*** PASCAL DELWIT: Les gauches radicales en Europe. XIXe-XXIe siècles. Editions de l'Université de Bruxelles (26 av. Paul Héger, B-1000 Brussels. Tel: (32-2) 6503799 – fax: 6503794 – Email: editions@ulb.ac.be – Internet: http://www.editions-universite-bruxelles.be ). "UBlire" series, No. 41. 2016, 652 pp. €12. ISBN 978-2-8004-1601-4.
Podemos in Spain, Die Linke, in Germany, Syriza in Greece, Left Bloc in Portugal…: judging by the appearances, it would seem that the rise in power of the radical left groups is on a par to those of the far right in Europe. The facts would suggest that there is an unexpected return to favour for “those who imagined that revolutionary ideas and Communist parties had come to an end” with the fall of the Iron Curtain and along with it the demise of the radical left. Pascal Delwit, however, who begins this book, warns that we need to be careful because, “references to the radical left is just an easy way of describing this phenomenon” because whilst this movement actually, “covers a very diversified pallet of ideas, projects, political profiles and organisations” there is a certain commonality they share within the left of the socialist family. This professor of political science at the Free University of Brussels seeks to clarify this political data by presenting and methodically analysing the changes in the radical left from the 19th to the 21st century.
As part of this tormented historical sequence, the author focuses on the birth of the socialist movement in the last quarter of the 19th century. In it he portrays the “birth of the socialist parties” in France, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Scandinavia, Italy and Germany. Experiencing various degrees of difficulty, they managed to assert themselves throughout and within the context of the Industrial Revolution, whilst also forming a part of a phase of democratisation in certain European societies. At the beginning of the 20th century, this movement is still very much present, with an electoral, political context and with a social impact within the socialist family that is indeed considerable, even though it did not even exist 100 years earlier in an epoch where its first utterings were made within charitable initiatives or social reformism. The second sequence begins with the split within this family and the birth of west European communism following the First World War and the Soviet revolution of October 1917. Professor Delwit then scrutinises “the tortuous development of revolution in Europe” (ephemeral insurrectional attempts in central Europe, two red years in Italy, the developments in the German Communist movement, the dynamic contained within French socialism “the small revolution in Europe” followed by Communism and Lenin fighting the “ultra left tendencies that were very strong within Europe’s young Communist parties”, followed by the divorce between socialists and Communists during the Congress of Tours in France. These events ultimately led to the disappearance of the Soviet Union after the fall of the Berlin Wall and are also discussed, as well as “Bolshevisation”, Trotskyism, the birth and death throes of the popular front against fascism, the Second World War, which went from the Hitler-Stalin Pact, to the war “To save the country of socialism”, the “brief hour of glory” of West European communism at the end of the conflict, before the Communist parties are dragged into the “Storm of the Cold War”. What follows is much better known and includes the different stages of “détente” and the old swansong regarding the Soviet “Empire”.
The final part focuses on the new European passage of the radical European left and the author provides a typology in this connection before analysing the elements of the particularly unfavourable context in which left groups are active and take action. There is also a chapter on the “shared house” inhabited by European United Left/ Nordic Green Left at the European Parliament. This is followed by an analysis of the groups making up this movement and the question of whether the European Union is in fact “a new corset” restricting it. Judging by the evidence, this in fact provides a “fundamental lever” for the far left to provide itself with a new profile and new area of action but it also “poses a crucial dilemma at the same time” because it would require some sort of united strategy. It subsequently transpires that European construction heightens “pretty similar point of view within the left spectrum of social democracy, particularly with regard to the possibility of taking action or not within the European Union”. The failure suffered by Syriza during its attempt to “carry out an alternative policy in the Eurozone” only strengthened “the complex and tendentiously more hostile relationship with the Union”, which is perceptible in many of the peripheral groups on the far left. Michel Theys
*** ERIC VAN DEN ABEELE: Les combats socialistes dans l’imagerie populaire {1885-1940}. Luc Pire éditions (1 av. du Château Jaco, B-1410 Waterloo. Tel: (32-2) 2108914 – fax: 2163598 – Email: editions@lucpire.eu – Internet: http://www.etui.org ). 2016, 160 pp. €29. ISBN 978-2-50705-423-6.
