array(17) { ["publication"]=> array(1) { ["D:clio:PublicationReview"]=> array(28) { ["clio:contributorName"]=> array(1) { [0]=> string(12) "Smith, Steve" } ["rda:titleManifestation"]=> string(38) "B. Studer: Reisende der Weltrevolution" ["rda:creator"]=> array(1) { [0]=> string(41) "Steve A. Smith, All Souls College, Oxford" } ["rda:languageOfExpression"]=> array(1) { [0]=> string(2) "en" } ["clio:uid"]=> string(10) "2022-4-020" ["cmis:objectId"]=> string(9) "reb-49942" ["cm:created"]=> string(20) "2020-05-17T19:05:00Z" ["cm:modified"]=> string(20) "2022-10-19T09:10:00Z" ["cm:createdBy"]=> string(14) "Gleb J. Albert" ["cm:modifiedBy"]=> string(14) "Eliane Kurmann" ["clio:contentType"]=> string(3) "reb" ["cmis:contentStream"]=> string(8370) "Over the past quarter of a century, Brigitte Studer has established herself as the world’s most original and creative historian of the Comintern, the organization created by the Bolsheviks in 1919 to promote world-wide Communist revolution. Deeply immersed in its archives, especially its personnel files, as well as in the diaries and memoirs of its operatives, Studer has pioneered a style of history that transcends the Cold War story of leaders, institutions, ideological clashes, and organizational acronyms in order to explore the lives of those individuals who dedicated themselves to promoting revolution. In _The Transnational World of the Cominternians_[1], Studer explored the institutional practices through which foreign communists in the Soviet Union struggled to align their subjectivities with the externally imposed norms, values and dispositions of the Stalinist system. Her new study builds on this approach, exploring with verve and insight the lives of two dozen Comintern activists whom she characterizes as „travellers of world revolution“. These men and women were professional revolutionaries who were sent by Moscow across the world to set up communist organizations, found newspapers, organize and finance political uprisings and military action, or to engage in espionage on behalf of the Soviet motherland. For these roving revolutionaries work required „linguistic skills, adaptability, a high degree of organization, tolerance of frustration, negotiating skills and, above all, discretion“ (p. 37). Across different chapters, rather than in a single exposition, Studer vividly captures the precariousness of their lives. Living out of suitcases, they were at constant risk of arrest, interrogation, torture, or even death; but against this somewhat stereotypical depiction, Studer shows that much of their lives were dull routine work, writing reports for the Comintern apparat in Moscow. In the early years, some were fired by revolutionary romanticism; but as the Comintern rapidly fell under Stalin’s control work became more bureaucratized and the culture characterized by mistrust and ideological fanaticism, which reached its apogee in the Spanish Civil War. Following two chapters that recount the formation of the Comintern and introduce the revolutionary travellers, Studer proceeds to look at key moments in the history of the Comintern. From the second Congress in 1920, the narrative turns to the Congress of the Peoples of the East in Baku in September 1920, an important symbolic moment in the history of anti-imperialism, although Studer perhaps exaggerates the extent to which it represented an effort on the part of the Comintern to integrate issues of race (and gender) into class politics. Her narrative then returns to Berlin, „the second global operational centre of international communism“ (p. 178), through which Moscow channelled people, funds, and propaganda, and, interestingly, explores Berlin as the capital of revolutionary culture in the 1920s. The next chapter offers a valuable account of the Comintern’s anti-colonial and anti-imperialist work, focusing on the First Congress against Colonial Oppression and Imperialism in Brussels in 1927 and the International Congress of „Negro Workers“ in Hamburg in 1930, a dimension