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Nicaraguan General Strike (1978)

Mon Jan 23, 1978

On this day in 1978, more than 80% of businesses across Nicaragua closed as part of a general strike that demanded an end to the repressive Somoza regime.

Two weeks earlier, on January 10th, the editor of the Managua newspaper "La Prensa" and founder of the Union for Democratic Liberation (UDEL), Pedro Joaquín Chamorro Cardenal, was murdered by suspected elements of the Somoza dictatorship, causing riots to break out in the capital city, Managua.

The strike lasted for two and a half weeks, but widespread resistance and anti-Somoza revolutionary activity persisted for more than a year afterward, resulting in many deaths, state abuses of power, and atrocities committed both by the Somoza regime.

After Somoza resigned in June of 1979, the FSLN took control of the state capital, however widespread fighting continued between the Sandinistas and the U.S.-backed Contras continued for years afterward.

• Date: 1978-01-23
• Learn More: www.cidh.org, en.wikipedia.org.
• Tags: #General Strikes.
• Source: www.apeoplescalendar.org

Russian Revolution (1905)

Sun Jan 22, 1905

Image: An engraving from an unknown author, depicting a crowd confronting soldiers outside the Narva Gates on the morning of January 22nd [Wikipedia]

On this day in 1905, troops at the Russian Winter Palace fired upon a huge procession of working class demonstrators, killing hundreds. The massacre, known as "Bloody Sunday", led to widespread uprisings and sweeping reforms in what is known as the Russian Revolution of 1905.

The revolt took place amidst widespread discontent with conditions under the Tsarist absolute monarchy, and a growing proliferation of political radicalism. Although mass strikes broke out weeks earlier in St. Petersburg, the beginning of the revolution is typically marked by the "Bloody Sunday" massacre on January 22nd, when unarmed protesters marching towards the Winter Palace to present a petition to Tsar Nicholas were fired upon by soldiers, killing hundreds.

In response to the massacre, mass worker resistance exploded across the Russian empire. Half of European Russia's industrial workers went on strike in 1905, 93.2% in Poland. The Tsar's uncle was assassinated on February 17th.

On March 2nd, the Tsar agreed to the establishment of a legislature, the State Duma. However, with the body's powers remaining limited (initially only given consultative powers), the rebels were emboldened to push harder.

Summer saw peasant rebellion and mutinies (Russia being at war with Japan at the time), most famously the mutiny on the battleship Potemkin, triggered when sailors refused to eat borscht made from maggot-infested meat.

As strikes continued, the government announced a Manifesto on October 17th, enacting emergency civil reform to placate the masses, and successfully crushed remaining resistance in the following months, such as the Moscow Uprising in December.

The uprising is considered the predecessor to the Russian Revolution of 1917 which led to the establishment of the Soviet Union; Vladimir Lenin called it "The Great Dress Rehearsal", without which the "victory of the October Revolution in 1917 would have been impossible".

• Date: 1905-01-22
• Learn More: en.wikipedia.org, www.bolshevik.info, www.thoughtco.com.
• Tags: #Labor, #Assassinations, #Massacre, #Mutinies, #Protests.
• Source: www.apeoplescalendar.org

Antonio Gramsci (1891 - 1937)

Thu Jan 22, 1891

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Antonio Gramsci, born on this day in 1891, was an Italian Marxist philosopher and communist politician. His works touch on a variety of topics, including political theory, sociology, history, and linguistics.

Gramsci was a founding member and leader of the Communist Party of Italy and was imprisoned by Benito Mussolini's fascist regime. Gramsci wrote more than 30 notebooks and 3,000 pages of history and analysis during his imprisonment. His "Prison Notebooks" are considered a highly original contribution to 20th-century political theory.

Today, Gramsci is perhaps best known for his concept of cultural hegemony, which describes how the state and ruling capitalist class use cultural institutions to maintain power in capitalist societies without resorting to force. Hegemonic culture promotes capitalist values and norms such that they become the "common sense" values of all and reinforce the status quo.

"The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born."

