Blog 2 - Propaganda and Internationalism

Blog 2 – Communist Internationalism

Every nation and every individual has a dream and an aspiration. Some simply aspire to be viewed as individuals with their own vivid and complex experiences. That desire is not always manifested immediately and explicitly, as Mckay was at first reluctant to express his opinion about the potential Communist revolution in the USA. Several Soviet propaganda posters expressed the sentiment that the USSR was a place that celebrated diversity and that all oppressed peoples were united in the fight against capitalism.

The USSR actively sought to portray itself as that bastion of racial unity. Posters detailing unity between Black, South Asian and East Asian people were common. This was useful propaganda at a time when many countries were beginning to pursue a decolonization movement. The Indian National Congress declared their demand for full independence in 1929, when posters were in full force. It made the populations in those countries somewhat more partial to the USSR, as it contrasted itself with imperialist and racialist West. To suggest that there was no racist sentiment in the USSR seems unrealistic, despite Mckay’s account. He only visited Moscow, at a time where the great revolutionary spirit was abound. For a nation rarely exposed to the Black Man, they were at least fascinated by his presence. Perhaps they were equally fascinated by the fact that he was a poet. For it is difficult to conceive that the racist science, literature and history propagated by the colonial empires, particularly in the 19^th century, never made inroads into the Russian imagination or that the victory of the Bolsheviks was somehow able to dispel entirely any racist notions.

The posters presented the black and brown man as equal to the Soviet man. The figures were equally muscular and grand, standing together. Both before the second phase of decolonization began and during it, these posters stood out, as the colonial empires could not possibly shirk away from their racist past and present, even after having left many colonies. The civil rights movement in the United States began to take shape alongside this during the 1950s. The fact that African-Americans were vociferously calling for their rights, gave another platform for the Soviets to bring their supposed racial tolerance into the limelight.

Mckay highlights that a revolution in America is still far off because the ruling class and the system is not as oppressive as that of Czarist Russia. Many streams of thought suggest that the creation of racial hierarchies facilitates the continuation of the capitalist system because it pacifies the race that is placed above, giving them a more dominant role in society, inducing them to believe that they are prosperous. One is reminded of Lyndon Johnson’s statement about duping a poor white man into believing that he is better than the best black man. Perhaps the revolution is inhibited by the presence of racial biases within the movement that is meant to bring it about. The fact that the white American Communist still in some sense thinks himself better than the black man, lends credence to how the revolutionary mobilization in the USA is lacking.