Letters

Anti-war YP

It is very important that Your Party has a clear anti-imperialist, anti-war position. It is obvious that imperialism is becoming more aggressive and the ruling class media machine is trying to win people to the idea of war on Russia and China.

If any such war starts, we will come under tremendous pressure to support it. Look what happened to the left in World War I. The socialist parties said they would organise a general strike against any such conflict, but, in reality, the mass parties politically collapsed and supported their own ruling class and the mass slaughter.

We should not attempt to fudge our position in opposing the war in Ukraine. The ruling class is aiming to escalate that war in the hope that they can get out of their economic crisis by defeating and plundering Russia and then China. We should give no support to this war. To do so would be the kiss of death to any real socialist party. To support this war is to become a cheerleader for imperialism and transform YP into just another pro-capitalist controlled show. And the British state will be using its agents and supporters to try and do just that.

We need open debate to ensure we don’t just become another pro-establishment, fake socialist party, dominated and led by a bunch of careerists - a Labour Party mark two. The biggest mistake the anti-imperialist forces in YP can make is to try and fudge over differences on war and peace by supporting a party so broad that it includes those who support Britain going to war to defend its imperialist interests in Ukraine or anywhere else.

I suggest that local YP branches pass motions calling for (1) withdrawal of the UK from Nato; (2) an end to all UK military and financial support to the Kiev regime; (3) a democratic solution to the national conflict, recognising the rights of the people of Donbas and Crimea to self-determination; (4) For the unity of Ukrainian and Russian workers in the struggle against capitalism and imperialism and for a new socialist and democratic Soviet Union.

Sandy McBurney
Glasgow

Culture bloc YP

The cultural plans hatched at Communist University last August for a ‘Diderot Gesellschaft’ - an international gathering of radical artists, writers, scientists, academics and more, as described in my Weekly Worker article (‘Learning to play our way’ July 24 2025) - have moved on apace. This emulates Bertolt Brecht’s attempts at the same and retains the name, as that emphasises its international origins (and sounds like an early-80s post-punk band, which is no bad thing!).

At the Historical Materialism conference in London in November 2025 (HM25) we performed an outdoor agitprop-style sketch, combining some of Diderot’s play, Jacques and his master, with scenes from Brecht’s Refugee conversations, which he acknowledged was inspired by that play. This sketch was created with Phoebe von Held, who has developed much work on Diderot and Brecht, including the book, Alienation and theatricality: Diderot after Brecht.

That same evening (Friday November 7), we did a 90-minute live radio broadcast on the London art radio station, Resonance FM, for the show Bad punk. As well as the sketches, the programme was a tribute to the recently and tragically passed music artist, Keith McIvor, with whom I had collaborated on several projects over the years. I’m sure that Keith would have become a key figure in our Diderot Gesellschaft and will always be an inspiration and contributor through the work he has left us. Just such an example is the way he utilised the now legendary anti-fascist song, ‘Bella Ciao’, and this opened the radio broadcast. It’s incredible how this song still resonates so strongly - most recently as sung by children in Gaza (just search ‘Bella ciao Gaza’ on Instagram).

As to radio, I’m indebted to our founder member, Darko Suvin, for guiding me towards Fredric Jameson’s comments on Brecht’s understanding and use of the medium in his book Brecht and method: “Brecht’s modernism - and the very modernism of his moment of history in general - is bound up with radio, and demands the acknowledgement of its formal uniqueness as a medium, of its fundamental properties as a specific art in its own right: a form in which the antithesis of words and music no longer holds, but a new symbiosis of these two formerly separate dimensions is effectuated and rehearsed.”

The ways in which radio and voice recording have extended now through digital technology offers huge possibilities for exploration and will be core work in our Diderot Gesellschaft.

The most inspiring event for me at HM25 was the launch of the ‘performance workbook’ of Thomas Müntzer: Dramatic depiction of the German Peasants’ War of 1525 - a play by Berta Lask. The event included readings from the play, giving a flavour of what must have been an extraordinary event that took place on May 31 1925 during a festival held by the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in the Saxon town of Eisleben to mark the 400th anniversary of the German Peasants’ War. A play by Berta Lask was performed in the open air by 150 amateur actors with around 15,000 spectators.