- Antonio Gramsci

• Date: 1891-01-22
• Learn More: revisesociology.com, www.marxists.org, en.wikipedia.org.
• Tags: #Communism, #Marxism, #Birthdays, #Fascism.
• Source: www.apeoplescalendar.org

Lenin's Death and Testament (1924)

Mon Jan 21, 1924

On this day in 1924, revolutionary Vladimir Lenin died after a series of strokes. Following his death, his wife Krupskaya circulated "Lenin's Testament", a letter in which he criticized Party leadership and made suggestions for the future.

The majority of the Testament had been dictated by Lenin to his secretary, Lidya Fotieva, on December 25th, 1922, with a postscript added on January 4th, 1923, approximately a year before his death.

In the letter, Lenin expressed concerns over the stability of the Central Committee, and by extension the Communist Party, writing "Our party rests upon two classes, and for that reason its instability is possible, and if there cannot exist an agreement between such classes its fall is inevitable...I have in mind stability as a guarantee against a split n the near future, and I intend to examine here a series of considerations of a purely personal character."

Lenin goes on to state that the personal relationship between Stalin and Trotsky could cause such a split: "I think that the fundamental factor in the matter of stability – from this point of view – as such members of the Central Committee as Stalin and Trotsky. The relation between them constitutes, in my opinion, a big half of the danger of that split..."

In the letter's postscript, dated January 4th, Lenin calls Stalin "rude" and recommends Party members to find another General Secretary, "another man who in all respects differs from Stalin only in superiority – namely, more patient, more loyal, more polite and more attentive to comrades, less capricious, etc."

After, Lenin's death, his surviving widow, Nadezhda, began circulating the document and attempted to present it at the 13th Congress. By a vote of 30 to 10, party leadership refused to have the document read to the congress. The Testament was, however, published by anti-communists; the full English text of Lenin's testament was published as part of a 1926 New York Times article.

Bill Bland, a Marxist-Leninist historian, notes that the contents of the letter mark a striking reversal to Lenin's previous assessment of both Stalin and Trotsky. Stalin had been elected General Secretary of the Central Committee in April 1922 on Lenin's proposal. While Lenin praises Trotsky as the "the most able man in the present Central Committee" in the letter, Lenin had previously referred to Trotsky as "Judas Trotsky" and "swine".

Historian Stephen Kotkin argued that the evidence for Lenin's authorship of the Testament is weak and suggested that the document could have been created by Krupskaya, although other historians, such as Isaac Deutscher and Dmitri Volkogonov, accepted its legitimacy. Trotskyist journal The New International noted in 1935 that Stalin himself acknowledged Lenin as the author in a 1927 speech.

• Date: 1924-01-21
• Learn More: www.marxists.org, en.wikipedia.org, www.revolutionarydemocracy.org.
• Tags: #Communism, #Marxism.
• Source: www.apeoplescalendar.org

Irish War of Independence (1919)

Tue Jan 21, 1919

Image: Photocopy of image taken during the Irish War of Independence. Seán Hogan's (NO. 2) Flying Column, 3rd Tipperary Brigade, IRA. 1920-1921 [Wikipedia]

On this day in 1919, the republican party Sinn Féin declared Irish independence from Britain. After two years of guerilla warfare against British occupation and ~2,300 deaths, the Anglo-Irish Treaty was signed, creating the Irish Free State.

In April 1916, Irish republicans had launched the Easter Rising against British rule, proclaiming an Irish Republic. Although the rebellion was suppressed, the incident led to greater popular support for Irish independence. In December 1918 elections, just a month prior to their independence declaration, republican party Sinn Féin won a landslide victory.

On January 21st, 1919 Sinn Féin formed a breakaway government (Dáil Éireann). The same day, two Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) officers were killed in the Soloheadbeg ambush by Irish Republican Army (IRA) volunteers.

Throughout 1919, the IRA went about capturing weapons and freeing republican prisoners while the Dáil began building up a state. In September, the British government outlawed the Dáil and Sinn Féin, and the conflict intensified.

Over the following two years, the IRA waged a campaign of guerilla warfare against British occupiers. In total, approximately 2,300 people were killed - 936 of the British-aligned forces, 491 of the Irish-aligned forces, and 900 civilians.

The British government bolstered the RIC with recruits from Britain, the "Black and Tans and Auxiliaries", who became notorious for ill-discipline and reprisal attacks on civilians.

