7/14/2023 0 Comments Cp im feeling curious![]() ![]() ![]() Gulag camps took various forms, including transit camps, concentration camps, criminal camps, political camps, prisoner of war camps, labour camps, women’s camps, punishment camps, and children’s camps. The agency was set up in 1919 by Lenin and, after Lenin’s death in 1924, was run highhandedly by Stalin till his death in 1953. It refers to the state agency that created and controlled hundreds of camps – known as Gulag camps – across the length and breadth of the Soviet Union from early to mid- twentieth century. Gulag, perhaps, best demonstrates the idea that violence and bloodshed are considered to be the legitimate basis of a communist revolution. To that end, I offer a brief outline of what happened in Gulag before proceeding into further discussion. Echoing Žižek from the epigraph, I claim that it is high time we dig up and revisit the suppressed history of the communist parties. To begin with, CPM should not be voted to power because the history of barbaric repression from Gulag to Marichjhapi makes one question their commitment to humanity. I argue that it is undesirable and that it might have disastrous consequences if CPIM, in its existing avatar, comes back to run the government. My point is not simply that CPIM does not stand a chance of regaining power in upcoming elections in Bengal. In this short article, feel free to treat it as an “opinion piece,”I address my questions by way of claiming that the edifice of the so-called Marxist Party – in Bengal and the Soviet Union, among other places, admittedly there are exceptions – is built on white lies, unacknowledged crimes and flawed theoretical suppositions. They went to the extent of trying to pull down my mask, whatever that might have meant, as I had given the disclaimer that I was posing those questions from an Ambedkarite subject-position. While most of the audience who engaged with the post shared my concerns, there surfaced a handful of self-proclaimed supporters of the Left Front who tried to obstinately defend their position, sometimes at the cost of fabricating and distorting historical facts. On the occasion of Lenin’s birthday on 22 April 2020, I posed ten questions, via Facebook, to the activists of the Students Federation of India (SFI) and the supporters of the Communist Party of India (Marxist)(CPIM) regarding the contemporary politics in West Bengal. “In the twentieth century, we tried to change the world too quickly the time is to interpret it again.” – Slavoj Žižek, “Don’t Act. “Philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways the point is to change it.” – Karl Marx, “Theses on Feuerbach” (1845) ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |