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Al-Ahram Weekly 20 - 26 April 2000 Issue No. 478 
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Published in Cairo by Al-Ahram established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 20 - 26 April 2000 Issue No. 478
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| Published in Cairo by Al-Ahram established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Heritage Features Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Al-Ahram:
A Diwan of contemporary life (334)
The fallout from the successful Bolshevik revolution of 1917 spread way beyond the borders of Russia. Like the French revolution with its advocacy of liberty, equality and fraternity, the Bolshevik revolution with its ideology of social and economic justice was exportable. Foremost among the countries affected by the Bolshevik revolution were those witnessing nationalist uprisings for freedom after World War I. Egypt was one of them and the reaction here was mixed. Al-Ahram, initially hostile to the revolution, had a change of heart after a campaign was launched by some intellectuals to establish the Egyptian Socialist Party.
Dr Yunan Labib Rizk tells the story from the pages of Al-Ahram
Bolshevik revolution ripples
"Bolsheviki" is Russian for 'the majority.' It acquired its specific political significance when, in 1903, the Russian Socialist Democratic Party split, with the 'majority' rallying around Lenin and his concept of revolution, while his opponent, Martov, was only able to win the support of a minority, or "mensheviki" in Russian.
Bolshevism achieved international renown with the overwhelming victory of the October Revolution, spearheaded by the Leninist wing. On 7 November 1917, this revolution succeeded in ending centuries of Czarist rule over the vast Russian empire which had risen to such prominence in European and international politics following the modernisation programme instituted by the famous Peter the Great (1672-1725).
There were many reasons why the Bolshevik revolution captured the world's imagination. For one, it had immediate ramifications on World War I that was still raging at the time, particularly for the allied powers for whom the Bolshevik revolution meant the weakening of the eastern front. It was for this reason that these powers continued to support the opponents of the nascent revolution, who were termed the "whites," as opposed to the Bolshevik "reds."
More noteworthy was the ideology upon which the revolution was founded. Like the French revolution that had preceded it by a century and a quarter, it had an ideology that could be exported. If the French brought to the world a concept of government based on the principle of democracy, the Russians advocated a concept of socio-economics founded upon the just distribution of wealth.
The Russian revolution had a particular lure for the peoples of countries like Egypt that would experience nationalist revolutions in the wake of World War I. Indeed, that a hiatus of only 16 months separated the Bolshevik revolution (November 1917) and the Egyptian revolution of March 1919 gave rise to fears that socialist ideas would infect the nationalist movement in Egypt.
The fears mounted as the Egyptian revolution produced a phenomenon strongly suggestive of Bolshevism. In Russia, workers in every village and city formed 'soviets,' raising the banner of rebellion against central authority and signalling their coalescence into the revolutionary tide of the masses. Similarly in many cities in Egypt, such as Tanta and Minya, revolutionaries raised the banner of local power in the face of the British occupation. However, the small city of Zifta in Al-Gharbiya province, acquired particular notoriety, at least according to some accounts, for having virtually declared an independent republic. Also alarmingly reminiscent of the Russian revolution were the peasant assaults on the properties of major landowners, as occurred to Ibrahim Pasha Murad in the village of Mit Gabir in Al-Sharqiya.
In his extensive work The History of the Communist Movement in Egypt, Rifaat Said holds that these fears were greatly exaggerated. He argues that for the most part the exaggerations were deliberate "in order to scare nationalist forces away from the socialists and to intimate that the establishment of a socialist party in Egypt would jeopardise the cause of independence." If, as he suggests, the socialist movement in Egypt was smaller than portrayed at the time, the alarm, however unfounded, did affect the revolutionary leadership. Said cites a confidential letter from Saad Zaghlul to the Wafd Central Committee dated 23 June 1919 in which Zaghlul expresses his concern over reports that handbills were being distributed to the effect that Egyptians were relying on German assistance and championed the Bolsheviks. "Such handbills can only benefit our enemies who will claim that the Egyptian movement is in contact with the Germans and the Bolsheviks."
