Explanatory Approaches in Literature on Brazilian Communism During the Cold War

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Among these authors are Eric Hobsbawn, The Age of Extremes The Short Twentieth Century, 1914-1991 (London: Vintage Books, 1994); Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Robert J. McMahon (Ed.), The Cold War in the Third World (Oxford-New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).

2 Apart from Max Weber (1864–1920), Vilfredo Pareto (1848–1923), Gaetano Mosca (1858–1941) and Robert Michels (1876–1936) are the most important elitist thinkers that have laid a counterpoint to Marxism at the time.

3 In 1961 its name was changed to Brazilian Communist Party.

4 This instrumental and unitary actor view assumes that the communist movement was manipulated by its leaders in Moscow is at the heart of anti-communist propaganda. Although it is simplistic in that it does not consider the will of individuals and groups in explaining events, it is quite effective for the analysis of the International Communist Movement (ICM) between the 1920s and 1930s. The high political centralism and constant Soviet Union interventions, aimed to organize the emerging world communist movement in a military-like structure to achieve its goals and policies.

5 David C. Engerman, Know Your Enemy: The Rise and Fall of America’s Soviet Experts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009) narrates the emergence of Soviet Studies in the US after 1945.

6 The organization that substituted the Comintern in the post-war.

7 A complete collection of this journal is found online in https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000500968.

8 Dierdre Carmody, “And Now, No More Problems of Communism,” The New York Times (May 31, 1992). http://www.nytimes.com/1992/05/31/world/and-now-no-more-problems-of-communism.html.

9 Walter Krivitsky, I was a Stalin`s Agent (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1939); Ruth Fischer, Stalin and the German Communism (London: Harvard University Press, 1948); Eudocio Ravines, La Gran Estafa (Santiago del Chile: Editorial del Pacífico S. A., 1954). See also Eudocio Ravines, America Latina. Un continente en erupcion (Buenos Aires: Editorial Claridad S. A., 1956) and Eudocio Ravines, The Yenan Way (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1972).

10 Osvaldo Peralva. O Retrato (Porto Alegre: Ed. Globo S.A., 1962); O. Carvalho e Souza, Evolução do Comunismo no Brasil (Rio de Janeiro: D.N.P. 1938).

11 Robert J. Alexander, Communism in Latin America (New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1957); The Communist Party of Venezuela (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1969); Victor Alba. Historia del Comunismo en America Latina (Mexico: Occidentales, 1954); Historial del Frente Popular: analise de una tatica politica (Mexico: Libro Mex Editores, 1959).

12 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%ADctor_Alba; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_J._Alexander

13 Rollie E. Poppino, International Communism in Latin America. A History of the Movement 1917-1963 (London: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1964), 161–62, work suggests an individual’s voluntary identification with the Soviet cause, which comes from a very different approach than that of the instrumental framework. This voluntary framework emphasizes the willingness and commitment of communist leaders to support the Soviet Union and its policies. This framework is suitable to analyze the period after the dissolution of the Comintern, in other words, post 1940s. During this period, the Soviet Union’s means for direct intervention on the CPs were greatly reduced and the CPs national leaders began to play a very important role. From that moment on, the Soviet’s effort to maintain loyalty towards the MCI started to depend on Russia’s diplomatic work and by persuading the international activism in favor of Stalin’s beliefs, rather than simple obedience and military structure. Most of the authors who use comparative and documental analyses to study communism, such as Thomas Elliot Skidmore, “Failure in Brazil: From Popular Front to Armed Revolt,” Journal of Contemporary History 5, no. 3 (1970): 137–157; Leôncio Martins Rodrigues, “O PCB: Os dirigentes e a organização,” in O Brasil Republicano 3v, edited by B. Fausto (São Paulo: Difel, 1981) and Dario Canale, Francisco Viana, and José Nilo Tavares, Novembro de 1935: Meio Século Depois (Petrópolis: Vozes, 1985), as well as a good number of articles published in the Communism and Post-Communism Studies (originally called Communist Affairs and later Studies in Comparative Communism), fall into the framework of voluntary identification.

14 The last framework is the structural-bureaucratic one. It sheds light on the structures and bureaucratic methods of social control present in any Stalinist party, whether it be the Soviet monopoly of Marxism and Communism or, for example, centralized national and international organizational structures or partisan schools for Marxist Leninist indoctrination. Comparatively, there are still few works applying this approach. They include Irving Howe and Lewis Coser, The American Communist Party, a Critical History (Boston: Beacon Press, 1957); Poppino, “International Communism in Latin America. A History of the Movement 1917-1963,” 161–62; Hugh Seton-Watson, The Pattern of Communist Revolution (London: Methuen & Co. Ltd, 1960); Manuel Caballero, Latin America and the Comintern 1919-1943 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); and Alfredo Wagner B. de Almeida, “As bibliotecas marxistas e as escolas de partido,” Religião e Sociedade no. 9. (ISER: Rio de Janeiro, Jun 1983), 35–46, and the excellent study of Sonia Laranjeiras, O PCB na Oposição: 1950-1954 (Mimeo, 1983).

15 John W. Foster Dulles, Brazilian Communism 1935-1945. Repression during the World Upheaval (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1983).

16 Stanley Hilton, A Rebelião Vermelha (Rio de Janeiro: Record, 1986).

17 Found in Witold S. Swarowski, World Communism: A Handbook, 1918-1965 (Stanford: Hoover Institute Press, 1974).

18 John W. F. Dulles, for example, was the son of John Foster Dulles, one of the most important Secretaries of State in the USA and nephew to Allen Welsh Dulles, former CIA director. See his obituary here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/27/AR2008062703642.html.

