Soviet betrayals drove British Black radicals from communism toward Pan-Africanism

Evidence

But just as some events, like the worldwide depression of the late 1920s and 1930s, would propel some members of this intelligentsia toward the left, others caused them to seriously question the commitment of European radicals, and particularly European Communists, to their causes. In the early and middle 1930s, two such events, the Third International’s disbanding of the International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers in 1933, and the press revelation of the Soviet Union’s trade with Italy in war materials during the Italo-Ethiopian War (in contravention to League of Nations sanctions), proved to be critical. In Britain, the most radical Black activists generally turned toward Pan-Africanism as the form of their political work while retaining aspects of Marxism for their critique of capitalism and imperialism. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1225

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the Frankfurt School volume’s treatment of how betrayed radicals reassessed their allegiances, and to the overall arc of why Black Marxism diverged from orthodox European Marxism.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1225