Saad Zaghlul
Salama Mousa
If this was the reaction of the Egyptian nationalist leader who, at the time, was in Paris, then the consternation among British occupation authorities and conservative forces in Egypt could only have been more intense. It is little wonder, therefore, that the Bolshevist impact would impose itself on secret British correspondence of the time, not to mention the pages of Al-Ahram as from the summer of 1919.
"Bolshevism in Egypt" was the subject of two lengthy reports drafted by British military intelligence in Egypt and dated 23 August and 8 September 1919. One topic of these reports was an Italian subject living in Egypt by the name of Pizzuto. Pizzuto had left Egypt before World War I. When he returned after the war he began to spend lavishly on the dissemination of Bolshevism. Not only did his propaganda influence Greek and Italian expatriates, but it also made some inroads into certain sectors of Egyptian society. Aware of Egyptian religious sensitivities, Pizzuto tried to persuade his audiences that the Prophet Mohamed was Bolshevist and Jesus Christ even more so.
This use of religion in the propagation of the new ideology backfired. On 18 August 1919, Sheikh Mohamed Bekheit, the mufti of Egypt, issued a fatwa (religious ruling) condemning Bolshevism as a threat to religion. This famous ruling is cited in numerous works on modern Egyptian history in general and the history of the Egyptian left in particular. Less well-known is the question upon which it was based, a question formulated by El-Sherif Hassan Mohamed regarding "the disturbing spread of Bolshevism in this day and age." El-Sherif Hassan had the following to say about the Bolshevists:
"They propagate chaos and corruption. They refute religious scriptures and prohibitions and subscribe to no faith whatsoever. They reject the right to private property and sanction the plunder of the property of others and the right to shed blood towards this end. They deny the sanctity of marital bonds and hold that children do not belong to their parents, but to their governments, thereby destroying the fabric of family life. They do not discriminate between the lawful and sinful. Intercourse with women is permissible whether or not a conjugal bond exists, and women who seek to preserve their chastity do so at the risk of death."
Essentially, Sheikh Bekheit's fatwa supported this view, which, in turn, deepened the gulf between advocates of Bolshevism and their adversaries. In covering these developments it was obvious that Al-Ahram sought to maintain an objective neutrality. Yet, it was apparent that its sympathies lay with the adversaries, a bias that manifested itself in the items it selected from the European press to convey to its readers.
One article, for example, quotes the elderly German statesman, Bismarck, as saying that he wished the nations and peoples of the world would "set aside a plot of land where these socialist mentors could put their theories into practice so that the world would have a chance to see whether or not it is possible to live in accordance with the teachings of Marx."
Then, on the occasion of the convening of the Paris peace conference in early 1919, it cites another report to the effect that the allied powers turned down the Bolsheviks' request to send delegates to the conference. Their reason for doing so was that the Bolsheviks "broke their promise and betrayed their conscience. They overturned the government and the system of rule, destroying the unity of the Russian nation, persecuted the subjects of allied nations and reneged on their debts and the fulfilment of other duties."
More damning, however, was the article that appeared on the front page of its 9 March 1919 edition. Under the headline, "In the Bolshevist paradise," the newspaper gives the account of a Polish officer who, following a visit to Russia, depicted the sufferings of the Russian people under communist rule. In a grim passage describing how food was doled out, he writes, "All restaurants are obliged to serve the people one meal a day. This meal is unvaried and the same in every restaurant, and costs three and a half rubles. When the diner presents his coupon, the waiter places before him a broth so repulsive that it turns your stomach, a minced meat concocted from every sort of gristle and offal, and a speck of fish. This meal, enough to sate your appetite for at most three hours, is what you have to survive on until the following day."
As the Egyptian revolution intensified and fears that protesters would be increasingly vulnerable to Bolshevik influence heightened, Al-Ahram began to express its own ideas more directly. Its editorial, "The Bolsheviks and the Workers: A dream that never came true," reflects its stance. The article opens, "At the inception of Bolshevism in Russia, when Lenin began disseminating his many tenets and strictures, the workers rushed to embrace some of them, much as a thirsty man in the desert is lured by a mirage. They grasped at that delicious dream encapsulated by the words "More money, less work," in eager anticipation of the day when this miracle would come to pass. It was not long, however, before the glaring truth shone through and dispelled the illusion. The actions of the Bolshevist government demolished every edifice of industry, leaving hundreds of thousands of workers without a source of revenue and buffeted on all sides by the hardship and tyranny of Bolshevism."