of its work scanted in histories written during the Cold War. Two chapters then relate events in China in the 1920s and 1930s, viewed mainly through the activities of the revolutionary travellers. Studer follows the Comintern’s own assessment of its involvement in China by counting it a „failure“; but it is arguable that its military, financial and political assistance to the Guomindang was critical in reforging national unity and a moderately strong state. The last two chapters deal with the decline of the Comintern in the wake of the rise of Stalin and Hitler. In this dismal era many roving revolutionaries were holed up in Paris, the centre of anti-fascist struggle, or in the Hotel Lux in Moscow. The Spanish Civil War provided the last opportunity for the Comintern to bring about revolution in Europe; yet despite a tremendous investment of energy and resources, it came to nought, generating lasting recriminations on the left. Studer offers many insights into these events but her focus on the agency (or lack of it) of foreign emissaries tends to reinforce a „top-down“ view of events, although she is careful not to exaggerate the determinacy of the Comintern in bringing about failure. However, the opening of Comintern archives has led to a stream of more dialectical accounts of revolutionary opportunities in Germany, China and Spain that integrate Comintern agency with a „bottom up“ dimension that analyses how grassroots activists and organizations negotiated the sometimes suicidal policies laid down by Moscow.[2] It is not completely clear how the author chose her two dozen revolutionary travellers, other than with a view to telling a story about how their lives intersected in far-flung places. In addition to this core group, she touches on the lives of 320 cadres who shared with the core group the Comintern as a „workplace“ (a nice touch). The core group is by no means homogeneous. By and large, it does not include senior policy makers. Typical are figures such as the brilliant media mogul Willi Münzenberg or Jules Humbert-Droz who became first director of the Latin American Secretariat. Humbert-Droz happened also to be a founding member of the Swiss Communist Party, but the leaders of national communist parties are excluded from the core group (they generally lacked the cultural capital of the revolutionary travellers). Studer is clear about one criterion of her selection and that is to „over-represent“ the number of women in the cohort. Reasonably enough, she insists that historians should not leave unchallenged the assumption in the historical record that the work of men was more important than of women. She gives a fascinating account of revolutionary travellers such as Tina Modotti and Ursula Kuczynski, but her key point is to remind us of the vital „technical“ work done by women as translators, secretaries, typists, coders, and file clerks. It is a pity that she does not do more to bring non-Europeans into her story. It is true that she offers a fine account of the adventures of M.N. Roy and Virendranath Chattopadhyaya, who after a long career fighting the British Raj joined the German Communist Party where he hooked up with Agnes Smedley. Still, if one is looking to write a global history of the Comintern then revolutionary travellers of the stature of Ho Chi Minh, Zhou Enlai, Deng Xiaoping, Sen Katayama, or Tan Malaka in Asia, or of José Carlos Mariátegui or Luís Carlos Prestes in Latin America cannot be left out. As an imaginative study of the political commitment of a group of mainly European revolutionary travellers, Studer's account is excellent. The chapters on their activities in central Europe, China, and Spain are vivid and engaging, but the focus on them rather than on Communist activists at the grassroots inevitably reproduces a top-down perspective. Otherwise my main criticism of this admirable book is that it is not a „global“ history as its subtitle suggests. This would have required more focus on revolutionary travellers in Asia, Latin