Soviet betrayal of Ethiopia did not deter black radicals from the antifascist movement.

Evidence

The most sympathetic interpretation of the actions taken by Stalin and the Comintern is that the dismantling of much of the propaganda apparatus in support of “world revolution” and national liberation struggles in the colonies was necessary in exchange for trade, entrance into the League of Nations for the Soviet Union, and the establishment of a loose antifascist front of “collective security” with the imperialist and capitalist states. The alternative, it continues, was the prospect of a German war, tacitly approved by those ruling classes in England, France, and America for whom the Sixth Congress of the Comintern had expressed resolute hostility. Padmore, who early in 1933 had spent several months imprisoned by Nazi authorities in Hamburg, either was unimpressed with this rationale … My own research suggests otherwise. Discussions with Afro-American veterans of the Spanish Civil War have indicated that even the revelation of Soviet aid to Italy during the 1935 Italian invasion of Ethiopia (William Nolan in his Communism Versus the Negro, op. cit., pp. 135, 245 n. 90, cites articles in the New York Times, 8 and 10 September 1935), did not deter them. James Yates told me: “We didn’t get a chance to go to Ethiopia much as many of us would have liked to gone. But when Ethiopia was invaded and Italy overran it, those same troops left there and went to Spain. This was a time and a chance for especially the Blacks to volunteer and get back at the fascists that had invaded Ethiopia.” — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 2377

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• QUESTION: Why did black radicals keep faith with the antifascist movement despite Soviet aid to Italy against Ethiopia — what did the Spanish Civil War offer them that Ethiopia could not?

Related

• Black communists stayed loyal despite Soviet aid to fascist Italy (similarity 0.88)
• Ethiopia’s 1935 invasion triggered a worldwide outpouring of Black radical solidarity. (similarity 0.81)
• Soviet betrayals drove British Black radicals from communism toward Pan-Africanism (similarity 0.80)
• The Italo-Ethiopian War ended James’s tutorship under European radical thought. (similarity 0.79)