Over the following year, Al-Ahram continued its campaign against the new ideology. Under the headline, "A warning from an Egyptian prince," it announced that Prince Gamil Tousoun issued a statement urging the Muslim people to assist the allied powers in their fight against Bolshevism. This ideology, he said, "does not conform with the Shari'a of Islam because, regardless of how it is disguised, it usurps the rights of the individual to freedom and property as the Muslim people understand them and as the Qur'an commands us to respect them. We should not forget the impact of Qur'anic strictures on our daily lives. The Qur'an is an important part of the law of human transactions for it is from the Qur'an that the provisions of this law are derived."
Prince Tousoun cautions the Muslims of the Caucusus, Persia, Afghanistan and Russia, in particular, against the Bolshevist threat. "Due to the location of their countries and their religious beliefs, it is expected that they, more than anyone, should help the allies in this burgeoning war, the war between civilisation and social death. There is not the slightest doubt that the Bolshevist threat to civilisation and the established foundations of government makes it the most serious peril of the age."
Al-Ahram also gave extensive space on its pages to three articles contributed by a reader who signed himself Murad. In his first article he holds that "God created people at different levels of superiority. Some he blessed with acute perspicacity, while others' powers of discernment are more opaque than coal. He endowed some with ambition, energy, earnestness and diligence, thus embodying his presence within them so as to enable them to survive without having to extend their hands for help. Others, however, if forced to choose between a dry piece of bread and dying of hunger they would find the task of softening the bread with water too strenuous."
Murad finds it astounding that the Bolsheviks "want to make all men equal in money, income and property, in spite of the diverse stations in which their talents and traits place them. In their desire to remove the differences between life and inertia, movement and stagnation, the Bolsheviks deem it lawful to usurp property from its rightful owner as though it were theirs."
In his second article, Murad mourns the demise of the old Czarist regime, under which "the Russian people were the paragon of religious devotion, as firm in their faith as the constancy of the stars in the firmament. Whenever they would pass by a church, they would stop and bow their heads in prayer and everywhere you turned there was a statue of the Prophet of Nazareth (Jesus). How, in God's name, did everything turn so topsy-turvy?"
Furthermore, the Bolsheviks, as he writes in his last article, are only capable of returning bad for good. The French took great pains to furnish loans to the Russians, but the Bolsheviks disowned them once they came to power. He asks, "If socialism, as they claim, is founded upon justice, what kind of justice is it to abjure on one's debts? What new etiquette is it for the debtor to make such easy booty of his creditor's money, without the slightest twinge of conscience? Is there any difference between this and highway robbery and theft in the market place?"
Al-Ahram published another report to cast aspersions on the new ideology. It said that a young Turkish student from Al-Azhar made a tour of Upper Egypt in order to propagate the idea that the Bolshevists wanted to help Egypt to end the British occupation. Towards this end, he was soliciting donations, over which issue a fight broke out between him and a citizen of Assiut. The Turkish student was arrested "and is now in hospital being treated for the wounds he received in that fight."
In the summer of 1921, Egyptians' attention and that of Al-Ahram would turn to the attempt to form the Egyptian Socialist Party, a development that would cause Al-Ahram to modify its position on Bolshevism. This was not the first attempt to form a socialist party in Egypt. Just before the outbreak of World War I, an Egyptian intellectual by the name of Hassan Gamal El-Din founded the "Blessed Socialist Party," a group that turned out to be socialist in name only and soon collapsed.
As for the Egyptian Socialist Party, the first time Egyptians read about it in Al-Ahram was on 16 August, when the newspaper announced that a Monsieur Rosenthal was taking the steps necessary to establish a party by this name. The party was to have three branches: the Franco-British branch of which Rosenthal was to be the secretary, the Greek branch headed by Mr Petredis and the Egyptian branch headed by Ali Effendi El-Anani.
