1. History of Black Africa, (4 vols; Budapest, 1966–1974)Google Scholar, also published in French and Hungarian.

2. JAH, 4 (1963), 129–130CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3. JAR, 8 (1967), 549–50Google Scholar.

4. Davidson, A.B., “Marxist Literature on the Problems of Colonialism and Anti-colonialism in Africa South of the Sahara (From the 1920s Until the End of the Second World War)” in Krizsán, László, ed. Sources and Historiography on African National Liberation Movements (Studies on Developing Countries, 96) (Budapest, 1978) 9, 14Google Scholar.

5. Kutva (in Russian: Kommunisticheskii Universitet Trudiashchikhsia Vostoka) was one of four party schools operating in the 1920s. The Institute of Red Professors trained Marxist university teachers, and the Lenin Institute, the Sun Yat-sen University of Chinese Toilers, and Kutva trained party cadres from the USSR, China, and what would now be called the Third World. Niankp (Nauchno-issledovatel'skaia assotsiatsiia natsional'no-kolonial'nykh problem) originated within Kutva in 1927, but by 1929 was an autonomous institute with its own library and publishing program.

6. Haywood, Harry, Black Bolshevik: autobiography of an Afro-American Communist (Chicago, 1978), 162Google Scholar.

7. “Chernaia Afrika na revoliutsionnom puti” [Black Africa on the revolutionary path], Revoliutsionnyi Vostok, 8 (1930), 235–51Google Scholar; Rasovaia problema i marksizm [The race problem and marxism] (Moscow: Niankp, Trudy; vyp. 6, 1930)Google Scholar; Reviewed by Nasonov, N., Revoliutsionnyi Vostok (9/10): 323–31Google Scholar; Sik's reply, ibid., 331-34; “Vliianie mirovogo krizisa v Chernoi Afrike” [The influence of the world crisis on Black Africa] Agrarnye Problemy, 78 (1931), 107–55Google Scholar; Chapter on Black Africa in Agrarnyi vopros i krest ‘ianskoe dvizhenie: spravoahnik [The agrarian question and the peasant movement], 1st ed., book 3 (Moscow, 1932) 127–79Google Scholar; “Agrarnaia politika imperialistov v Cherno-Afrikanskikh koloniiakh” [The imperialists' agarian policy in Black Africa] Agrarnye Problemy, 5/6 (1932), 89–107; 12 (1932), 86–102Google Scholar; Review of Mitchell, N., Land Problems and Policies in the African Mandates of the British Commonwealth (Baton Rouge, 1931)Google Scholar in Inostrannaia Kniga, 12 (1932), 21–23Google Scholar; “Agrarnyi krizis v negritianskoi Afrike” [The agrarian crisis in Negro Africa] in: Agrarnyi krizis [The agrarian crisis], book 4 (Moscow, 1933) 257–324Google Scholar; “Agrarnyi vopros v IuAS” [The agrarian question in the Union of South Africa] in Agrarnyi vopros na Vostoke [The agrarian question in the Orient](Moscow, 1933) 327–61Google Scholar; Review of Goodfellow, D.M., A Modern Economic History of South Africa (London, 1931)Google Scholar in Inostrannaia Kniga, 3 (1933), 40–41Google Scholar; Review of Sullivan, J.R., An Economic Geography of Southern Africa (Cape Town, 1931)Google Scholar in Inostrannaia Kniga, 3 (1933), 41–42Google Scholar; Chapter on the Union of South Africa in Agrarnyi Vopros i krest'ianskoe dvizhenie: spravochnik, 2nd ed., v. 3 (Moscow, 1935), 78–97Google Scholar; Chapter on tropical and southern Africa on the eve of the French Revolution in Novaia istoriia kolonial 'nykh i zavisimykh stran [Modern history of the colonial and dependent countries] v. 1 (Moscow, 1940), 82–92Google Scholar; Chapter on tropical and southern Africa in the period of the victory and expansion of capitalism in the leading countries (1789–1870), in ibid., 346–63; Chapter on tropical and southern Africa, 1870–1918 in ibid., 489–523; “Samori” Tridtsat' Dnei, 4 (1941), 68–71Google Scholar; “Iz istorii russkoi afrikanistiki [From the history of Russian African studies] Sovetskaia Etnografiia, 2 (1946), 173–81Google Scholar; this last later reprinted as “E.P. Kovalevskii protiv rasizma” [Kovalevskii, E.P. against racism] in Izuahenie Afriki v Rossii (dorevoliutsionnyi period) [African studies in the Russian Empire before the Revolution] (Moscow, 1977), 126–37Google Scholar; “Kolonializmu net mesta na zemle” [There is no place for colonialism on the earth] Mezhdunarodnaia Zhizn', 3 (1961), 3–16Google Scholar; “Mirambo: ocherk iz knigi vengerskogo afrikanistika V teni velikogo Mirambo” [Mirambo: a sketch from the book In the shadow of the great Mirambo by the Hungarian Africanist] Vokrug Sveta, 3 (1963), 38–40Google Scholar.