On December 6th, 1921, the Anglo-Irish Treaty was signed, bringing an end to the 1919 Irish War of Independence. The treaty formally recognized the Irish Free State and led to the creation of Northern Ireland, partitioning the island.

"If you remove the English Army tomorrow and hoist the green flag over Dublin Castle, unless you set about the organization of the Socialist Republic your efforts will be in vain. England will still rule you. She would rule you through her capitalists, through her landlords, through her financiers, through the whole array of commercial and individualist institutions she has planted in this country and watered with the tears of our mothers and the blood of our martyrs."

- James Connolly

• Date: 1919-01-21
• Learn More: www.theirishstory.com, www.theirishwar.com, www.marxists.org, en.wikipedia.org, www.neversuchinnocence.com.
• Tags: #Independence.
• Source: www.apeoplescalendar.org

Wannsee Conference (1942)

Tue Jan 20, 1942

Image: The villa "Am Großen Wannsee 56–58", where the Wannsee Conference was held, now a memorial and museum [ushmm.org]

On this day in 1942, leading Nazi officials met at a villa in Wannsee, Berlin, to discuss the "Jewish question". Here, the policy of Jewish genocide was explicitly architected, although the "Final Solution" had been approved one year earlier.

The conference was attended by 15 high-ranking party and state officials, headed by Reinhard Heydrich, SS Lieutenant-General and head of the Reich Security Main Office. Other important attendees included Heinrich Müller, chief of the Gestapo, and Adolf Eichmann, who was executed in 1962 for war crimes in Jerusalem.

Because a policy of mass extermination had already been approved by Hitler in 1941 (especially as mass killings of Jews had already begun in occupied Europe), the historical importance of the meeting was not recognized by those present.

The purpose of formalizing the logistics behind the "Final Solution's" implementation was simply to emphasize that, once the deportations had been completed, the fate of the deportees became an internal matter of the SS, totally outside the purview of any other agency. Heydrich estimated that there were around 11 million Jews in Europe who would be targeted for extermination. Within a few months of the Wannsee Conference, the Nazis would begin installing the first poison-gas chambers in Polish extermination camps.

On January 20th, 1992, on the fiftieth anniversary of the meeting, the site was finally opened as a Holocaust memorial and museum known as the Haus der Wannsee-Konferenz (House of the Wannsee Conference).

"Those who suffer from conspiracy phobia are fond of saying: 'Do you actually think there's a group of people sitting around in a room plotting things?' For some reason that image is assumed to be so patently absurd as to invite only disclaimers. But where else would people of power get together - on park benches or carousels?"

- Michael Parenti

• Date: 1942-01-20
• Learn More: encyclopedia.ushmm.org, en.wikipedia.org, www.britannica.com.
• Tags: #Fascism.
• Source: www.apeoplescalendar.org

Amílcar Cabral Assassinated (1973)

Sat Jan 20, 1973

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Amílcar Cabral was a Bissau-Guinean and Cape Verdean agricultural engineer, intellectual, and communist revolutionary who was assassinated on this day in 1973 by a PAIGC veteran and Portuguese agents. Cabral was one of Africa's foremost anti-colonial leaders, leading the nationalist movement of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde Islands and the ensuing war of independence in Guinea-Bissau.

From 1963 until his death, he led the Partido Africano da Independência da Guiné e Cabo Verde (PAIGC) guerrilla movement against the Portuguese government, beginning a decade-long, but ultimately successful war of liberation. The goal of the conflict was to achieve independence from both Portuguese Guinea and Cape Verde.

Cabral was assassinated on January 20th, 1973 by at PAIGC headquarters in Conakry by PAIGC veteran Inocêncio Kani and Portuguese agents, according to historian Lucy Burnett. Eight months later, Guinea-Bissau issued a unilateral declaration of independence. Cabral's pan-Africanism and revolutionary socialism continues to be an inspiration for socialists and national independence movements worldwide.

"In combating racism we do not make progress if we combat the people themselves. We have to combat the causes of racism. If a bandit comes to my house and I have a gun, I cannot shoot the shadow of the bandit; I have to shoot the bandit. Many people lose energy and effort, and make sacrifices combating shadows. We have to combat the material reality that produces the shadow."