Rifaat Said's History of the Communist Movement in Egypt furnishes ample information on Rosenthal. He was of Russian origin and a jeweler by occupation. He began to draw the attention of the Egyptian Public Security Authority early on as "a zealous anarchist bent on disseminating tendentious propaganda," and his name appeared in various court cases in 1913, 1916 and 1920. Using Alexandria as his base, the police there observed that "he has a charismatic personality and is influential among the foreign communities."
Commenting on news about the new party, Al-Ahram said that it could confirm nothing about the "the extent of El-Anani's socialism," but it said that it did know that Rosenthal was "a fanatic socialist, and perhaps even more than fanatic." It then asked, "Could El-Anani share this fanaticism?"
The second news item about the nascent party appeared in the form of a letter to Al-Ahram from Salama Mousa who announced that a large group of Egyptian socialists had decided to form an association, rather than a party. The purpose of this association was to enable its members to study the various aspects of this ideology in order to determine how they might be applied to Egyptian society. Mousa -- who figures prominently in the history of the Egyptian socialist movement -- conceded that "now is perhaps the worst time to establish such an association." He cited two reasons for this: "Firstly, the Russian Bolshevists have virtually met with utter failure and spread the banners of devastation and destruction throughout their country. Secondly, we in Egypt are at a particularly critical juncture and it would not do to compound matters in a way that can be seized upon by the enemies of our independence."
Salama Mousa went on to attribute the failure of Bolshevism to the impulsiveness and rashness with which its advocates sought to implement it, whereas socialism was a practice that should be brought about gradually by those means best thought to lead to its development. Perhaps it was this admission that led Al-Ahram to allocate more space to the debate over the new socialist party in Egypt.
Foremost among the proponents of the Egyptian Socialist Party was El-Anani. In his letter to Al-Ahram of 19 August 1921, El-Anani first takes issue with Al-Ahram for questioning whether his convictions were "fanatical" or "pragmatic." They were neither, he asserted, but rather "moderate" and "scientific." He went on to explain that modern socialism was based on three foundations. The first was religious faith which inspired many principles of reform, the second was the moral tenet calling for freedom, equality, brotherhood and justice, and the third was Karl Marx's dialectical materialism. He concluded, "In these foundations together we find the impetus for major reformist principles. Nature has laws that are inexorable when the causes exist to set them in motion."
Another advocate of the new party was Mohamed Abdullah Anan, a lawyer. "Egyptian socialism is not a call to revolution or anarchism," he proclaimed and went on to explain, "It seeks to totally uproot the current social order. This is different from the superficial coup d'état which alters the form of government from a monarchy to a republic, for example, or seeks to win certain political rights, for such changes can be brought about by violence and bloodshed. However, changing the rules and means of production, reorganising the relationship between labour and reward to ensure justice and eliminating the system that gives rise to exorbitant wealth and extreme poverty cannot be brought about through a revolution that entails violence and bloodshed."
Foremost among the opponents of the new party was Ahmed Helmi, the nationalist writer who, since the beginning of the century, had acquired fame as one of the most powerful writers for Al-Liwaa newspaper. In Helmi's opinion, the establishment of a socialist party would threaten and undermine the Egyptian social order. "The poor of all faiths find consolation in the belief that the sources of prosperity are defined and apportioned by God. To destroy this religious edifice would spell catastrophe for the Egyptian social order."
Andrawas Hanna, another opponent, contended that socialism was tantamount to a new order of priesthood. He went on to argue that conditions in Egypt were different from those in Europe where socialism emerged and that the ideas propounded by advocates of socialism in Egypt were derived from the European civilisation. "It is a complex issue, in which the concepts of socialism and democracy are only a fragment," he concluded.
It was against this backdrop of controversy that Al-Ahram of 29 August 1921 brought to its readers the "Communiqué of the Egyptian Socialist Party" in which the party's founders outlined their social, economic and political principles and assured the public that it would seek to achieve its aims through "the process of political party competition and peaceful advocacy." The establishment of the new party thus opened a new chapter in the history of modern Egypt.
* The author is a professor of history and head of Al-Ahram History Studies Centre.