8. He is described in one source as a “scholar and politician” and as President of the all-Hungarian Peace Council. We have not had access to Hungarian bibliographic sources, but we know of no published work by Sik written later than 1946. See Izuahenie Afriki v Rossii, 178n.

9. Haywood, , Black Bolshevik, 259Google Scholar.

10. Ibid., 270. It is interesting to note that according to Wilson, E.T., Russia and Black Africa before World War II (New York, 1974), 169–70, esp. n. 28Google Scholar, this self-determination approach, advocating that American Negroes had some of the characteristics of a nation, had been put forward by Stalin in 1925 to a group of five Afro-Americans who had come to study at Kutva. Among them was Otto Hall, brother of Harry Haywood (ibid., 336n28 and Haywood, , Black Bolshevik, 265)Google Scholar who opposed Haywood's position at the 6th Congress. According to Wilson, (169) the 6th Congress position on the United States included advocacy of an independent Negro republic in the southern “Black Belt,” thus adopting an element from Garvey's otherwise unacceptable platform. This certainly seems to be the implication of Haywood's position, which he admitted was based on a study of the Garvey movement (Black Bolshevik, 248). Yet interestingly, he does not explicitly say this. Perhaps this is because by 1978 he was arguing (ibid., 280) that the 6th Congress resolution "document should have made clear that one cannot hold absolutely to the national territorial principle in the application of the right of self-determination.” (It seems possible, incidentally, that the Nasanov referred to here is the same N. Nasonov who reviewed Sik's book on the race problem; see above note 7.)

11. Haywood, , Black Bolshevik, 264Google Scholar.

12. Ibid. There is perhaps some substance to Haywood's critique of Sik's position on this point, although one cannot be certain without seeing the document that Sik presented to the 6th Congress. Nevertheless, Sik's line in the debate as presented by Haywood has certain resonances in current (1980-1982) Trotskyist criticisms of the South African Communist Party, criticisms that have in effect treated the current South African situation as ripe for a “pure proletarian revolution.” We are thinking here, for example, of the so-called “Marxist Workers' Tendency of the ANC” (which is not in fact a “tendency” of the ANC at all and whose members are currently suspended from the ANC) . This group has recently published The Impending Socialist Revolution in South Africa (London, 1982)Google Scholar.

13. Haywood, , Black Bolshevik, 266Google Scholar.

14. Ibid., 270. See also Degras, Jane, ed., The Communist International 1919-1943 (London, 1956–1965) 2: 546–47Google Scholar, where the extract from the 6th Congress Theses on the Revolutionary Movement in Colonial and Semi-Colonial Countries reads as follows:

“In the Union of South Africa, the Negro Masses, who constitute the majority of the population and whose land is being expropriated by the white colonists and by the State, are deprived of political rights and of freedom of movement, are exposed to the worst kinds of racial and class oppression, and suffer simultaneously from pre-capitalist and capitalist methods of exploitation and oppression.