- Amílcar Cabral

• Date: 1973-01-20
• Learn More: www.jacobinmag.com, www.marxists.org, www.blackpast.org, en.wikipedia.org.
• Tags: #Socialism, #Assassinations, #Independence.
• Source: www.apeoplescalendar.org

Philip Agee (1935 - 2008)

Sat Jan 19, 1935

Philip Agee, born on this day in 1935, was an ex-CIA officer who became a prominent critic of CIA policies, detailing his experiences in the text "Inside the Company: CIA Diary". Agee ultimately defected to Cuba, dying there in 2008.

Philip Agee (1935 - 2008) served as a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer for eight years, joining the organization in 1960. He was assigned posts in Montevideo, Mexico City, and Quito, Ecuador.

Agee resigned from the CIA in 1968 following the Tlatelolco massacre in Mexico City, in which the U.S.-supported government engaged in mass shootings and arrests of a crowd of more than ten thousand protesters. The same massacre also played a role in the political radicalization of Subcomandante Marcos of the Zapatistas.

Agee moved to London and published "Inside the Company", a tell-all text that, among other things, detailed his work in spying on diplomats, engaging in illegal activity to force a diplomatic break between Ecuador and Cuba, naming President José Figueres Ferrer of Costa Rica, President Luis Echeverría Álvarez of Mexico, and President Alfonso López Michelsen of Colombia as CIA collaborators, and exposing the identities of dozens of CIA agents.

For the exposure of agents, Agee was expelled from the United Kingdom. Agee was also eventually expelled from the Netherlands, France, West Germany and Italy, and was compelled to live under a series of socialist governments - Grenada under Maurice Bishop, then Nicaragua under the Sandinistas, and finally Cuba under Castro. Agee died in Cuba in January 2008.

"I don't think we have ever had real democracy in this country. Anyone who studies adoption of the constitution will understand quite clearly that; democracy - as we understand that on today; was the last thing the founding fathers had in mind when they wrote the constitution....it was: to establish strong central authority responding the elitist interests in United States.

That's private property. And those men who wrote the constitution were representatives of the elites. They were the lawyers, bankers, merchants, the land owners, slave owners and so forth. And they write the constitution for their own private interest$. That is how government has served ever since. And that is why we have so little democracy in United States."

• Philip Agee

• Date: 1935-01-19
• Learn More: en.wikipedia.org, spartacus-educational.com, archive.org.
• Tags: #Birthdays, #Massacre.
• Source: www.apeoplescalendar.org

Baburova and Markelov Assassinated (2009)

Mon Jan 19, 2009

On this day in 2009, anarchist journalist Anastasia Baburova (1983 - 2009) and human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov (1974 - 2009) were assassinated by Russian neo-Nazis.

Baburova was a member of the Russian anarchist group "Autonomous Action" and a student of journalism at Moscow State University. Markelov was a lawyer who defended left-wing political activists, anti-fascists, journalists, and victims of police violence.

On January 19th, 2009, Markelov gave a press conference where he fiercely denounced the early prison release of a Russian army officer, convicted for the abduction and murder of a Chechen girl. After finishing, a masked assailant shot him in the back of the head, killing him instantly. Baburova, who was covering the press conference, was shot and killed after trying to stop the shooter.

In May 2011, the shooter Nikita Tikhonov was sentenced to life imprisonment, and his partner Eugenia Khasis was sentenced to 18 years in prison.

Russian military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer has speculated that the Russian government was involved, noting that Tikhonov's use of a pistol fitted with a silencer was atypical for the neo-Nazi movement, which usually used knives and homemade explosives to commit violence.

• Date: 2009-01-19
• Learn More: en.wikipedia.org, www.frontlinedefenders.org.
• Tags: #Assassinations, #Anarchism, #Journalism, #Fascism.
• Source: www.apeoplescalendar.org

Tokyo Students Battle Police (1969)

Sat Jan 18, 1969

On this day in 1969, around four hundred protesters who had occupied Tokyo University's Yasuda Hall in protest of US-Japan relations battled with police, throwing rocks and gas‐filled bottles at officers on the street. The battle lasted until January 19th, and was broadcast on television, causing a national sensation.