Eric Van den Abeele is a senior lecturer at the University of Mons-Hainaut, as well as a guest researcher at the European Trade Union Institute. He is also a man of many talents, skills and interests. In this large book, which, in its way, is a work of art, he tells the story of the beginning of socialism in Belgium by way of an array of illustrated political posters. In his preface, he points out that the appearance of this movement was never been a done deal in this country, described by Karl Marx in Capital as “the paradise of continental liberalism”. The author explains that his only intention was to present the Parti ouvrier belge (Belgian Workers’ Party) – the original name of the Socialist Party as it saw itself and how its enemies represented it and until the beginning of the Second World War. He adopts a thematic approach and his superb posters speak of past battles for democracy, freedom, better social conditions and a respect for fundamental rights. These battles are, for the most part, still on the agenda, even though there are no more posters to say so… (MT)
*** KOSTAS KOUTSOMITIS, EVANGELOS MAVROUDIS: Le tango rouge. Nikos Zachariadis ou l'ascension et la chute d'un leader. Editions Kedros (3 G. Gennadiou, GR-10678 Athens. Tel: (30-210) 3809712 – fax: 3302655 – Email: books@kedros.gr – Internet: http://www.kedros.gr ). 2016, 576 pp. €17.50. ISBN 978-960-04-4707-1.
On 29 May 1945, a British Dakota transported Nikos Zachariadis, the head of the Greek Communist Party, to Athens. This emblematic figure was a personal friend of Stalin and had just got out of Dachau. Fans of the left greet him as a messiah. It is an extremely tormented period, but the white reign of terror, he promises reconciliation. Nonetheless, the choices he takes will, on the contrary, intensify the conflict and bring the country into Civil War, with devastating consequences for Greece. For him and his companions, his pain involves the suffering of exile. In the Soviet Union his new conflict will provoke his fall from power and subsequent deportation to Siberia by the regime for which he never ceased to be a loyal militant. In the Soviet Union, he was under constant surveillance by the police and in strict solitary confinement. He will finish up by putting an end to his life by transforming a radiator pipe into his gibbet. Kostas Koutsomitis, the renowned cinematographer and Dr Evangelos Mavroudis, spent more than 20 years searching in the Greek and Soviet Communist Party archives and holding discussions with key figures, as well as visiting the different places in which Zachariadis lived, to write this book. This book is a fictional psychography of a figures considered by the left in Greece to be a “God”. In this book, fictional characters coexist with historic figures such as Nikos Belogiannis, the man of the left condemned to death and executed, the commander of the Democratic Army, Markos Vafiadis, as well as the women who fell in love with Nikos Zachariades, such as Mania Novikova and Roula Koukoulou. This epoch subsequently marks the history of modern Greece and is narrated in a cinematographic way. It is a historical novel that brilliantly brings to life the epic journey of a man identified by some Greeks as the embodiment of the country’s greatest tragedy. (AKa)
*** CHRISTOS CHOMENIDIS: Niki. Editions Patakis (38 Panayi Tsaldari, GR-10437 Athens. Tel: (30-210) 3650000 – fax: 3811940 – email: bookstore@patakis.gr – Internet: http://www.patakis.gr ). 2015, 494 pp. € 19.70. ISBN 978-960-16-5248-1.