The communist party, which has already had some successes among the Negro proletariat, has the duty of continuing still more energetically the struggle for complete equality of rights for the Negroes, for the abolition of all special regulations and laws directed against Negroes, and for confiscation of the estates of landlords. In drawing into its ranks Negro workers, organising them in trade unions, fighting for their admission into the trade unions of white workers, the communist party is obliged to struggle by every means against racial prejudice among white workers and to eradicate such prejudice entirely from its own ranks. The party must vigorously and consistently advance the slogan of the creation of an independent Native Republic, with guarantees for the rights of the white minority, and translate this fight into action…”

We quote this extract in extenso because this position had a profound effect on the development of the Communist Party of South Africa, as it was known until 1950.

15. Haywood, , Black Bolshevik, 279Google Scholar.

16. Ibid., 269.

17. Ibid., 280.

18. Ikwesi: a Black Liberation Journal of South African and Southern African Political Analysis (8-11 Victoria Centre, Nottingham, England)Google Scholar. See, for example (15) October 1980, where references to the Black Republic slogan appear on pp. 2, 28-29, 32, and 35.

19. Haywood, , Black Bolshevik, 271Google Scholar. Here Haywood suggests that the South African delegates opposed to the resolution argued that the South African revolution was a socialist one “with no intermediate stage, an argument which posed a sort of South African exceptionalism.” Clearly Haywood is referring here to the “American exceptionalism” in the CP.U.S.A., which opposed the self-determination line supported by him. The question arises: exception to what? The only apparent answer is, to an abstract theory of revolution involving a necessary set of historical stages; in other words, a strongly teleological conception of revolution--each stage must be completed before going on to the next. It implies a necessary temporal sequence of stages or phases, rather than aspects which may occur more or less simultaneously in a complex revolutionary process.

20. In other words, Haywood's position is similar to one from which Marx distanced himself when he argued against “an historico-philosophic theory of the general path of development prescribed by fate to all nations, whatever the historical circumstances in which they find themselves.” Marx, to Otechestvenniye Zapiski (11 1877)Google Scholar in Marx-Engels Selected Correspondence, (3rd rev. ed.: Moscow, 1975), 293Google Scholar.

21. See the Introduction by Cohen, Robin, to Nzula, A.T., Potekhin, I.I., and Zusmanovich, A.Z., Forced Labour in Colonial Africa, (London, 1979), 3Google Scholar.

22. Wilson, E.T., Russia and Black Africa, 186Google Scholar. While Wilson concentrates on Sik here, he also points out that Moskovskii Rabochii (Moscow Worker) Press released a series of pamphlets in 1929 edited by E. Pashukanis and B. Vinogradov, entitled Mirovaia Politika (World Politics) dealing with such subjects as “Imperialism on the Dark Continent” and “French Imperialism in the Colonies.” E. Pashukanis later became an influential figure in Soviet legal theory whose work Law and Marxism: A General Theory was published in English in 1978 by Ink Links, London. The rapid movement of talented young academics into this field (Potekhin and Zusmanovich are two clear examples in the early 1930s) suggests not only that high priority was given to such work but also that the development of Soviet Africanistics cannot be simply treated as the application of Sik's 1929 agenda that is translated here. It would be interesting to see how far Potekhin and Zusmanovich in later life followed the research topics and also the general analytical lines advocated in Sik's 1929 program.

23. Wilson, , Russia and Black Africa, 340n106Google Scholar.

24. Haywood, , Black Bolshevik, 267Google Scholar.

25. See our translators' footnote 7 to Sik's paper below; also Wilson, , Russia and Black Africa, 341n113Google Scholar.

26. Wilson, , Russia and Black Africa, 189 and accompanying footnotesGoogle Scholar.

27. See note 20 above. As Cohen points out in his Introduction, Wilson fails to draw attention to the role of “Tom Jackson” (A.T. Nzula, the first black General Secretary of the Communist Party of South Africa) in writing this book. Cohen is careful not to underestimate the contribution of the other two authors.

28. Nzula, et al., Foroed Labour, 118Google Scholar.

29. Ibid., 147.

30. See for example the critiques by Hrbek, I. “Towards a Periodisation of African History” in Ranger, T.O., ed., Emerging Themes of African History (Nairobi, 1968)Google Scholar; Oruko, H. Odera “Marxism and African History,” Kenya Historical Review, 1 (1973), 139–50Google Scholar; and in particular Bernstein, Henry “Marxism and African History – Endre Sik and his Critics,” Kenya Historical Review, 5 (1977), 1–21Google Scholar.

