Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-xbtfd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T23:13:41.184Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Roy-Lenin Debate on Colonial Policy: a New Interpretation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

John P. Haithcox
Get access

Extract

Before the opening of the Second World Congress of the Communist International (July 19–August 7, 1920) [which met on the first day in Petrograd but subsequently in Moscow], Lenin prepared a draft thesis on the national and colonial question. M. N. Roy, a young Bengali attending his first international Communist gathering, eagerly responded to Lenin's request for criticisms. As a result, Lenin invited him to write an alternative thesis. Both theses were modified as a result of discussions within the National and Colonial Commission, and both were subsequently adopted by the Congress. After his encounter with Lenin, Roy rose rapidly in the Comintern hierarchy. In 1922 he was elected a candidate member of the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI), and a full voting member in 1924. He became a member of the Presidium in 1924. It was in the year 1926, however, that Roy attained the peak of his influence in the Comintern. In February of that year he was appointed to the editorial staff of the Communist International, and in the following December he was reelected to the Presidium and joined the Political Secretariat of the ECCI. At the time of the Seventh Plenum of the ECCI (November 12–December 16, 1926), Roy became Secretary of the Chinese Commission, a post he held jointly with Petrov, and a member of the Agrarian Commission. The Plenum, convened for the purpose of considering the China problem, adopted a thesis on the question and Roy was sent to China as a representative of the Comintern to carry it out. Following the events in China in 1927, Roy's influence declined precipitately, though he was not formally expelled until December, 1929.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 23 , Issue 1 , November 1963 , pp. 93 - 101
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1963

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 “The Agenda and Preparation of the Enlarged Executive of the Communist International,” International Press Correspondence, VI, p. 181.Google Scholar

2 “Election of the Presidium and the Secretariat of the ECCI,” (12 20, 1926)Google Scholar, Ibid., p. 1646.

3 “VII Meeting of the Enlarged ECCI,” Ibid., p. 1432.

4 North, Robert C. and Eudin, Xenia J., M. N. Roy's Mission io China: The Communist-Kuomintang Split of 1927 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of Calif. Press, 1963)Google Scholar; Whiting, Allen S., Soviet Policies in China 1917–7924 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1954)Google Scholar; and Overstreet, Gene D. and Windmiller, Marshall, Communism in India (Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of Calif. Press, 1959).Google Scholar

5 North and Eudin, p. 1.

6 Lenin, Vladimir I., “Preliminary Draft Theses on the National and Colonial Questions,” Selected Work, X (New York: International Publishers, 1938), p. 236.Google Scholar

7 U. S. Department of State, The Second Congress of the Communist International, as reported and interpreted by the official newspapers of Soviet Russia (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1920), p. 43.Google Scholar

8 “Theses on the National and Colonial Questions,” (adopted at the Second Comintern Congress), Theses and Statutes of the Third (Communist) International (Moscow: Publishing Office of the Communist International. Reprinted by the United Communist Party of America, 1920), p. 70.Google Scholar

8 Whiting, , pp. 51–52.Google Scholar

10 Lenin, , “The Report on the National and Colonial Questions at the Second Congress of the Communist International,” 07 26, 1920 Google Scholar, loc. cit., p. 240.

11 Overstreet, and Windmiller, , p. 29.Google Scholar

12 Lenin, , pp. 240–241.Google Scholar

13 Whiting, , p. 55.Google Scholar

14 “Theses on the National and Colonial Questions,” loc. cit., p. 74.Google Scholar

15 See North, , p. 14.Google Scholar

16 Roy, M. N., “Disagreement with Lenin,” The Radical Humanist (Calcutta), XVI (1952), 292.Google Scholar

17 U. S. Department of State, p. 41.

18 “Theses on the National and Colonial Questions,” loc. cit., p. 74 Google Scholar. Roy later admitted his error. He wrote that he gradually came to the realization that the Indian proletariat were not only “weak numerically” but “formed but partially as a class” for “very few are consciously inclined toward communism.” Roy, M. N., Heresies of the Twentieth Century (Bombay: Renaissance Publications, Vora & Co., Ltd., 1943), pp. 118–119.Google Scholar

19 Lenin, , “Report on the Current Moment,”Google Scholar made at the Fourth Conference of Trade Union and Factory Committees, Moscow, June 27, 1918, Sochineniia, XXIII (Moscow-Leningrad, 1926–1932, 30 Vols.), 82 Google Scholar, translated in Meyer, Alfred G., Leninism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1957), p. 30 Google Scholar. For a discussion of Lenin's concept of “spontaneity,” see Meyer, , pp. 29–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20 Overstreet, and Windmiller, , p. 22 Google Scholar, quoting from Rosner, Alfred, “In Moscow in Lenin's Days: 1920–21,” The New International, XXI (Summer, 1955), 109.Google Scholar

21 “Theses on the National and Colonial Questions,” loc. cit., p. 70.Google Scholar

22 Ibid., p. 75.

23 Meyer, Alfred G., Marxism: the Unity of Theory and Practice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1954), pp. 109–113 Google Scholar. I am indebted to Prof. Meyer for his excellent description of the maximum and minimum programs.

24 Whiting, , p. 93 Google Scholar, quoting from IV Semirnyi Kongress, p. 194.Google Scholar

25 Ibid., p. 94.

26 Ibid., p. 95.

27 “Theses on the National and Colonial Questions,” loc. cit., p. 73.Google Scholar

28 Roy, M. N., “Attempt to Interpret Indian History by the Marxist Method II,” The Radical Humanist, XVIII (1954), 398–407.Google Scholar

29 Roy, M. N., India in Transition (Geneva: J. B. Target, 1922), p. 29 Google Scholar. The publication details are fictitious.

30 Ibid., p. 40.

31 Overstreet, and Windmiller, , pp. 30–32.Google Scholar

32 Ibid., p. 32.

33 Tagore, Saumyendranath, Historical Development of the Communist Movement in India (Calcutta: Red Front Press, 1944) p. 4 Google Scholar. Saumyendranath Tagore is the grandson of Rabindranadi Tagore's eldest brother, Dwijendranath Tagore.

34 Overstreet, and Windmiller, , p. 36 Google Scholar. Among Tagore's numerous errors is the statement that as late as 1927 there was no Communist Party of India.

35 Ibid., p. 32.

36 Ibid., p. 71.

37 Ibid., p. 49.