America and the USA. Notes: [1] Brigitte Studer, The Transnational World of the Cominternians, Basingstoke 2015. [2] Transnational histories of the Comintern that seek to integrate Comintern policy with the agency of activists on the ground include: Sandra Pujals, Los poputchiki. Communist Fellow Travellers, Comintern Radical Networks, and the Forging of a Culture of Modernity in Latin America and the Caribbean; and Anna Belogurova, Nationalism and Internationalism in Chinese Communist Networks in the Americas, both in: Oleksa Drachewych / Ian McKay (eds.), Left Transnationalism. The Communist International and the National, Colonial and Racial Questions, Montreal 2022; also Holger Weiss, Framing a Radical African Atlantic. African American Agency, West African Intellectuals, and the International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers, Leiden 2013; Hakim Adi, Pan-Africanism and Communism: The Communist International, Africa and the Diaspora, Trenton NJ 2013." ["clio:coop"]=> int(0) ["clio:focus"]=> bool(true) ["clio:objectStatus"]=> int(2) ["cliowf:workflowStatus"]=> int(14) ["cliowf:originator"]=> string(3) "HSK" ["clio:tableArchive"]=> string(0) "" ["R:rdaRoles:contributor"]=> array(1) { [0]=> array(1) { ["D:clio:PersonProfile"]=> array(7) { ["clio:contentType"]=> string(11) "contributor" ["cmis:objectId"]=> string(16) "beitraeger-94476" ["clio:organizationId"]=> int(0) ["foaf:givenName"]=> string(5) "Steve" ["foaf:familyName"]=> string(5) "Smith" ["foaf:mbox"]=> string(31) "stephen.smith2@history.ox.ac.uk" ["hsk:accessStatus"]=> int(1) } } } ["R:cliowf:relatedWorkflow"]=> array(1) { [0]=> array(1) { ["D:cliowf:ContributionWorkflow"]=> array(2) { ["cliowf:assigneeName"]=> string(15) "Albert, Gleb J." ["R:cliowf:relatedAssignee"]=> array(1) { [0]=> array(1) { ["D:clio:PersonProfile"]=> array(6) { ["clio:contentType"]=> string(11) "contributor" ["cmis:objectId"]=> string(16) "beitraeger-32402" ["foaf:givenName"]=> string(7) "Gleb J." ["foaf:familyName"]=> string(6) "Albert" ["foaf:mbox"]=> string(18) "gleb.albert@uzh.ch" ["hsk:accessStatus"]=> int(2) } } } } } } ["D:clio:Comment"]=> array(0) { } ["doctrine_entity"]=> string(17) "PublicationReview" ["R:rda:reviewOfManifestation"]=> array(1) { [0]=> array(1) { ["D:bibo:Book"]=> array(29) { ["title"]=> string(27) "Reisende der Weltrevolution" ["cmis:objectId"]=> string(10) "book-58868" ["cm:created"]=> string(20) "2020-05-17T19:05:00Z" ["cm:modified"]=> string(20) "2022-10-08T23:10:00Z" ["cm:createdBy"]=> string(14) "Gleb J. Albert" ["cm:modifiedBy"]=> string(17) "Jan-Holger Kirsch" ["clio:contentType"]=> string(4) "book" ["rda:titleManifestation"]=> string(27) "Reisende der Weltrevolution" ["mods:subTitle"]=> string(56) "Eine Globalgeschichte der Kommunistischen Internationale" ["rdaRoles:author"]=> array(1) { [0]=> string(16) "Studer, Brigitte" } ["rda:placeOfPublication"]=> string(6) "Berlin" ["rda:dateOfPublication"]=> string(4) "2020" ["rda:publishersName"]=> string(15) "Suhrkamp Verlag" ["clio:publishersId"]=> int(2480) ["rda:extent"]=> string(6) "618 S." ["bibo:isbn"]=> string(17) "978-3-518-29929-6" ["rda:purchasePrice"]=> string(9) "€ 30,00" ["rda:languageOfExpression"]=> array(1) { [0]=> string(2) "de" } ["clio:countryCode"]=> string(2) "DE" ["doctrine_entity"]=> string(4) "book" ["clio:contributorName"]=> array(1) { [0]=> string(15) "Albert, Gleb J." } ["reviews"]=> array(1) { [1]=> array(1) { ["D:clio:PublicationReview"]=> array(27) { ["clio:contributorName"]=> array(1) { [0]=> string(10) "Rybak, Jan" } ["rda:titleManifestation"]=> string(38) "B. Studer: Reisende der Weltrevolution" ["rda:creator"]=> array(1) { [0]=> string(40) "Jan Rybak, European University Institute" } ["rda:languageOfExpression"]=> array(1) { [0]=> string(2) "de" } ["cmis:objectId"]=> string(10) "reb-117822" ["cm:created"]=> string(20) "2022-05-09T11:05:00Z" ["cm:modified"]=> string(20) "2022-05-09T11:05:00Z" ["cm:createdBy"]=> string(13) "Enrico Natale" ["cm:modifiedBy"]=> string(13) "Enrico