31. Wilson, E.T. “Russia's Historic Stake in Black Africa” in Communism in Africa (Bloomington, 1980)Google Scholar. On page 81, Wilson says that “the years 1927-1933 marked a high point of concern for this area, including Africa.” On page 82, he points out that “scholars associated with Niankp's African Bureau-such as I.I. Potekhin--subsequently presided over the renaissance of Soviet African studies in the 1950s.” (There was, of course, an upsurge of interest in Ethiopia in 1935-1936, when that country was attacked and occupied by Fascist Italy: for a list of works published see Darch, Colin, A Soviet View of Africa [Boston, 1980])Google Scholar.

32. For a discussion of the renewed emphasis on the non-capitalist path of development at about this time see Slovo, J. “A Critical Appraisal of the Non-Capitalist Path and the National Democratic State in Africa,” Marxism Today (06 1974)Google Scholar, reprinted in Utafiti 3 (1978), 245–75Google Scholar.

33. Accounts can be found in Atkinson, D.G.G. “The Russian Land Commune and the Revolution” (Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University, 1971)Google Scholar; Solomon, S.G. “Controversy in Social Science: Soviet Rural Studies in the 1920s,” Minerva 13 (1975)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Solomon, S.G.The Soviet Agrarian Debate: a Controversy in Social Science, 1923-1929 (Boulder, 1977)Google Scholar. The two works by Solomon differ in emphasis and complement each other.

34. Atkinson, , “Russian Land Commune,” 282–88Google Scholar.

35. The articles by the former Sukhanov, Menshevik N., and a reply by Kubanin, M. were published in Na Agrarnom Fronte 11/12 (1926)Google Scholar.

36. Solomon, Soviet Agrarian debate; idem, “Controversy,” passim.

37. Atkinson, , “Russian Land Commune,” 326Google Scholar; Dubrovskii, , “Marks i Engels ob obshchine i o vozmoshnosti nekapitalisticheskogo razvitiia Rossii” [Marx and Engels on the commune and the possibility of a non-capitalist development of Russia] Agrarnye Problemy 4/6 (1933), 23–54Google Scholar.

38. VI Kongress Kominterna, Records 4 (1929), 6Google Scholar, quoted in J. Slovo, “Critical Appraisal.”

39. See, e.g., ibid., and on the concept applied to Africa, the articles in Palmberg, Mai, ed., Problems of Socialist Orientation in Africa. (Uppsala, 1978)Google Scholar. On the closely-related concept of the “advanced socialist society” see Lavigne, Marie “Advanced Socialist Society,” Economy and Society, 7 (1978), 367–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the Soviet view, e.g., Iovchuk, M.T.et al., eds., Socialist Society in the Present Stage (Moscow, 1978)Google Scholar.

40. Atkinson, , “Russian Land Commune,” 328Google Scholar.

41. For an excellent summary of Marx's position, the populist position, developments at the 6th Congress, and their modern implications, see Slovo, “Critical Appraisal.” For two differently nuanced recent accounts see Shipley, S.M. “The Sociology of the Peasantry, Populism and the Russian Peasant Commune” (M. Phil, thesis, University of Lancaster, 1978)Google Scholar; Hussain, A. and Tribe, K.Marxism and the Agrarian Question, II, Russian Marxism and the Peasantry, 1861-1930 (London, 1981)Google Scholar. Hussain and Tribe take a position close to Kubanin's in their interpretation of Marx on the commune.

42. See Atkinson's accounts of the analyses of, e.g. Zak, S.D., Danilov, V.P., and Trapeznikov, S.P. (“Russian Land Commune,” 327–28)Google Scholar.

43. Sik's publication of his massive four-volume HBA from the mid 1960s onwards is itself evidence in support of this.

44. Davidson, , “Marxist Literature,” 10Google Scholar.

45. Slovo, , “Critical Appraisal,” 253Google Scholar.