Blog 2 - USSR Propaganda

The above Soviet Russian poster is a visual depiction of the Soviet call for the liberation and independence of the world's colonised peoples during the first phase of decolonisation. Lenin and the Soviets were one of the most powerful driving forces in the political opposition towards colonial powers after the First World War. It was a call for not just the dismantling of Western capitalist states and their hegemonic control of the colonised world, but also a call that emphasised the significance of a united universal proletariat - a class-conscious group of comrades, not defined or limited by race, gender or creed. Rather, they were united in their common dream of a classless society, ridden from the terrors that was the capitalist ‘exploitation of man by man’. 

This supposed unity and camaraderie is exactly how Dada, an Indian man living in America, is shipped to Russia for his Marxist education. How else may have the son of a labourer from Rawalpindi have made it to a University in Moscow? It wasn’t through some magical rags to riches fairy-tale, but through the international network of communists assisting these young students, with big dreams of the liberation of their homelands. And as Dada puts it, it was a vision to witness. Students of various ages, ethnicities, and physical abilities united in the struggle to decide their own fate. He mentions the sight of Black men strolling alongside, often flirting with, white women- a sight that was outlawed in the Western capitalist lands of America, but was somehow never frowned upon in these Moscow streets. 

But is unity all it takes to undo the parasitic actions of these Europeans? To get lost in this talk of unity and camaraderie would be too simplistic, for building this 'universal' idea of the proletariat is not so straight-forward. To illustrate, consider our reading of Mckay. He is a poet visiting Moscow as an unofficial visitor of the American Communist Party, but is somehow received in public with surprising enthusiasm and given much importance in meetings that did not concern him. While Mckay was charmed by the attention and claims it made him ‘a black icon’, re-reading this text today shouldn’t hide the racial undertones- that he was after all, different. His exotification placed him as an object, a singular symbol of a distant idea of the black man. ‘What could this strange creature tell us about his people?’, they seemed to say. Their actions made it clear they had no patience to understand the complexity of the African people and their struggles, and just as the colonisers have, they treated him not as a human being just like themselves. It should then not be ignored how the supposed ‘unity’ under communism chooses to ignore race.

And so, it would be good to ask, what does this Soviet poster of an Indian man shoving his coloniser off the map of Goa above bold Russian letters really mean for the decolonisation of India? Or the decolonisation of all colonies at large, even? Should the face of Indian, African or East-Asian Liberation be shadowed under the bright bold letters of a Russian Communist State? If we are to dissect what decolonization means for a people left stripped of their culture and identity for hundreds of years under a foreign regime, is it not the reconciliation of that very identity at the core of what it means to be liberated? 

As John Stewart Locke wrote so callously of the colonised people, “They have no history in the East”. Colonisers like Locke have suppressed the East for centuries, and have justified it by propagating that their customs, their religion, and their culture are to blame for their stagnation; for their inability to govern themselves. How are we to erase this racism from our nationhood if not by recounting that earlier identity- the un-suppressed, unapologetic indigenous identity of the colonised? How can the USSR lead that struggle for the black man when he himself gawks at the sight of one? How can the USSR lead that struggle for the Indian man if he knows not what it means to be one? If the colonisation of a nation started with the force of a white man, it certainly cannot end in the hands of more white men. Despite the sincerity of the USSR’s support for the anti-colonial struggle, it cannot be forgotten that their efforts were also tied into the goal of creating national pride and prestige. They were set to have established a hierarchy one way or another, with the USSR as the beacon of light for the world. This is perhaps the issue, that the proletariat cannot be universal- unity in the hopes of a universal communist regime runs the risk of erasing centuries of violence, of culture, and of history. In order to undo what has been done by colonisers such as Locke, we cannot allow that history to be erased- it must be protected. Maybe then we should hope to see the poster of an Indian man shoving his colonsier off the map of Goa under sanskrit letters.