Natale" ["clio:contentType"]=> string(3) "reb" ["cmis:contentStream"]=> string(5974) "Brigitte Studer hat mit Reisende der Weltrevolution eine tiefgehende, spannende und wunderbar zu lesende Sozial- und Milieustudie der Kommunistischen Internationalen vorgelegt. An frühere Forschung anknüpfend beschreibt die Autorin, aufbauend auf einer beeindruckenden Quellensammlung und Literaturarbeit, die Lebens- und Arbeitsrealität kommunistischer Kader im Dienst der Komintern. Zwischen revolutionärem Aktivismus und Spionage, bürokratischem Arbeitsalltag, Flucht vor der Polizei, Entbehrungen, Verfolgung durch die ‹eigenen› Leute und emotionalen Erfahrungen bewegen sich die Akteur/innen, die sie mit grosser Sensibilität analysiert in einem immer komplexeren Spannungsfeld. Der Ausgangspunkt der Studie ist die «revolutionäre ‹Generation von 1920›» (S. 31), jene überwiegend junge Menschen die sich, begeistert von der Russischen Revolution und dem Versprechen der Kommunistischen Internationale die ganze, durch Krieg und Ausbeutung geprägte alte Welt auf den Kopf zu stellen, in den Dienst der Sache stellten. Menschen mit den unterschiedlichsten Hintergründen schlossen sich der Komintern an. Wie Studer schreibt: «Den Kommunisten gab es nicht.» (S. 529) Gemein hatten die von ihr beschriebenen Aktivist/innen jedoch ihr unstetes Leben mit gepackten Koffern, den Einsatz und die Disziplin für die (vermeintlich) gemeinsame Sache und die freiwillige Aufgabe eines traditionellen bürgerlichen Lebensstils. So bildeten die «Mitglieder des internationalen Kommunismus der Zwischenkriegszeit […] eine über die sich weltweit erstreckenden Räume durch eine gemeinsame Sprache und gemeinsame Praktiken verbundene Gemeinschaft oder eigene Lebenswelt.» (S. 23). Sie «waren Teil einer der größten kollektiven Erfahrungen des 20. Jahrhunderts» (S. 526). Besonders hervorzuheben ist Studers Analyse der Geschlechterverhältnisse innerhalb der Komintern. Einerseits beleuchtet sie bisher weitgehend vergessene weibliche Revolutionär/innen wie Fanny Jezierksa, Hilde Kramer, Tina Modotti, Mentona Moser oder Ruth Oesterreich. Gleichzeitig zeigt sie auch die zentrale Rolle, die Gender (oft unausgesprochen) in der tagtäglichen Arbeit und in den sozialen Beziehungen der Komintern-Mitarbeiter/innen spielte, und wie in der Komintern selbst Anspruch und Realität im Bereich der Geschlechterverhältnisse divergierten. Das Buch ist Teils chronologisch, teils geographisch organisiert. Den Rahmen für die einzelnen Kapitel bilden die Orte revolutionärer Aktivität: vom Komintern-Kongress und dem revolutionären Arbeitsalltag in Moskau, der Hauptstadt der Weltrevolution, zu den Versuchen die «Völker des Ostens» von Baku aus zu revolutionieren, dem Westeuropäischen Büro der Kommunistischen Internationale in Berlin, zu Zentren antikolonialer Aktivität wie Brüssel, bis Shanghai, Wuhan, Barcelona und Albacete. Studer gelingt es, jeden dieser geographischen Räume zum Ansatzpunkt für die Analyse der Handlungsrahmen und Wahrnehmungen ‹ihrer› Akteur/innen zu nutzen und die jeweils relevanten Kernaspekte der Arbeit der Komintern-Mitarbeiter/innen anhand lokaler Studien zu analysieren. Studer untersucht die Geschichte der Komintern nicht – wie viele andere Arbeiten – in Hinsicht auf die ‹grossen› internen Konflikte, die Entscheidungen in Moskau und deren Auswirkungen auf die verschiedenen Parteien und Sektionen, sondern stellt die Akteur/innen in den Mittelpunkt. Dabei zeigt sie, wie sich die Veränderung der Komintern im Zuge der Stalinisierung im (Arbeits‐)Alltag der Mitarbeiter/innen widerspiegelte. So schreibt sie: «Auch die Komintern institutionalisierte sich. Sie wuchs zu einem Apparat mit festen Strukturen und Regeln. Und sie entwickelte eine Bürokratie mit ihrer eigenen Logik der Selbstbewahrung und Kontrolle.» (S. 179) Diese Veränderung, nicht zuletzt im Zuge der Theorie vom ‹Sozialismus in einem Land›, hatte tiefgehende Auswirkungen für viele der einst so begeisterten jungen Revolutionär/innen: «Mit der Entfernung der unmittelbaren Revolutionsperspektive