The protest was part of a growing leftist sentiment against the US and the conservative Japanese government that led to more than 10,000 young people being arrested by the end of the year. One year after this event, more than 22 colleges were either closed or only partially open due to student unrest.

• Date: 1969-01-18
• Learn More: www.nytimes.com, aboutjapan.japansociety.org.
• Tags: #Protests.
• Source: www.apeoplescalendar.org

Battle of Hayes Pond (1958)

Sat Jan 18, 1958

Image: Lumbee men Simon Oxedine and Charlie Warriax, both veterans, with captured KKK flag at VFW convention. Image published in Life Magazine, 1958. Page 26-28. [progressive.org]

On this day in 1958, armed Lumbee Native Americans broke up a KKK rally near Maxton, North Carolina, driving the white supremacists away and confiscating their flag. Four Klansmen were injured in the "Battle of Hayes Pond".

Grand Dragon James W. "Catfish" Cole was the organizer of the Klan rally. Sanford Locklear, Simeon Oxendine and Neill Lowery were Lumbee leaders who attacked the Klansmen and successfully disrupted the rally.

The year prior, Cole had initiated a campaign of harassment designed to intimidate the Lumbee Tribe to help organize the local Klan. He called a rally on January 18th, and 100 Klansmen arrived at the private field near Hayes Pond which Cole had leased from a sympathetic farmer. Cole managed to erect the cross, but before he could finish the ceremony, over 500 Lumbee men appeared and encircled the assembled Klansmen.

Four Klansmen were injured in the subsequent exchange of gunfire. Cole was later found guilty of inciting a riot and sentenced to two years in prison.

• Date: 1958-01-18
• Learn More: en.wikipedia.org, progressive.org.
• Source: www.apeoplescalendar.org

Patrice Lumumba Assassinated (1961)

Tue Jan 17, 1961

Patrice Lumumba was a Congolese anti-colonial revolutionary assassinated by U.S. and Belgian assisted forces on this day in 1961, after serving as Prime Minister. Lumumba had served as the first Prime Minister of the independent Democratic Republic of the Congo from June until September 1960, and played a significant role in the transformation of the Congo from a colony of Belgium into an independent republic.

Ideologically an African nationalist and pan-Africanist, Lumumba led the Congolese National Movement (MNC) party from 1958 until his assassination, in a coup by Joseph-Désiré Mobutu, assisted by U.S. and Belgian forces. The coup occurred when Lumumba, facing armed rebellion and an occupation by Belgian forces, asked for support from the Soviet Union. This led to a government split between himself, President Joseph Kasa-Vubu, and military commander Joseph-Désiré Mobutu.

On December 1st, 1960, Lumumba was captured by Mobutu's forces and imprisoned. On January 17th, 1961, he and his associates were brutally beaten and tortured by Katangan and Belgian officers, and Lumumba was executed later that night. The execution was carried out with Belgian and U.S. assistance. Belgium formally apologized for its role in the assassination in 2002.

On Lumumba's legacy, his friend and colleague Thomas Kanza wrote the following:

"He lived as a free man, and an independent thinker. Everything he wrote, said and did was the product of someone who knew his vocation to be that of a liberator, and he represents for the Congo what Castro does for Cuba, Nasser for Egypt, Nkrumah for Ghana, Mao Tse-tung for China, and Lenin for Russia."

"No Congolese worthy of the name will ever to be able to forget that this independence has been won through a struggle in which we did not spare our energy and our blood...We have known ironies, insults, and blows which we had to undergo morning, noon and night because we were Negroes. We have seen our lands spoiled in the name of laws which only recognized the right of the strongest. We have known laws which differed according to whether it dealt with a black man or a white. We have known the atrocious sufferings of those who were imprisoned for their political opinions or religious beliefs, and of those exiled in their own country. Their fate was worse than death itself. Who will forget the rifle-fire from which so many of our brothers perished, or the jails in to which were brutally thrown those who did not want to submit to a regime of justice, oppression and exploitation which were the means the colonialists employed to dominate us?"

- Patrice Lumumba

• Date: 1961-01-17
• Learn More: en.wikipedia.org, www.zinnedproject.org, www.marxists.org, www.britannica.com, www.theafricareport.com.
• Tags: #Assassinations, #Colonialism.
• Source: www.apeoplescalendar.org