In Greek, the word for victory is “niki”. This is the title of this historical novel, which is a success on two scores. The father of the narrator, Antonis Armaos, was a real person, Basil Nefeloudis, and an historic member of the Greek Communist Party, who experienced persecution and imprisonment before being finally done away with by the head of the Greek Communist Party at the time, Nikos Zachariadis, an emblematic but ambiguous figure. It also recounts the life of Armaos and the history of Greece ranging from the period from the disaster of Asia Minor in the 1922 to the Metaxa dictatorship in 1936, followed by the years in which the Communist Party develops throughout Greek territory up until the occupation of 1940-44 and the civil war of 1946-49. The figure portrayed is therefore that of Greece who fights and survives by any means necessary and who will not be intimidated or eliminated by war, exile or persecution. The communist ideologue thus depicted in this way also frees himself from his life and family ties to consecrate his entire life to the sacrifices and commitments involved in the common socialist struggle. The book also provides a picture of the civil war from the angle of the different families torn apart and, with some of them, Communists, taking part in the resistance, whilst others cooperate with the Germans. These families are like any others except that they are riven between idealists and naïve opportunists. Christos Chomenidis is a very well known author in Greece and beyond. In this book he poses a crucial question: what is Greece and who are its people? He brings a number of answers to this question, in light of what the Greek Communist Party has been in the context of human frailty and family ties. Just as it was yesterday, it is today, with children coming into the world with a heavy burden on their shoulders but will not refuse it or give into it. The people inhabiting “Niki” are part of 20th century Greek history and also, perhaps, a little of the history at this beginning of the new millennium… (AKa)
*** ANASTASIOS-IOANNIS METAXAS (Editor): La science politique, enquête interdisciplinaire et transversale sur le fonctionnement de la politique. Sociologie politique, la représentation sociale et la participation politique (Vol. 4). Editions Sideris (116 rue Solonos, GR-10681 Athens. Tel: (30-210) 3833434 – fax: 3832294 – Email: contact@isideris.gr). 2016, 604 pp. €25. ISBN 978-960-08-0716-5.
This fourth volume of a 10-part study edited by Anastasios Metaxas, emeritus professor at the University of Athens in the Peloponnese, involved contributions from 27 academic specialists “getting to grips with” the question of political sociology. This discipline seeks “to explain and understand” how different demands at individual and collective levels are originally located in a specific social culture and political context that is constantly evolving on the basis of action taken by the different centres of decision-making. They can be explained in forms and processes of influence and the given system of social action made through political representation and participation. (AKa)
*** Fedechoses… pour le fédéralisme. Presse fédéraliste (Maison de l'Europe et des Européens, 242 rue Duguesclin, F-69003 Lyon. Internet: http://www.pressefederaliste.eu ). September 2016, No. 173, 40 pp. €8. Annual subscription: €30.
In this issue of the still very competitive French federalist journal, the customary editorial is replaced by an appeal launched by the Movimento Federalista Europeo, the Italian section of the UEF, to European citizens to mobilise for a demonstration in Rome on the 60th anniversary of the treaties next March. The signatories of the appeal call for a permanent “federal core” to be constructed “Around the political union of countries sharing the euro”. It also calls for the “Commission to become a genuine European Government, accountable to the European Parliament representing the citizens and the Council transformed into a kind of Sennett of Member States”. Those launching the appeal also call for the implementation of policies devised for restoring citizens’ trust and subsequently stemming the trends of both populist and nationalist forces and their rallying cry is as follows, “let’s make the 60th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome turning point in European history so that we can go beyond the existing treaties based on a model of the project for the union of Europe devised at Ventotene during the Second World War, towards a the European people, For the European people”. Jean-Pierre Gouzy usual column focuses on the “Barroso affair”. This writer and old guard of federalism highlights the fact that and during his presidency, the man from Goldman Sachs also encouraged an acceleration in the technocratisation of the European Commission on the lines of what the British were advocating. In this context, there are also many other questions because this issue is full of articles focusing on Brexit, whilst other contributions provide a critical insight into the European Council of Bratislava which, instead of being the “relaunch summit” proved to be the summit of “incompetence”. Alain Réguillon asks what the European Council is actually doing because it appears to be nothing other than “an assembly of talking heads that are incapable of really taking into account the general interest of the European Union”. (MT)
*** Regions & Cities of Europe. News from the UE’s assembly of regional and local representatives. Comité des régions (99-101 rue Belliard, B-1040 Brussels. Tel: (32-2) 2822211 – fax: 2822085 – Email: regionsandcities@cor.europa.eu – Internet: http://www.or.europa.eu ). July/August 2016, No. 96, 30 p..
This issue of the Committee of the Regions’ newsletter pays particular attention to the “other” “Invest and Connect” summit of Bratislava. This summit sought to provide a number of possible responses to the many challenges that need to be met by the cities, regions and states of the Union. It contains a number of interviews with the economist Jeremy Rifkin, Commission Vice President Maros Sefcovic and Peter Pelegrini, the Slovak Vice Prime Minister. (MT)