This publication is a comprehensive selection of unique documents pertaining to the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA) from the formerly closed archives of the Communist International.

This is a comprehensive selection of documents pertaining to the Communist Party of South Africa from the formerly closed archives of the Communist International.

This book analyzes the stance of international communism towards nationality, anti-colonialism, and racial equality as defined by the Communist International (Comintern) during the interwar period. Central to the volume is a comparative analysis of the communist parties of three British dominions, South Africa, Canada and Australia, demonstrating how each party attempted to follow Moscow’s lead and how each party produced its own attempts to deal with these issues locally, while considering the limits of their own agency within the movement at large.

In 1919, Bolshevik Russia and its followers formed the Communist International, also known as the Comintern, to oversee the global communist movement. From the very beginning, the Comintern committed itself to ending world imperialism, supporting colonial liberation, and promoting racial equality. Coinciding with the centenary of the Comintern's founding, Left Transnationalism highlights the different approaches interwar communists took in responding to these issues. Bringing together leading and emerging scholars on the Communist International, individual communist parties, and national and colonial questions, this collection moves beyond the hyperpoliticized scholarship of the Cold War era and re-energizes the field. Contributors focus on transnational diasporic and cultural networks, comparative studies of key debates on race and anti-colonialism, the internationalizing impulse of the movement, and the evolution of communist platforms through transnational exchange. Essays further emphasize the involvement of communist and socialist parties across Canada, Australia, India, China, Japan, Southeast Asia, Latin America, South Africa, and Europe. Highlighting the active discussions on nationality, race, and imperialism that took place in Comintern circles, Left Transnationalism demonstrates that this organization - as well as communism in general - was, especially in the years before 1935, far more heterogeneous, creative, and unpredictable than the rubber stamp of the Soviet Union described in conventional historiography. Contributors include Michel Beaulieu (Lakehead University), Marc Becker (Truman State University), Anna Belogurova (Freie Universitat Berlin), Oleksa Drachewych (University of Guelph), Daria Dyakonova (Université de Montréal), Alastair Kocho-Williams (Clarkson University), Andrée Lévesque (McGill University), Lars T. Lih (Independent Scholar), Ian McKay (McMaster University), Sandra Pujals (University of Puerto Rico), John Riddell (Ontario Institute of Studies in Education), Evan Smith (Flinders University), S.A. Smith (All Souls College, Oxford), Xiaofei Tu (Appalachian State University), and Kankan Xie (Peking University).

This book makes a very significant, timely and relevant contribution to a very topical subject of immense local as well as global interest. Through tracing the evolution of media discourse about race and racism, which the author prefers to call ‘race talk’, the writer prised open a window to a panoramic, variegated and yet nuanced perspective of the perennial South African race question etched across the vistas of time and memory since Jan Van Riebeeck set up the first European settlement as a refreshment station for the Dutch East India Company, at the Cape of Good Hope in 1652 up to the time of writing this book. It lends a fresh lens through which to re-read South African society, not only to a studious scholar of media history but also to anybody interested in the general history of South Africa. - Dr Zvenyika Mugari, WITS This book is based on meticulous archival searching, presented in a new, fresh and highly engaging way. This is a book based on evidentiary-led scholarly principles that has lucidity as a goal. Unlike so many scholarly works which are turgid and very difficult to read because they are written in restricted codes meant only for other academics, this manuscript is wonderfully lucid, accessible and a pleasure to read. The prime readership will be academics but its lucidity makes it appealing beyond a purely academic readership, hopefully reaching media professionals and students also and influencing debates on race policy. This is how academic books, in fact, should be written. - Prof Keyan Tomaselli, University of Johannesburg The author has embarked on a very difficult and complex task of understanding the race construct in the South African media context. This is a highly contested and contentious space in South Africa and it is particularly arduous for a “white, middle-class, middle-aged, Afrikaans male” to navigate this space. The author has however eloquently managed to pilot this fine line of controversy. He offers a balanced view of the belligerent debate without treading insensitively on the toes of protagonists and at the same time challenges prevailing views. - André Rose, National Cancer Institute

Definitive and gripping narrative history of the Communist Party of South Africa.

In Framing a Radical African Atlantic Holger Weiss presents a critical outline and analysis of the International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers (ITUCNW) and the attempts by the Communist International (Comintern) to establish an anticolonial political platform in the Caribbean and Sub-Saharan Africa during the interwar period. It is the first presentation about the organization and its activities, investigating the background and objectives, the establishment and expansion of a radical African (black) Atlantic network between 1930 and 1933, the crisis in 1933 when the organization was relocated from Hamburg to Paris, the attempt to reactivate the network in 1934 and 1935 and its final dissolution and liquidation in 1937-38.