In 1927 the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics celebrated the 10th Anniversary of the Russian Revolution with much fanfare. Supporters of the Soviet Union flocked to Moscow to attend the official Revolution Day festivities slated for November 7. The Communist International decided to make use of this opportunity to bring together representatives of the various national "friendship societies," centralizing their activities in a single international organization to be known as the International Association of Friends of the Soviet Union.[1] An organizing committee for the new association was named, with representatives of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Communist Party of Great Britain playing a leading role.[1]
The founding congress of FSU was held at the House of the Trade Unions in Moscow November 10–12, 1927. 917 delegates from 40 countries assisted the conference.[2][3][4] Leading figures in the organization were Clara Zetkin and Henri Barbusse. National sections of FSU was formed in various countries.
The Canadian-Soviet Friendship Society was established in 1949 with Dyson Carter as president and Dorise Nielsen as executive secretary. Carter edited News-Facts About the USSR from 1950 to 1956 and the pro-Soviet glossy magazine Northern Neighbours from 1956 to 1989. The CSFS succeeded the National Council for Canadian Soviet Friendship, which had been founded during World War II to support the USSR as a war ally. Earlier, a Canadian branch of the American based Friends of Soviet Russia had also existed from the mid-1920s to the late 1930s.
In 1960, the CSFS became the USSR-Canada Friendship Association. It was led by Leslie Hunt and then, after 1972, Michael Lucas. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Lucus founded the Canadian Friends of Soviet People as a successor organization. Its journal, the Northstar Compass,[7] was published from 1992 until 2017. Lucas was also the founder and leader of the International Council for Friendship and Solidarity with the Soviet People. The organisation was intended to be a successor organization to the International Association of Friends of the Soviet Union.
Mexico
Mexican poster for meeting commemorating the 51st death anniversary of Karl Marx. Amigos de la URSS was one of the organisers of the meeting
In Mexico, the association Amigos de la Union Sovietica combatiente was founded in 1942.[8]
Sovjet-Unionens venner, the FSU branch in Norway, was founded in 1928.[9]Adam Egede-Nissen was chairman of the organization 1933-1935.[10] Later Nordahl Grieg became the chairman of the organization. The organization was banned under the German occupation, along with the Communist Party, on August 16, 1940.[11]
An organization following the international model was set up in Romania by the Romanian Communist Party activist Petre Constantinescu-Iaşi in the spring of 1934, at a time of relative détente between the Soviet and Romanian governments (see Greater Romania).[12] Centered in Chişinău and later in Bucharest, it reunited a sizable panel of communist and non-committed intellectuals, and favored Soviet-Romanian cultural ventures, raising controversy after a delegation led by Alexandru Sahia illegally crossed into Soviet territory to attend the anniversary of the October Revolution.[12] It was ultimately outlawed in November of the same year by the Gheorghe Tătărescu cabinet, and was succeeded by the Society for Maintaining Cultural Links between Romania and the Soviet Union, created in May 1935 and itself outlawed in 1938.[12] Various attempts to build on the Amicii URSS legacy during World War II remained unsuccessful, but after the start of Soviet occupation, in November 1944, the Romanian Society for Friendship with the Soviet Union (ARLUS) was founded.[12] It survived as an officially-endorsed cultural institution during the early stages of the Communist regime, but was disbanded in 1964, when the Romanian Communist leader Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej announced a "national path to communism" and proceeded to distance himself from the Soviet Union.[12]
Amigos de la Union Sovietica (AUS) was founded in 1925. The organization played an important role in the antifascist struggle during the Spanish Civil War.
Sweden
A Swedish FSU branch, Sovjet-Unionens vänner, was founded in 1930.[15] In 1935 a Social Democrat from Mölndal, Edvin Trettondal, became the chairman of the organization, which resulted in his expulsion from the Social Democratic Party. He later joined the Communist Party. By the late 1930s the organization disintegrated. A section of its members, including Trettondal, formed the association Sovjet-Nytt.[16]
United Kingdom
The Friends of the Soviet Union was established in the United Kingdom in 1930 and was eventually succeeded by the British-Soviet Friendship Society.[17]
In the United States the Friends of Soviet Russia was formally established in August 1921 with Alfred Wagenknecht serving as the group's first Executive Secretary. With the establishment of the new international association the name of the organization was changed to the Friends of the Soviet Union. The organization published a monthly magazine entitled Soviet Russia Today.
