Transcribing the Past

    Through a Glass Rosily by George Orwell, Tribune , 23 November 1945 The recent article by Tribune’s Vienna correspondent[1] provoked a spate of angry letters which, besides calling him a fool and a liar and making other charges of what one might call a routine nature, also carried the very serious implication that he ought to have kept silent even if he knew that he was speaking the truth. He himself made a brief answer in Tribune, but the question involved is so important that it is worth discussing it at greater length. Whenever A and B are in opposition to one another, anyone who attacks or criticises A is accused of aiding and abetting B. And it is often true, objectively and on a short-term analysis, that he is making things easier for B. Therefore, say the supporters of A, shut up and don’t criticise: or at least criticise “constructively”, which in practice always means favourably. And from this it is only a short step to arguing that the suppression and disto...

Text of a leaflet distributed in Moscow by supporters of the Committee of 100 AGAINST ALL BOMBS The campaign in Britain against nuclear weapons is beginning to turn towards the working class. As it does so, it will create an increasing challenge to the capitalist state. This marks a development both in the activities and in the consciousness of the Campaign. It is a genuine turn to the masses of ordinary workers, not the bureaucracies of the Labour and Trade Union movements. Already, as a result of this emphasis, we have seen the beginnings of industrial action against the bomb. Workers directly involved have refused to handle nuclear cargoes. Others have held token strikes. THE BOMB IN CLASS SOCIETY More and more people in the campaign are seeing the deeper implications of working class action against the bomb. The class which dominates production controls society. It decides policy and, despite the democratic facade, enforces it through its state apparatus. U...

  'Crossection in Vinnitsya, 1939'. It shows the massacre made by Stalin when thousands of Ukrainian were killed during the Great Purge in 1937-1938. By William Kurelek (1927 -1977)   The following text is an English translation of a directive that lead to the deaths of over 3 million Ukrainians. In the 1930s Soviet agricultural policies combined with poor conditions for harvesting caused the collapse of agricultural production in many areas of the Soviet Union but especially in Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Southern Russia. The population in the these areas went looking for food, often travelling vast distances on foot, some with their families others leaving them behind in the hope of sending food back.  In the Russian Empire you required special papers to travel within the Empire, a sort of internal passport. This was kept by the Soviet Union, so what the starving were doing was illegal. It was also causing embarrassment and was a potential source of unrest. The document b...

  The Student Movement in the Shadow of the State During the post war years the Esperanto movement was strong in several nations within the Soviet Bloc, especially Poland. Esperanto gave people a chance for international contacts, even beyond the Iron Curtain. But at the same time the Esperanto movement was used by their ruling regimes for propaganda, observation and control by the state. Jarek Parzyszek tells us of his experiences within the Polish student movemnt. Władysław Gomułka, speaking to the masses in Warsaw in 1956. During the early days of his rule he was quite popular. However, by the end of the 1960s he had launched anti-Jewish campaigns to silence critics, he was deposed as party leader following popular protests in 1970. Founded in 1972 in Zakopane South Poland, the Polish Student Esperanto Committee was a successful attempt to co-ordinate the activities of several independent - educational, scientific, cultural and tourist - groups and clubs which were operating in ...