19 https://www.sahistory.org.za/sites/default/files/Document%2021%20’The%20Twenty-one%20Points%20-%20Conditions%20of%20Admission%20to%20the%20Communist%20International’%20as%20adopted%20at%20the%20second%20Comintern%20congress%20in%201920.%20(South%20African%20Communists%20speak%201915%20-%201980).pdf.

20 All revolutions inspired by the Russian one have failed. Between 1917 and 1921 there were the Ukrainian (1918); Lithuanian-Byelorussian (1918–19); Spain (1917); Persian (1920–21); Finnish (1918); German (1918–19); Mongolian (1921). Support for revolutions died away when Comintern adopted the Popular Front in 1935.

21 Luis Carlos Prestes, “Informe de balanço do Comitê Central do PCB,” Problemas, n° 64 (Jan-Fab 1955), 90–93.

22 Dinarco Reis, A Luta de Classe no Brasil e o PCB (São Paulo: Editora Novos Rumos, 1987); Paulo Cavalcanti, Nos tempos de Prestes (Recife: Ed. Guararapes, 1982) and Salomão Malina, Questões Históricas do PCB (São Paulo: Ed. Novos Rumos, 1986) are among the communists historians following this approach.

23 “tenentismo” or “prestismo” were Brazilian junior army (lieutenants) uprisings or social movements.

24 Entre as publicações de destaque que revelam a dependência dos PCs ao MCI encontram-se: F. Claudin, La Crisis del Movimiento Comunista, De la Komintern al Kominform (Madrid: ed. Ibérica, 1978); Silvio Pons et alli (Ed.), The Cambridge History of Communism (3 vols.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017); R. A. Daniels (Ed.), A Documentary History of Communism in Russia, From Lenin to Gorbachev (London: University of New England, 1993).

25 Gregório Bezerra, Memórias. Segunda Parte: 1946-1969 (Rio de Janeiro: Ed. Civilização Brasileira, 1979); Paulo Cavalcanti, Nos tempos de Prestes (Recife: Ed. Guararapes, 1982); Leôncio Bausbaum, História Sincera da República (São Paulo: Ed. Fulgor, 1972); and Leôncio Bausbaum, Uma vida em seis tempos (São Paulo: Ed. Alfa-Omega, 1978).

26 Abguar Bastos, Prestes e a Revolução Social (São Paulo: Hucitec, 1986); Evaristo Giovanetti Neto, O PCB na Assembléia Constituinte de 1946 (São Paulo: Ed: Novos Rumos, 1986).

27 Antônio Paim, História das Ideias Filosóficas no Brasil (São Paulo: Ed. Grijalbo, 1967).

28 Arnaldo Spindel, O Partido Comunista na Gênese do Populismo (São Paulo, Ed. Simbolo, 1980); Francisco Weffort, Origens do Sindicalismo Populista no Brasil. In Estudos CEBRAP 4 (1982), 67–105, in http://bibliotecavirtual.cebrap.org.br/arquivos/origens_do_sindicalismo_populista_d.pdf.

29 Perry Anderson, “Communist Party History,” in People’s History and Socialist Theory, edited by R. Samuel (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981); Thomas P. Anderson, Matanza. El Salvador’s Communist Revolt of 1932 (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1981).

30 This debate is found in Richard C. Thornton, The Comintern and the Chinese Communists 1928-31 (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1969); Shanti Swarup. A Study of the Chinese Communist Movement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966).

31 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular_Front_(Chile); E. Browder, Victory and After (New York: International Publishers, 1942).

32 Fred Warner Neal. “The Communist Party in Yugoslavia,” American Political Science Review 51, no. 1 (Mar 1957): 88–111.

33 It can be found in Donald L. Herman, The Comintern in Mexico (Washington D. C.: Public Affairs Press, 1974); Jacques Fauvet, Histoire du Parti Communiste Français. De la guerre e la guerre 1917-1939 (Paris: Fayard, 1964); Jacques Fauvet, Histoire du Parti Communiste Français de 1920 a 1979 (Paris: Fayard, 1977); François Feijo, “Le Movement Communiste International: l’evolution des relations entre les partis communistes,” Etudes Internationales. Canadá, 3 (1972): 451–72.

34 Ronald Chilcote. Brazil and Its Radical Left. An Annotated Bibliography on the Communist Movement and the Rise of Marxism 1922-1972 (New York: Kraus International Publications, 1980).

35 Ronald Chilcote. The Brazilian Communist Party: Conflict and Integration 1922-1972 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974), 215.

36 Ibid., 197–199.

37 Leôncio Martins Rodrigues. O PCB: Os dirigentes e a organização. In O Brasil Republicano 3v, edited by B. Fausto (São Paulo: Difel, 1981), 437–43.

38 Recent Brazilian literature on Brazilian communism still reproduces traditional Cold War approaches. See the Works of Valter Pomar, 100 Anos do Comunismo no Brasil (São Paulo: Kotter Editorial, 2022); Anita Leocadia Prestes, Luis Carlos Prestes, Um Comunista Brasileiro (São Paulo: Boitempo Ed., 2015); Daniel Aarão Reis. Luis Carlos Prestes, Um revolucionário entre dois mundos (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2014).