Footnotes
1 2 Louis Nemzer, "The Soviet Friendship Societies," Public Opinion Quarterly vol. 13, no. 2 (Summer 1949), pg. 266.
The history of Moldova can be traced to the 1350s, when the Principality of Moldavia, the medieval precursor of modern Moldova and Romania, was founded. The principality was a vassal of the Ottoman Empire from 1538 until the 19th century. In 1812, following one of several Russian–Turkish wars, the eastern half of the principality, Bessarabia, was annexed by the Russian Empire. In 1918, Bessarabia briefly became independent as the Moldavian Democratic Republic and, following the decision of the Parliament, united with Romania. During the Second World War it was occupied by the Soviet Union which reclaimed it from Romania. It joined the Union as the Moldavian ASSR, until the dissolution of the USSR. In 1991 the country declared independence as the Republic of Moldova.
A pioneer movement is an organization for children operated by a communist party. Typically children enter into the organization in elementary school and continue until adolescence. The adolescents then typically join the Young Communist League. Prior to the 1990s there was a wide cooperation between pioneer and similar movements of about 30 countries, coordinated by the international organization, International Committee of Children's and Adolescents' Movements, founded in 1958, with headquarters in Budapest, Hungary.
The Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic or Moldavian SSR, also known as the Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic, Moldovan SSR, or simply Moldavia or Moldova, was one of the 15 republics of the Soviet Union which existed from 1940 to 1991. The republic was formed on 2 August 1940 from parts of Bessarabia, a region annexed from Romania on 28 June of that year, and parts of the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, an autonomous Soviet republic within the Ukrainian SSR.
Clara Zetkin was a German Marxist theorist, communist activist, and advocate for women's rights.
The history of communism encompasses a wide variety of ideologies and political movements sharing the core principles of common ownership of wealth, economic enterprise, and property. Most modern forms of communism are grounded at least nominally in Marxism, a theory and method conceived by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels during the 19th century. Marxism subsequently gained a widespread following across much of Europe, and throughout the late 1800s its militant supporters were instrumental in a number of unsuccessful revolutions on that continent. During the same era, there was also a proliferation of communist parties which rejected armed revolution, but embraced the Marxist ideal of collective property and a classless society.
The Friends of Soviet Russia (FSR) was formally established in the United States on August 9, 1921 as an offshoot of the American Labor Alliance for Trade Relations with Soviet Russia (ALA). It was launched as a "mass organization" dedicated to raising funds for the relief of the extreme famine that swept Soviet Russia in 1921, both in terms of food and clothing for immediate amelioration of the crisis and agricultural tools and equipment for the reconstruction of Soviet agriculture.
Union of Councils for Jews in the Former Soviet Union (UCSJ) is a non-governmental organization that reports on the human rights conditions in countries throughout Eastern Europe and Central Asia, exposing hate crimes and assisting communities in need. UCSJ uses grassroots-based monitoring and advocacy, as well as humanitarian aid, to protect the political and physical safety of Jewish people and other minorities in the region. UCSJ is based in Washington, D.C., and is linked to other organizations such as the Moscow Helsinki Group. It has offices in Russia and Ukraine and has a collegial relationship with human rights groups that were founded by the UCSJ in the countries of the former Soviet Union.
The Soviet occupation of Romania refers to the period from 1944 to August 1958, during which the Soviet Union maintained a significant military presence in Romania. The fate of the territories held by Romania after 1918 that were incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1940 is treated separately in the article on Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina.
Albert Samuel Inkpin, was a British communist and the first General Secretary of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). He served several terms in prison for political offences. In 1929 he was replaced as head of the CPGB and made head of the party's Friends of Soviet Russia organisation, a position he retained until his death.