und der Überhandnahme der Alltagsroutine schwand die Revolutionsromantik der Berufsrevolutionäre!» (S. 164) Immer öfter schienen die Mitarbeiter/innen – als disziplinierte Kader – neue Wendungen und neue Generallinien aus Moskau den lokalen Parteien als nicht zu hinterfragende Wahrheiten vermitteln zu müssen; immer öfter wurden Zweifel laut, und immer problematischer und gefährlicher wurde es, diese Zweifel auch offen zu äussern. In den späten 30er Jahren war dann eine ‹Einladung› nach Moskau keine ersehnte Chance mehr, sondern eine gefährliche Drohung, die mit dem Tod enden konnte. Zwar scheint es ohne Vorwissen oft schwierig, all die 180-Grad-Wendungen der Komintern – die für die Akteur/innen so entscheidend waren – einzuordnen und zu nachzuvollziehen. Die von der Autorin gewählte Perspektive, diese Veränderungen in ihrer Wirkung auf die Mitarbeiter/innen im Ausland zu analysieren, eröffnet jedoch grossartige neue Erkenntnisse. Reisende der Weltrevolution ist ein ausserordentlich wichtiger Beitrag zur transnationalen Geschichte des Kommunismus, zur Erforschung der Komintern und nicht zuletzt zur Geschlechtergeschichte. Die Globalisierung durch Revolutionär/innen, im Zuge des, wie Studer schreibt, «neuen Globalisierungsanspruch[s] der Komintern» (S. 108), knüpft an Arbeiten zu revolutionären oder aktivistischen, transnationalen Netzwerken an und eröffnet neue Möglichkeiten und Perspektiven, um die Geschichte sozialer Bewegungen zu analysieren. Zitierweise: Rybak, Jan: Rezension zu: Studer, Brigitte: Reisende der Weltrevolution. Eine Globalgeschichte der Kommunistischen Internationale, Berlin 2020. Zuerst erschienen in: |http://www.sgg-ssh.ch/de/publikationen/schweizerische-zeitschrift-fuer-geschichte-szg|Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Geschichte| 72 (1), 2022, S. 173-174. Online: ." ["clio:coop"]=> int(0) ["clio:focus"]=> bool(false) ["clio:objectStatus"]=> int(2) ["cliowf:workflowStatus"]=> int(14) ["cliowf:originator"]=> string(8) "INFOCLIO" ["clio:tableArchive"]=> string(0) "" ["R:rdaRoles:contributor"]=> array(1) { [0]=> array(1) { ["D:clio:PersonProfile"]=> array(6) { ["clio:contentType"]=> string(11) "contributor" ["cmis:objectId"]=> string(16) "beitraeger-70926" ["foaf:givenName"]=> string(3) "Jan" ["foaf:familyName"]=> string(5) "Rybak" ["foaf:mbox"]=> string(24) "jan.rybak.mail@gmail.com" ["hsk:accessStatus"]=> int(1) } } } ["R:cliowf:relatedWorkflow"]=> array(1) { [0]=> array(1) { ["D:cliowf:ContributionWorkflow"]=> array(2) { ["cliowf:assigneeName"]=> string(14) "Natale, Enrico" ["R:cliowf:relatedAssignee"]=> array(1) { [0]=> array(1) { ["D:clio:PersonProfile"]=> array(6) { ["clio:contentType"]=> string(11) "contributor" ["cmis:objectId"]=> string(16) "beitraeger-42209" ["foaf:givenName"]=> string(6) "Enrico" ["foaf:familyName"]=> string(6) "Natale" ["foaf:mbox"]=> string(25) "enrico.natale@infoclio.ch" ["hsk:accessStatus"]=> int(2) } } } } } } ["D:clio:Comment"]=> array(0) { } ["doctrine_entity"]=> string(17) "PublicationReview" ["R:rda:reviewOfManifestation"]=> array(0) { } ["R:cliowf:relatedPublishingWorkflow"]=> array(1) { [0]=> array(2) { ["D:cliowf:PublishingWorkflow"]=> array(7) { ["cliowf:assigneeName"]=> string(14) "Natale, Enrico" ["clio:objectStatus"]=> int(2) ["cliowf:segment"]=> int(32) ["cliowf:channel"]=> string(8) "INFOCLIO" ["cliowf:datePublished"]=> string(20) "2022-05-09T11:13:00Z" ["cliowf:publishedBy"]=> string(5) "42209" ["R:cliowf:relatedAssignee"]=> array(1) { [0]=> array(1) { ["D:clio:PersonProfile"]=> array(6) { ["clio:contentType"]=> string(11) "contributor" ["cmis:objectId"]=> string(16) "beitraeger-42209" ["foaf:givenName"]=> string(6) "Enrico" ["foaf:familyName"]=> string(6) "Natale" ["foaf:mbox"]=> string(25) "enrico.natale@infoclio.ch" ["hsk:accessStatus"]=> int(2) } } } } ["EntityType"]=> string(12) "Contribution" } } ["hsk:categories"]=> array(7) { [0]=> string(6) "1/9/18" [1]=> string(5) "2/100" [2]=> string(9) "3/103/164" [3]=> string(9) "3/105/109" [4]=> string(8) "3/105/78" [5]=> string