Preliminary Programme

The ruling Socialist Unity Party (SED) of the German Democratic Republic (DDR) always presented itself as born from the history of the German Communists’ fight against Nazism. It also celebrated its internationalist past, especially the heroism of the German contingent who fought for the Republic in the Spanish Civil War. When, in 1975, the Honecker leadership decided to intervene in Angola on the side of the MPLA, this anti-Fascist and internationalist lineage was made into a central justification for the project, with the South African Defence Force (SADF) cast as the new fascists. During the next decade and a half, as well as giving security training and support to the Angolan forces, the DDR sent large numbers of mainly young people to the country to work as technical advisers, artisans, medical personnel, lecturers and so forth. They were to a large extent organized by the SED’s youth movement, the Free German Youth (FDJ). Many of these volunteers were deployed in SWAPO and other liberation movement bases, and in small towns and garrisons. They were under considerable threat from the UNITA and SADF, and some died from disease, accidents and military incidents. The paper uses sources from the German Federal Archives (Lichterfelde) and the Foreign Office, Berlin to examine the experience of these ‘youth brigades’ and others. The paper asks whether they were highly motivated activists invested in the anti-fascist tradition and taking part in a genuine act of international solidarity, or whether they were unwilling participants in a political adventure pursued in the leadership bureaucracy’s self-interest. It examines the motivation and objectives of the SED’s policies in Angola, and the party and civil service structures that were set up to manage the operation. It looks at the recruitment of the young men and women, their deployment in Angola, and how they fared. The paper especially focuses on micro-biographies of a number of well-documented individuals. Their stories range from the heroic, to the farcical, to the tragic. Particular attention is given to the interactions between Germans and Angolans, and to the question of whether they understood one another or whether they were mutually uncomprehending. Did the tradition of resistance to Fascism in Germany take on renewed meaning in the Angolan struggle; or was it dissipated in a Quixotic, or calculating, project to which it had no relevance ? (Show less)

When the dust of the Russian Revolution had settled in the early 1920s, Berlin became not only a hub for disillusioned anarchists, to paraphrase Emma Goldman, but also for anticolonial revolutionaries from across India, Egypt, and Ireland. Indeed, while most of the Indian revolutionaries in the city turned to communism and aligned themselves with the Comintern, a small group also turned to anarchism and joined the International Working Men’s Association (IWMA), formed in late 1922 with Alexander Schapiro, Augustin Souchy, and Rudolf Rocker as secretaries. Drawing on archival material and private papers from across Britain, India, and Germany, this paper examines the history of the Indian revolutionaries in Berlin – principally M.P.T. Acharya and Virendranath Chattopadhyaya – to think more closely about the role of anarchism in the Indian freedom struggle. Looking also at their friendship with prominent anarchist such as Souchy, Rocker, and Alexander Berkman, as well as involvement in organizations such as the IWMA-affiliated International Anti-Militarist Bureau (IAMB) and, eventually, the Comintern-led League Against Imperialism (LAI), the paper opens a window onto hitherto unexplored connections between anarchism and anticolonialism in the 1920s and 1930s. (Show less)

The topic of this proposal of paper is based on a comparative study of the relations and links between anarchists and different expresions of political violence in Western Europe (mainly focused in Italy, Spain, France, Germany and Great Britain) from the 60’s to the begginins of the 80’s in the XX Century.
First at all, I will explain some various definitions, meanings and forms of political violence. After this, we will continue with a brief history of the main actions and organizations that caracterised that period of time, from those with roots inside some currents of anarchism to those that were linked or had their origins in other political or social movements (sometimes totally opposed to anarchist views, as the neofascist groups were, during the so-called “Years of Lead” in Italy) or that came as a kind of reaction from different states and goverments across Western Europe. I will conclude with an analysis of some of the main patterns in these expressions of violence, at a transnational level, focusing specially in the main links, similarities and differences between groups, actions and the different degrees and types of violence (as many as different interpretations on the concepts of “direct action” and “legitimate reaction” to a so-perceived aggression, can exist).
The main sources for the elaboration of this paper will be not only bibliography but also documents from the IISH (Amsterdam) and archives in other countries like Italy (Archivio Centrale Dello Stato, Rome) or Great Britain (The National Archives, Kew, Surrey).
This paper partly reflects the results of the research I have conducted as a PhD student, related to anarchism and political violence in Italy and Spain (1960-2004). (Show less)