The Workers International Relief (WIR) — also known as Internationale Arbeiter-Hilfe (IAH) in German and as Международная рабочая помощь in Russian — was an adjunct of the Communist International initially formed to channel relief from international working class organizations and communist parties to famine-stricken Soviet Russia. The organization, based in Berlin, later produced films and coordinated propaganda efforts on behalf of the USSR.
Amicii URSS, which carries the same meaning) was a cultural association in interwar Romania, uniting left-wing and anti-fascist intellectuals who advocated a détente between their country and Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union. Created in the spring of 1934 by Petre Constantinescu-Iași, an activist of the previously outlawed Romanian Communist Party, the society took its inspiration from the French Amis de l'URSS and from the worldwide network. Actively encouraged and financed by the Comintern, Amicii URSS was viewed with suspicion by authorities — never officially registered, it was eventually banned on the orders of Premier Gheorghe Tătărescu on November 25, 1934. It ceased its activity after that point, but constituted a precedent for the Romanian Society for Friendship with the Soviet Union (ARLUS).
Friends of the Soviet Union was an organization in Norway, promoting relations with the Soviet Union. The organization was founded in 1928. It worked closely with the Communist Party of Norway.
National communism is a term describing various forms in which Marxism–Leninism and socialism has been adopted and/or implemented by leaders in different countries using aspects of nationalism or national identity to form a policy independent from communist internationalism. National communism has been used to describe movements and governments that have sought to form a distinctly unique variant of communism based upon distinct national characteristics and circumstances, rather than following policies set by other socialist states, such as the Soviet Union.
19th-century German philosopher Karl Marx, the founder and primary theorist of Marxism, viewed religion as "the soul of soulless conditions" or the "opium of the people". According to Marx, religion in this world of exploitation is an expression of distress and at the same time it is also a protest against the real distress. In other words, religion continues to survive because of oppressive social conditions. When this oppressive and exploitative condition is destroyed, religion will become unnecessary. At the same time, Marx saw religion as a form of protest by the working classes against their poor economic conditions and their alienation. Denys Turner, a scholar of Marx and historical theology, classified Marx's views as adhering to Post-Theism, a philosophical position that regards worshipping deities as an eventually obsolete, but temporarily necessary, stage in humanity's historical spiritual development.
The Communist Women's International was launched as an autonomous offshoot of the Communist International in April 1920 for the purpose of advancing communist ideas among women. The Communist Women's International was intended to play the same role for the international women's movement that the Red Peasant International played for poor agrarians and the Red International of Labor Unions played for the international labor movement.
Internationalism is a political principle that advocates greater political or economic cooperation among states and nations. It is associated with other political movements and ideologies, but can also reflect a doctrine, belief system, or movement in itself.
The Association "Struggle" was a Stalinist organization operating in Odesa, Kharkiv, Kyiv, and Dnipro in Ukraine.
A socialist state, socialist republic, or socialist country, sometimes referred to as a workers' state or workers' republic, is a sovereign state constitutionally dedicated to the establishment of socialism. The term communist state is often used synonymously in the West, specifically when referring to one-party socialist states governed by Marxist–Leninist communist parties, despite these countries being officially socialist states in the process of building socialism and progressing toward a communist society. These countries never describe themselves as communist nor as having implemented a communist society. Additionally, a number of countries that are multi-party capitalist states make references to socialism in their constitutions, in most cases alluding to the building of a socialist society, naming socialism, claiming to be a socialist state, or including the term people's republic or socialist republic in their country's full name, although this does not necessarily reflect the structure and development paths of these countries' political and economic systems. Currently, these countries include Algeria, Bangladesh, Guyana, India, Nepal, Nicaragua, Sri Lanka and Tanzania.
Communist symbolism represents a variety of themes, including revolution, the proletariat, the peasantry, agriculture, or international solidarity. The red flag, the hammer and sickle and the red star or variations thereof are some of the symbols adopted by communist movements, governments, and parties worldwide.
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