(9) "3/105/198" [6]=> string(9) "3/103/163" } ["clio:domain"]=> string(3) "NEG" ["R:dcterms:creator"]=> array(1) { [0]=> array(2) { ["D:clio:PersonProfile"]=> array(6) { ["clio:contentType"]=> string(11) "contributor" ["cmis:objectId"]=> string(16) "beitraeger-70926" ["foaf:givenName"]=> string(3) "Jan" ["foaf:familyName"]=> string(5) "Rybak" ["foaf:mbox"]=> string(24) "jan.rybak.mail@gmail.com" ["hsk:accessStatus"]=> int(1) } ["tabelle"]=> string(12) "Contribution" } } ["clio:contentTypeRelated"]=> array(1) { [0]=> string(2) "eb" } } } } ["clio:tableArchive"]=> string(0) "" ["clio:objectStatus"]=> int(1) ["cliowf:workflowStatus"]=> int(1) ["clio:focus"]=> bool(true) ["R:rdaRoles:contributor"]=> array(1) { [0]=> array(1) { ["D:clio:PersonProfile"]=> array(6) { ["clio:contentType"]=> string(11) "contributor" ["cmis:objectId"]=> string(16) "beitraeger-32402" ["foaf:givenName"]=> string(7) "Gleb J." ["foaf:familyName"]=> string(6) "Albert" ["foaf:mbox"]=> string(18) "gleb.albert@uzh.ch" ["hsk:accessStatus"]=> int(2) } } } ["cliowf:originator"]=> string(3) "HSK" ["clio:contentTypeRelated"]=> array(1) { [0]=> string(2) "eb" } } } } ["R:cliowf:relatedPublishingWorkflow"]=> array(2) { [0]=> array(2) { ["D:cliowf:PublishingWorkflow"]=> array(8) { ["cliowf:assigneeName"]=> string(15) "Albert, Gleb J." ["clio:objectStatus"]=> int(2) ["cliowf:segment"]=> int(1) ["cliowf:channel"]=> string(3) "HSK" ["cliowf:datePublished"]=> string(20) "2022-10-12T00:00:00Z" ["rda:dateOfDistribution"]=> string(20) "2022-10-12T00:00:00Z" ["cliowf:publishedBy"]=> string(5) "28198" ["R:cliowf:relatedAssignee"]=> array(1) { [0]=> array(1) { ["D:clio:PersonProfile"]=> array(6) { ["clio:contentType"]=> string(11) "contributor" ["cmis:objectId"]=> string(16) "beitraeger-32402" ["foaf:givenName"]=> string(7) "Gleb J." ["foaf:familyName"]=> string(6) "Albert" ["foaf:mbox"]=> string(18) "gleb.albert@uzh.ch" ["hsk:accessStatus"]=> int(2) } } } } ["EntityType"]=> string(12) "Contribution" } [1]=> array(2) { ["D:cliowf:PublishingWorkflow"]=> array(7) { ["cliowf:assigneeName"]=> string(15) "Kurmann, Eliane" ["clio:objectStatus"]=> int(2) ["cliowf:segment"]=> int(32) ["cliowf:channel"]=> string(8) "INFOCLIO" ["cliowf:datePublished"]=> string(20) "2022-10-12T00:00:00Z" ["cliowf:publishedBy"]=> string(5) "52114" ["R:cliowf:relatedAssignee"]=> array(1) { [0]=> array(1) { ["D:clio:PersonProfile"]=> array(6) { ["clio:contentType"]=> string(11) "contributor" ["cmis:objectId"]=> string(16) "beitraeger-52114" ["foaf:givenName"]=> string(6) "Eliane" ["foaf:familyName"]=> string(7) "Kurmann" ["foaf:mbox"]=> string(26) "eliane.kurmann@infoclio.ch" ["hsk:accessStatus"]=> int(2) } } } } ["EntityType"]=> string(12) "Contribution" } } ["hsk:categories"]=> array(18) { [0]=> string(6) "1/9/18" [1]=> string(9) "1/9/18/19" [2]=> string(9) "1/9/18/20" [3]=> string(9) "1/9/18/21" [4]=> string(5) "2/100" [5]=> string(9) "3/103/156" [6]=> string(9) "3/103/159" [7]=> string(9) "3/103/163" [8]=> string(8) "3/104/98" [9]=> string(9) "3/104/193" [10]=> string(9) "3/105/109" [11]=> string(8) "3/105/78" [12]=> string(9) "3/105/198" [13]=> string(8) "3/105/73" [14]=> string(9) "3/105/200" [15]=> string(8) "3/107/82" [16]=> string(8) "3/107/59" [17]=> string(8) "3/107/65" } ["clio:domain"]=> string(3) "NEG" ["R:dcterms:creator"]=> array(1) { [0]=> array(2) { ["D:clio:PersonProfile"]=> array(7) { ["clio:contentType"]=> string(11) "contributor" ["cmis:objectId"]=> string(16) "beitraeger-94476" ["clio:organizationId"]=> int(0) ["foaf:givenName"]=> string(5) "Steve" ["foaf:familyName"]=> string(5) "Smith" ["foaf:mbox"]=> string(31) "stephen.smith2@history.ox.ac.uk" ["hsk:accessStatus"]=> int(1) } ["tabelle"]=> string(12) "Contribution" } } ["clio:contentTypeRelated"]=> array(1) { [0]=> string(2) "eb" } } } ["typepath"]=> string(17) "publicationreview" ["coins"]=> string(287) "" ["prevId"]=> string(10) "reb-129132" ["prevContentType"]=> string(3) "reb" ["prevTitle"]=> string(47) "J. dos Santos Pinto u.a. (Hrsg.): Un/doing