As editor and translator Sam Dolbear states in his preface, “In the play, Lask poses a basic question: ‘What would Thomas Müntzer see if he woke up today?’ A list accrues: climate breakdown, imperialism, gendered oppression, earthquakes, genocide, impending fascism. Capitalism didn’t dig its own grave. Rather, the dead oppressors of previous centuries have been resurrected, planted in new bodies, tooled with new modes of bondage, within uneven spatial domination and temporal disjunction.”

It was a huge irony to me that just before that event I’d said to my son that I thought I was going to have to keep coming back to London to develop the work I needed to do, because the left in Scotland is still so nationalistic. I then discovered that many of the key players in the Müntzer event reside in Glasgow and indeed an exhibition of 1920s agitprop theatre entitled Their theatre and ours by radical artist Joey Simon was ongoing. In fact at the Glasgow launch of the book in early December I played Thomas Müntzer!

The other major area I’ve been looking towards lately is cultural activity within Your Party. The Liverpool travesty of a conference in November had no cultural elements to it whatsoever, until the very closing minutes - by which time I had already had to leave. I had begun discussions with comrades in other parts of the country about the possibilities of a YP cultural bloc, but it was hard to summon enthusiasm until we knew the outcome of Liverpool. As it turned out, it became apparent that implosion wasn’t on the immediate agenda and we’d live to fight another day.

A Scottish conference was on the agenda though, and ideas for cultural input there immediately started to take shape. Even before embarking on the train back to Scotland I had agreed with comrade Tommy Martin of the North Edinburgh and Leith YP proto-branch, and member of the organising committee (OC) of the conference to take place in Dundee over a weekend in early 2026, that I’d propose a social event for the Saturday night and an exhibition about Dundee radicalism with the legendary Timex strike of the early 90s in pride of place. Here is the basic framework I drew up that Tommy presented to the OC:

“For some time I’ve been exploring the idea of a YP culture bloc, and the Scottish Conference in Dundee and the coming election campaign offers the perfect means to get this going. On the Saturday evening at conference I could curate and produce a social event featuring music, spoken word and other live acts. There could also be an exhibition through the weekend, featuring radical connections with Dundee, including the Timex strike and historical events like the ‘Tree of Liberty’, which I was involved in with radical artist Ruth Ewan

“I’d also hope to involve Dundee-based folklorist Erin Farley, who is one of the contributors to the Diderot Gesellschaft - hopefully, such an international gathering of radical artists, scientists and academics could have a fruitful relationship with YP.

“The Dundee conference could also see the launch of a May elections cultural campaign that develops directly with branches and coordinates larger-scale events, particularly around the May Day weekend. There could be a YP agitprop radical roadshow touring constituencies and countering the far-right through cultural means. A street theatre culture could be built in the coming months, with agitprop local groups and scripts adaptable to local conditions. I’m more than willing to take on the task of developing and coordinating all this and have experience in the field, having established the Workers Theatre Movement in the late 80s/early 90s.”

I also mentioned this in emails calling for volunteers to conference and to left members also on that OC. Most recently I was told by Jim Monaghan that he had proposed to Owen Wright, who appears to be leading the organising of conference and is based in Dundee, that I should be given responsibility and support for producing such cultural activities. I’ve not heard a single thing back yet, but the conference is a perfect opportunity to launch a YP cultural bloc and this will go ahead, whether it’s part of the official proceedings or not.

Its centrepiece will be another agitprop theatre sketch that has direct connections with the Workers Theatre Movement we ran in the late 1980s. We had found inspiration in what had taken place across the international communist movement in agitprop theatre and there was a particular sketch performed then called Meerut. It was a call for solidarity with jailed trade unionists in India and was performed on the streets behind wooden banner poles representing prison bars.

Our WTM updated the sketch to a call for solidarity with Irish republican prisoners and honouring the 10 dead hunger strikers. We called it ‘Twenty years’, as the Labour left had a campaign running entitled ‘Time to go’, as if it wasn’t always this and a Labour government that sent the troops in. Today the despicable treatment by the Labour government of the Palestine Action hunger strikers on remand certainly warrants a rewrite of that sketch.

Discussions with comrades in Hackney and Haringey proto-branches are also ongoing towards a cultural bloc and meetings on this will be widely posted as taking place soon.

Tam Dean Burn
Glasgow

Coprophilia

Viktor Semyonovich Abakumov was executed on December 19 1954. He was a high-level Soviet security official, who from 1943 to 1946 was head of military counter-intelligence in the USSR’s People’s Commissariat of Defence, (SMERSH) and from 1946 to 1951 minister of state security.

