Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis - Volume 130, Issue 3, 2017

A down payment on future prowess. The memory of a revolution that failed

In November 1918 revolutionary soldiers, sailors, and socialist workers took to the streets of German cities such as Düsseldorf, Halle, Leipzig, Braunschweig, and Berlin. For a moment it seemed as though the revolutionary fervour would spill over the border into the Netherlands. Three thousand Dutch revolutionaries, accompanied by four hundred revolutionary soldiers and sailors, took to the streets of Amsterdam on the evening of Wednesday 13 November 1918. Contrary to reports earlier that day, the soldiers in the military barracks in the Sarphatistraat did not support the revolutionary cause and instead opened fire on the revolutionaries. The subsequent death of four revolutionaries became both the culmination and the premature end of a week of revolutionary unrest in the Netherlands. This paper sets out to reconstruct what happened and who was involved in the events that took place in the Sarphatistraat. More importantly, it will ask how these events were viewed in the light of the Russian Revolution of 1917, and how Dutch socialists and communists gave a different meaning to the disconcerting memory of a revolution that failed before it had properly started.

David Wijnkoop. Troublesome intermediary between Amsterdam and Moscow

The Social-Democratic Party (SDP) of David Wijnkoop was, like the Bolsheviks, one of the first parties to break away from the social-democratic parties of the Second International. Like an intermediary Wijnkoop used the authority of Moscow to support his position as a leader of the Dutch left socialist movement and was able to develop and push his own independent line within the Comintern. He was convinced that the mainly Amsterdam-based party was more or less at the same level as the Russian party. His first appearance in Moscow at the second congress of the Comintern made quite an impression. Lenin and also some other leaders of the communist movement were irritated by the so-called verbal radicalist interventions of Wijnkoop. His aggressive appearance was very much criticized, not only by Lenin, Zinoviev, and Bukharin, but also by the German, Paul Levi. The latter was trying to create a mass communist party, but these efforts encountered strong opposition from Wijnkoop, who blamed the Germans for not being sufficiently left wing. Although the Dutch communist leader was outvoted again and again at the congress, he was still elected among the leadership of the Comintern. During those first years the Communist International presented many contending views. After attending the 1920 congress, Wijnkoop was no longer a troublesome intermediary, but instead accommodated himself to the Stalinization of the Moscow-based Comintern.

The Russian Revolution was not an anarchist revolution. Dutch anarchists and the Russian Revolution 1917-19

The reactions of Dutch anarchists to the Russian Revolution are until now as good as unexplored. This contribution tries to fill this gap by analyzing five anarchist and syndicalist newspapers. Together they represent the whole spectrum of Dutch anarchism. The anarchists and their newspapers can be divided into two groups: those who considered anarchism as a principle and project to bring human civilization into a new stage of perfection, and those who focussed more narrowly on anarchism as a movement to liberate workers in order to create a society in which these workers themselves, through their trade unions, would control production and distribution. The central question is whether these different interpretations of anarchism guided opinion on what had happened in Russia. The final answer is positive. The first group, inspired by the works of a Russian, Peter Kropotkin, was very critical of the Russian socialists, although it applauded their peace initiatives. The second group saw the whole revolution much more as a struggle, in which injustice and killings were unavoidable, than as a means to create a new anarchist society in which justice would reign for all.

Hammer and sickle. From foreign state weapon to Dutch party symbol

Ever since its inception in Soviet Russia during the spring of 1918, the hammer and sickle has remained one of the most recognizable political symbols, used on a worldwide scale. Although the symbol was designed merely as a Soviet substitute for the old czarist coat of arms, foreign communists were quick to adopt it as the most prominent symbol of their own parties and revolutionary aspirations. This process of international political transfer was not initiated by the Russian Bolshevik party or the Communist International, but seems to have been the result of more or less spontaneous developments that took different forms in different countries. This article analyses how the hammer and sickle was introduced in communist circles in the Netherlands. Who were responsible for this introduction, and what were their motives? It turns out not to be the party leadership, but a set of communist small traders and artists that initiated the transformation of the new Russian state weapon into a Dutch political symbol.

‘People of Java, the Russian Revolution contains lessons for you too’. Indonesian socialism, Bolshevism, and the spectre of anarchism

The Russian Revolution influenced the burgeoning socialist movement in the Dutch Indies and the late-colonial political landscape of the Indies in general in three ways. First, the revolution and Sneevliet’s article ‘Zegepraal’ escalated tension between a ‘parliamentary’ and a ‘revolutionary’ faction within the socialist association ISDV. Second, the revolutionary faction of the ISDV used events in Russia to argue that socialists had to turn away from the small Dutch community in the colony, and work towards extra-parliamentary organization of the Indonesian peasantry. Finally, developments on the international stage led to a semantic shift in political terms and concepts such as Bolshevism, anarchism, and ‘timeliness of revolt’. The example of Russia led to a re-evaluation of the Indonesian peasantry, seen no longer as a politically immature and anarchist mass but now as a potentially revolutionary force.

Enlightenment and the revolutionary press in colonial Indonesia. An investigation of Sinar Hindia’s content, production, and distribution practices

The 1917 revolutions inspired the popularization and radicalization of the nascent anti-colonial movement in the Indies, which is reflected in the history of the revolutionary press which emerged in the subsequent years until 1926-7. This article recovers the tradition of the revolutionary press and situates it in the history of Indonesian national struggles by examining the production and development of the revolutionary newspaper Sinar Hindia. An investigation of the paper’s content, production, and distribution practices reveals how Sinar Hindia not only embodied the anti-colonial national struggle but also became a voice for a project of enlightenment in the colony.

Red erasure. The silenced memory of Anton de Kom’s communism

In 1934 the Afro-Surinamese author and activist Anton de Kom published his Wij slaven van Suriname (We Slaves of Surinam). De Kom drew inspiration from his experience and life in Surinam, as well as from the writings of abolitionist authors and the communist and anti-imperialist circles in which he moved while in Europe. Back in Surinam he was accused of plotting to overthrow the colonial government, and mass protests against his arrest were violently suppressed before he was deported to the Netherlands. During the Second World War he remained active in the anti-fascist resistance, and died in a German concentration camp. Remembering his struggle has become a cornerstone of Surinamese nationalism, important to anti-racist activists and important also to his children and grandchildren. This article discusses how these three sets of actors have often chosen to gloss over De Kom’s communist allegiance.