Race" ["nextId"]=> string(10) "reb-116948" ["nextContentType"]=> string(3) "reb" ["nextTitle"]=> string(28) "A. Müller: Indien im Sucher" ["listImage"]=> array(1) { [0]=> string(102) "https://infoclio.clio-online.net/sites/infoclio.clio-online/files/media/book/cover_book-58868__120.jpg" } ["pdfPath"]=> string(68) "https://meinclio.clio-online.de/open/pdf/publicationreview/reb-49942" ["cliowf_channel"]=> string(8) "infoclio" ["portalsettings_title"]=> string(11) "infoclio.ch" ["portalsettings_hostname"]=> string(15) "www.infoclio.ch" ["portalsettings"]=> array(6) { ["hostname"]=> string(15) "www.infoclio.ch" ["title"]=> string(11) "infoclio.ch" ["copyright"]=> string(11) "infoclio.ch" ["contact"]=> string(16) "info@infoclio.ch" ["jsonpath"]=> string(31) "infoclio.clio-online\files\json" ["twigcache"]=> string(84) "F:\\Inetpub\\hfn-drupal-live-9\\web\\sites\\infoclio.clio-online\\files\\cache\\twig" } ["queryParams"]=> array(5) { ["facet_field"]=> string(14) "category_epoch" ["facet_prefix"]=> string(6) "1/9/18" ["fq"]=> string(83) "category_discip:"3/104/193" AND category_region:"2/100" AND category_epoch:"1/9/18"" ["recno"]=> string(1) "2" ["total"]=> string(1) "6" } ["queryString"]=> string(158) "facet_field=category_epoch&facet_prefix=1/9/18&fq=category_discip:"3/104/193" AND category_region:"2/100" AND category_epoch:"1/9/18"&recno=2&total=6&q=&sort=" } Rezension zu: B. Studer: Reisende der Weltrevolution | infoclio - Rezensionen
Neueste Geschichte/

B. Studer: Reisende der Weltrevolution

< zurück 2/ vorwärts >
Cover
Titel
Reisende der Weltrevolution. Eine Globalgeschichte der Kommunistischen Internationale


Autor(en)
Studer, Brigitte
Erschienen
Berlin 2020: Suhrkamp Verlag
Anzahl Seiten
618 S.
Preis
€ 30,00
ISBN
978-3-518-29929-6
Rezensiert für infoclio.ch und H-Soz-Kult von
Steve A. Smith, All Souls College, Oxford

Over the past quarter of a century, Brigitte Studer has established herself as the world’s most original and creative historian of the Comintern, the organization created by the Bolsheviks in 1919 to promote world-wide Communist revolution. Deeply immersed in its archives, especially its personnel files, as well as in the diaries and memoirs of its operatives, Studer has pioneered a style of history that transcends the Cold War story of leaders, institutions, ideological clashes, and organizational acronyms in order to explore the lives of those individuals who dedicated themselves to promoting revolution. In The Transnational World of the Cominternians1, Studer explored the institutional practices through which foreign communists in the Soviet Union struggled to align their subjectivities with the externally imposed norms, values and dispositions of the Stalinist system. Her new study builds on this approach, exploring with verve and insight the lives of two dozen Comintern activists whom she characterizes as „travellers of world revolution“. These men and women were professional revolutionaries who were sent by Moscow across the world to set up communist organizations, found newspapers, organize and finance political uprisings and military action, or to engage in espionage on behalf of the Soviet motherland. For these roving revolutionaries work required „linguistic skills, adaptability, a high degree of organization, tolerance of frustration, negotiating skills and, above all, discretion“ (p. 37). Across different chapters, rather than in a single exposition, Studer vividly captures the precariousness of their lives. Living out of suitcases, they were at constant risk of arrest, interrogation, torture, or even death; but against this somewhat stereotypical depiction, Studer shows that much of their lives were dull routine work, writing reports for the Comintern apparat in Moscow. In the early years, some were fired by revolutionary romanticism; but as the Comintern rapidly fell under Stalin’s control work became more bureaucratized and the culture characterized by mistrust and ideological fanaticism, which reached its apogee in the Spanish Civil War.

