Comrades Rao, Dange, Ghosh, and Punnaiah

21 February 1951

Malenkov: We have been informed of your desire to discuss organizational questions with us. As you already are aware, discussions on questions touching on the program of the party will take place in a matter of days.

Rao: Yes, we wish to talk about organizational questions. Our main organizational problems are the following: we must settle the question of the postponement of the congress and the composition of the Central Committee. Comrade Stalin spoke of the need to finish the endless discussions in the party. We consider that the party congress should take place after the determination of the political line. We will need to explain to the party masses why, when the congress has not been held for a significant period already, it has not been fixed in the current period. In our party the opinion exists that the party organs starting from the lowest and ending with the highest must be elected in a democratic way. If we in our own name say that the party congress must be put off, that would probably not carry weight. If, however, we say that this is the advice of the international communist movement, then we may convince the members of the party. Now some words on the second question: the composition of the Central Committee. From the constituents of the current Central Committee, 14 persons are left (in 1949 the Central Committee consisted of 31 persons; in May 1950 there were 9 persons). It is not representative, as only our tendency and the tendency of Ghosh and Dange are represented. Therefore, such a Central Committee cannot guarantee the unity of the party. It seems to me that Joshi must be reinstated to the party. This is necessary in order to guarantee the unity of the party. The question of the entry of Joshi as a part of the central committee would be put up by a significant number of party members. We hold contrary positions to Joshi, but I consider that he must become part of the central committee. Some trends which exist in the provinces are not represented in the central committee. They must be represented. Only thus will we go ahead. I consider that it is necessary to establish regular contact with the CPSU (b) for the benefit of resolving questions which spring up in the course of our daily practical work. In our time, we were given the advice of the CC of the CPSU (b) in 1933. In 1947, the discussion between Dange and Zhdanov took place, but the advice we were then given was half implemented. We found it outrageous that Dange never informed us why this advice was not carried out. We wish to know what advice was given to us [and] how it was sabotaged so that we may get to know particular individuals better. In 1947, one of the Chinese comrades returning from a session of the World Federation of Trade Unions had a discussion with Joshi lasting 6-7 hours, but nothing of this was reported to the Central Committee, and we learned about it only recently.

Malenkov: We can give you advice as to how in principle one should approach the resolution of organizational questions. You must excuse us as we will not manage to give you advice on separate practical problems and details. I wish to remind you that our advice is not obligatory. It may or may not be accepted by you.

It seems to me that for you to cite the advice of the international communist movement, in order to lean upon this advice to justify the postponement of calling the congress of the Communist Party of India, would be incorrect. It is harmful. You will be declared agents of Moscow and this will inflict damage on the communist movement in India.


We always avoid giving the least pretext to dub this or that party an agent of Moscow. Whether the Communist Party of India can cope with such kind of an organizational problem, we think that they can manage it. You will now have a party program. It is an important circumstance. In this is the advantage of the present stage of relations between the CPSU (b) and the Communist Party of India: we will work out the document, the program of the Communist Party of India. This document will lie at the basis of all of the activities of the Communist Party of India. It will facilitate the activity of the Communist Party of India.

The most reliable and tested members of the Communist Party must come into the Central Committee. The central committee must not represent an amalgam of the representatives of all of the existing tendencies in the party.
You asked how some individual comrades should be dealt with. First of all, Joshi. Once you have your program, the Central Committee as currently constituted will determine all activity which will rally the entire party. In constituting the Central Committee, the reliable and tested comrades must be included who have the ability to lead the party in the direction indicated by the program. Whether Joshi proceeds from this point of view is for you to consider. If I am not mistaken, there were previous discussions on this theme. It is necessary to verify in what measure Joshi will fulfill the will and program of the party.

Contact between the Communist Party of India and the CPSU (b) is necessary. It has been useful. To that measure, in whatever way the Central Committee of the Communist Party of India might carry out this contact, it is necessary to do it. We will assist [you in] this. Maybe we can think of establishing an organization of specialists in radio relations for this. We might be able to render some sort of assistance for this purpose.

Dange: At the time of the discussion in 1947, such a proposal was brought up but was left unimplemented.

Ghosh: I agree that, having obtained advice on principles on organizational questions, we will limit it to this and must leave all the affairs of organizational relations for the Indian Communist Party.

I wish to ask you, so far as members of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of India who are permanently situated in East Pakistan are concerned, should they be members of the Central Committee.

Malenkov: To have relations with the workers of East Pakistan is helpful. To have organizational relations, i.e., to have them as members of the Central Committee, is not obligatory.

Dange: Since my meeting with Cde. Zhdanov has been referred to here, I must inform you that after my return from Moscow I made a detailed report on this meeting to the Politburo of our party -– Comrades Ranadive, Joshi, Adhikari. There is no document of this for the reason that I was working in conditions of complete conspiracy and it was not possible to distribute my report in the form of a written document then as that would have been dangerous. I communicated all the questions including the question of radio relations.
In February 1948 the Second Congress of the party took place and in April I was put into prison and cut off from party life.

Malenkov: In past discussions we touched upon the question of instituting candidate membership in the party. This would help to raise the quality of the party and draw in tried and tested people, not enlarging the membership of the party too much but rather placing emphasis on the quality of persons taken into the party.

Dange: Yes, we thought over this suggestion and consider it feasible.

Punnaiah: After our program is published, it will be clear that we strongly made a mess-up of many questions. It will be clear that we were incorrect on many questions. For example, on the question of understanding the Chinese path of development. After the publication of the program, let there appear leading articles in the press of the fraternal communist parties morally supporting the program and the Central Committee. This would be a great help to us. I asked you also to bring clarity to some questions which I have on the problem of partisan warfare in India.

Malenkov: You will bring out the program of the party in the name of the Central Committee which will unite people on the basis of that program. Following from this, the activists will unite around the program. I think that the publication of the program of the Communist Party of India will determine our relations to them. The position of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of India would be very strong. And then that fact–whatever were the earlier points of view -- acquires a secondary significance once the program comes out, uniting the Central Committee. Each one of you would be recognized as one who steadfastly contributed to the party program. This will end confusion and unite the Central Committee on the basis of the program.

Ghosh: I fully agree with this. Once the publication of our program is a fact, that will be fully sufficient.

Malenkov: Do the comrades still have any questions for us? I want to inform the comrades that if they wish to get to the bottom of difficult material problems, then they might want to take into consideration that at the present time there exists the ‘International foundation to help the left workers’ organizations.’ We can render help in accordance with this.

Rao: We will think over this and inform you.

Dange: We need to open the struggle against the influence of bourgeois ideology over the masses, particularly on the questions of the history and philosophy of India. Our youth find bourgeois psychology on these questions acceptable. Maybe the Academy of Sciences can take upon itself this specialized work in order to render us some assistance. We require English translations of books appearing here on India and, in particular, we wish to receive the Chronological Notebooks of Marx on India. We have only two books devoted to the history of India: the book of Dyakov[i] and my book on the ancient history of India. If we might find the corresponding forms to relate the scientific work in India with the work of the Academy of Sciences, that would be a great help for us.

I wish to return to the request to have a meeting with the chairman of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions, Comrade Kuznetsov, for a discussion on trade union questions.

Cde. Malenkov said that the request of Comrade Dange would be fulfilled.

[Taken down by] V. Grigor’yan 22.II.51

_______________

Notes:

[ i] A. M. Diakov was a leading Soviet scholar and political commentator on India since the 1930s. In 1948, his book The Nationality Question and English Imperialism in India found opportunities for revolutionary activity among India’s nationalities. His over-eagerness was attacked in 1952, and Diakov opted for self-criticism.
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