Vol. 81/No. 45 December 4, 2017
Festival goers show thirst for political literature
Mendoza was staffing the table of the Young Socialists from the U.K. at the 19th World Festival of Youth and Students here, and Rafaelian had just bought a copy of To Speak the Truth: Why Washington’s ‘Cold War’ Against Cuba Doesn’t End by the two Cuban revolutionary leaders.
“Politics in Russia is very dark and full of lies,” Rafaelian replied. “But Che Guevara and Fidel Castro were different. We need more people like that today.”
Participants at the festival here snatched up over 800 books by communist and other revolutionary leaders.
Yaroslav Markelov, a 24-year-old engineer from Nizhni Archiz in Karachayevo-Cherkesiya, Russia, talked to Ólof Andra Proppé, also from the U.K. “Wages are low there,” Markelov said, “Many people are unemployed, and those working are paid as little as 7,000 rubles [$210] per month.”
“The capitalist crisis is affecting workers around the world. The bosses seek to make us pay for their crisis,” Proppé responded. Markelov was intrigued by the title of Is Socialist Revolution in the US Possible? by Mary-Alice Waters, a leader of the Socialist Workers Party in the U.S. He got the book to learn more about the SWP.
The hallways of the festival venue were thronged by young people looking at tables organized by youth organizations throughout the world, including four staffed by members of the Young Socialists.
The brisk sales reflected the interest in debating politics and a road forward. Half the books from Young Socialists tables were sold to youth from Russia. The top seller was Are They Rich Because They’re Smart? by SWP National Secretary Jack Barnes, with 78 copies purchased in different languages. This was followed by 73 copies of Is Socialist Revolution in the US Possible? and 60 of The Clintons’ Anti-Working-Class Record, also by Barnes. Eighteen participants got subscriptions to the Militant.
Some 70 titles on the fight for women’s liberation were sold, reflecting deep interest in this struggle among young women worldwide.
Artem Lepeshkin, who is active in the Committee for Friendship with Cuba in Russia, subscribed to the Militant and bought several books in Spanish. These included Is Socialist Revolution in the US Possible? and New International magazine with the article “U.S. Imperialism Has Lost the Cold War.”
“Cuba is an internationalist country,” he told Proppé. “It’s a small country, but it has the weight of a big country.”
Nearly 1,000 participants got copies of a 2016 interview with Alyson Kennedy, Socialist Workers Party candidate for U.S. president last year, published in the Russian language news outlet Gazeta.ru.
“The roots of today’s crisis lie in the capitalist system,” Kennedy said in the interview. She described conditions facing workers in the U.S., and the need for a revolution to “take political power from the rich, from those who control the government.”
On the last day of the festival, Anthony Yuzon, a graduate student from Manila, Philippines, stopped by the table of the Young Socialists from New Zealand. He was looking for Are They Rich Because They’re Smart? but it had sold out. He got a copy of The First and Second Declarations of Havana instead.
“The festival has been a big opportunity to meet people from around the world,” he told me. “These books give us an opportunity to discover politics that is not available in the Philippines. Cuba is inspirational to us as an example of working-class struggle.”
Many people wanted to discuss the legacy of the Bolshevik Revolution, and how the world’s first workers and peasants government was betrayed in the political counterrevolution headed by Joseph Stalin. Nine copies of Lenin’s Final Fight were sold, as well as four of Leon Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution — two in Russian — and two copies of Trotsky’s The Revolution Betrayed.
“I’m interested in Trotsky but it’s very hard to find anything by him in Russia,” said Maxim Sikach, an international law student from Khabarovsk Territory, as he bought History of the Russian Revolution. He also got Workers of the World and Oppressed Peoples, Unite! containing documents of the 1920 Second Congress of the Communist International.
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