Following two chapters that recount the formation of the Comintern and introduce the revolutionary travellers, Studer proceeds to look at key moments in the history of the Comintern. From the second Congress in 1920, the narrative turns to the Congress of the Peoples of the East in Baku in September 1920, an important symbolic moment in the history of anti-imperialism, although Studer perhaps exaggerates the extent to which it represented an effort on the part of the Comintern to integrate issues of race (and gender) into class politics. Her narrative then returns to Berlin, „the second global operational centre of international communism“ (p. 178), through which Moscow channelled people, funds, and propaganda, and, interestingly, explores Berlin as the capital of revolutionary culture in the 1920s. The next chapter offers a valuable account of the Comintern’s anti-colonial and anti-imperialist work, focusing on the First Congress against Colonial Oppression and Imperialism in Brussels in 1927 and the International Congress of „Negro Workers“ in Hamburg in 1930, a dimension of its work scanted in histories written during the Cold War. Two chapters then relate events in China in the 1920s and 1930s, viewed mainly through the activities of the revolutionary travellers. Studer follows the Comintern’s own assessment of its involvement in China by counting it a „failure“; but it is arguable that its military, financial and political assistance to the Guomindang was critical in reforging national unity and a moderately strong state. The last two chapters deal with the decline of the Comintern in the wake of the rise of Stalin and Hitler. In this dismal era many roving revolutionaries were holed up in Paris, the centre of anti-fascist struggle, or in the Hotel Lux in Moscow. The Spanish Civil War provided the last opportunity for the Comintern to bring about revolution in Europe; yet despite a tremendous investment of energy and resources, it came to nought, generating lasting recriminations on the left. Studer offers many insights into these events but her focus on the agency (or lack of it) of foreign emissaries tends to reinforce a „top-down“ view of events, although she is careful not to exaggerate the determinacy of the Comintern in bringing about failure. However, the opening of Comintern archives has led to a stream of more dialectical accounts of revolutionary opportunities in Germany, China and Spain that integrate Comintern agency with a „bottom up“ dimension that analyses how grassroots activists and organizations negotiated the sometimes suicidal policies laid down by Moscow.2

It is not completely clear how the author chose her two dozen revolutionary travellers, other than with a view to telling a story about how their lives intersected in far-flung places. In addition to this core group, she touches on the lives of 320 cadres who shared with the core group the Comintern as a „workplace“ (a nice touch). The core group is by no means homogeneous. By and large, it does not include senior policy makers. Typical are figures such as the brilliant media mogul Willi Münzenberg or Jules Humbert-Droz who became first director of the Latin American Secretariat. Humbert-Droz happened also to be a founding member of the Swiss Communist Party, but the leaders of national communist parties are excluded from the core group (they generally lacked the cultural capital of the revolutionary travellers). Studer is clear about one criterion of her selection and that is to „over-represent“ the number of women in the cohort. Reasonably enough, she insists that historians should not leave unchallenged the assumption in the historical record that the work of men was more important than of women. She gives a fascinating account of revolutionary travellers such as Tina Modotti and Ursula Kuczynski, but her key point is to remind us of the vital „technical“ work done by women as translators, secretaries, typists, coders, and file clerks. It is a pity that she does not do more to bring non-Europeans into her story. It is true that she offers a fine account of the adventures of M.N. Roy and Virendranath Chattopadhyaya, who after a long career fighting the British Raj joined the German Communist Party where he hooked up with Agnes Smedley. Still, if one is looking to write a global history of the Comintern then revolutionary travellers of the stature of Ho Chi Minh, Zhou Enlai, Deng Xiaoping, Sen Katayama, or Tan Malaka in Asia, or of José Carlos Mariátegui or Luís Carlos Prestes in Latin America cannot be left out.

As an imaginative study of the political commitment of a group of mainly European revolutionary travellers, Studer's account is excellent. The chapters on their activities in central Europe, China, and Spain are vivid and engaging, but the focus on them rather than on Communist activists at the grassroots inevitably reproduces a top-down perspective. Otherwise my main criticism of this admirable book is that it is not a „global“ history as its subtitle suggests. This would have required more focus on revolutionary travellers in Asia, Latin America and the USA.

Notes:
1 Brigitte Studer, The Transnational World of the Cominternians, Basingstoke 2015.
2 Transnational histories of the Comintern that seek to integrate Comintern policy with the agency of activists on the ground include: Sandra Pujals, Los poputchiki. Communist Fellow Travellers, Comintern Radical Networks, and the Forging of a Culture of Modernity in Latin America and the Caribbean; and Anna Belogurova, Nationalism and Internationalism in Chinese Communist Networks in the Americas, both in: Oleksa Drachewych / Ian McKay (eds.), Left Transnationalism. The Communist International and the National, Colonial and Racial Questions, Montreal 2022; also Holger Weiss, Framing a Radical African Atlantic. African American Agency, West African Intellectuals, and the International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers, Leiden 2013; Hakim Adi, Pan-Africanism and Communism: The Communist International, Africa and the Diaspora, Trenton NJ 2013.