Colonel-General Abakumov was a high-calibre, professional and effective intelligence officer, and under his leadership SMERSH successfully wiped out very many western intelligence operations against the USSR and ‘turned’ many others. However, he fell victim to the paranoia of the last years of Stalin’s life, and the post-Stalin factional fighting between Beria, Malenkov and Khrushchev (and, after the removal and elimination of Beria, between Malenkov and Khrushchev).

Abakumov was initially removed from office and arrested in 1951 by Beria on fabricated charges of failing to investigate the ‘Doctors’ Plot’, which he did not believe really existed. In fact, it was Beria who had organised resistance to the impending purge signalled by the Doctors’ Plot, believing with good reason that he himself, his power bases and the social groups backing him were going to be among the targets. After Stalin’s death, Beria accused Abakumov and others of carrying out a number of criminal operations, including assassinations.

Despite the fall of Beria in June 1953, Abakumov remained in prison, and was accused of being an accomplice in Beria’s own crimes (despite having opposed and bypassed him direct to Stalin), and of falsifying the ‘Leningrad Affair’ in the late 1940s, which was actually conducted by Malenkov and Beria. The Leningrad Affair was in fact real - the Leningrad party under Zhdanov had increasingly become a rival centre of power to Moscow and was pursuing a number of ‘liberal’ policies in the region, contrary to party policy.

However, Beria and Malenkov used the Leningrad purge to strengthen their own positions and that of the government and state against the party. Ironically, Beria and Malenkov attempted to implement very similar ‘liberal’ policies immediately after the death of Stalin, until they were outmanoeuvred and ousted by the then head of the party, Khrushchev. (Khrushchev had in fact replaced Malenkov as senior secretary to the Communist Party just two weeks after Stalin’s death, and was confirmed as first secretary in September 1953.) Abakumov and five others were charged in 1954 for falsifying the ‘Leningrad Affair’ and, among others, found guilty and executed by firing squad shortly afterwards.

In the ferocious faction fighting between 1953 and 1955, top Soviet leaders were not only jostling for power, but for their very survival, and using different figures and events in the security, intelligence and military apparatus to further their cases. It ultimately suited both Malenkov and Khrushchev, although they were bitter rivals, to have Abakumov eliminated.

The post-Stalin faction fighting was, of course, about powerful individuals jockeying for position (indeed survival), but ultimately this was a reflection of powerful interest groups in Soviet society struggling and competing for influence and dominance. The changes in top personnel in the party, the state, government and in the economy, brought about by the Yezhovshchina (‘Great Purge’) between 1937 and 1938, along with the massive destruction brought about by the Great Patriotic War, had severely weakened the leading role of the Communist Party in favour of the security apparatus in particular, plus the state and government machineries more generally. Stalin had in fact retired as Communist Party general secretary and abolished the post after the 19th Party Congress in October 1952, seemingly indicating the growing importance of the government and state.

The ultimate triumph of Khrushchev as overall leader of the Soviet Union fundamentally represented the re-establishment of the leading role of the Communist Party in Soviet society - including over the government machinery and the security and intelligence services.

Abakumov was certainly no saint and as a professional intelligence officer and in military intelligence ‘wet affairs’ he could not but help get his hands dirty (it was his job to identify enemy agents, interrogate them, turn them if possible, ultimately to eliminate them), and inevitably was seen to be supporting one or other of the leaders and factions or acting against the interests of others.

But all the evidence suggests Abakumov was completely loyal to the Soviet power and to leadership headed by Stalin, and fundamentally he was a highly effective, if ruthless, top intelligence and counter-intelligence officer. His case has never been reviewed or re-investigated and he has never been formally ‘rehabilitated’.

That is deeply ironic, when one considers the outright backstabbers and traitors who were ‘rehabilitated’ in the Soviet Union in the late 1980s.

Andrew Northall
Kettering

Didn’t win?

Henry Kissinger didn’t win the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize, as Eddie Ford stated (‘Keeping Donald happy’ October 16 2025): it was a joint award with Le Duc Tho, the veteran Vietnamese communist, who was his negotiation counterpart.

Le Duc Tho refused the prize, saying, “Peace has not yet been established in Vietnam”. Indeed Vietnam suffered two years more war. But peace was not a relevant consideration for the US official, so he trousered his half-award and postured with it for the rest of his life.

John Spencer
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