The Exilic Productions of American Radicalism in Interwar Moscow By
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The Anticolonial Imagination: The Exilic Productions of American Radicalism in Interwar Moscow By Ani Mukherji B.A., Cornell University, 1998 M.A., University of California, Berkeley, 1999 A.M., Brown University, 2004 A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of American Civilization at Brown University Providence, Rhode Island May 2011 © Copyright 2011 by Ani Mukherji This dissertation by Ani Mukherji is accepted in its present form by the Department of American Civilization as satisfying the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Date ________ __________________________________ Robert G. Lee, Advisor Recommended to the Graduate Council Date ________ __________________________________ B. Anthony Bogues, Reader Date ________ __________________________________ Paul Buhle, Reader Date ________ __________________________________ Naoko Shibusawa, Reader Date ________ __________________________________ Peter Weber, Dean of the Graduate School iii Abstract of “The Anticolonial Imagination: The Exilic Productions of American Anticolonialism in Interwar Moscow” by Ani Mukherji, Ph.D., Brown University, May 2011 “The Anticolonial Imagination” is an examination of race, migration, politics, and the history of ideas in the interwar period (1919-1939). Based on archival material collected in Russia and the United States, the dissertation analyzes the political and cultural expressions of a small group of African Americans and Asian Americans who traveled to Moscow in the 1920s and 1930s to work and to study in institutions administered by the Communist International (Comintern). This group included African American writers, West Indian Pan-Africanists, Japanese American socialists, and Indian revolutionaries. Through an examination of these sojourners’ exilic activism and cultural productions, I demonstrate the ways in which anticolonialists attempted to place issues of anti-racism and self-determination at the center of the international Communist movement, much to the chagrin of American authorities and the European powers. This study contributes to several interrelated areas of research. First, the dissertation advances a new angle of approach for studies of race and foreign affairs by excavating the history of the Soviet Union in the struggle against colonialism in the period before World War Two. Second, this study reconstructs how migrant activists of the interwar period attempted to unite the ideological impulses of nativist anticolonialism and proletarian fraternalism in innovative ways that cut across political space and diasporic boundaries. Lastly, for scholars of American politics, “The Anticolonial Imagination” reveals a rich set of political and cultural visions that were decisively iv eliminated in the post-war repression that corresponded to the creation of the National Security State. By recovering the voices of those who were silenced, marginalized and forgotten, the manuscript provides for a better understanding of the political and racial ordering that occurred during the early Cold War. v CURRICULUM VITAE S. Ani Mukherji was born in Indianapolis, Indiana on May 24, 1976. He received his B.A. in the College Scholar Program at Cornell University in a program entitled “Language, Literature, and Social Theory” in 1998. Mukherji completed an M.A. in History at the University of California at Berkeley in 1999 and was granted an A.M. in American Civilization at Brown University in 2004. Mukherji has received grants and fellowships from the Center for the Cold War and the United States (New York University), Society of Historians of American Foreign Relations, the Fulbright Program, and the Woodruff Library at Emory University. Mukherji has taught courses in American Studies, History, and Ethnic Studies at Brown University and Wesleyan University. He has also taught history courses in Massachusetts public schools in Fall River, Hyannis, and Boston. vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My greatest debt—student loans notwithstanding—is to my parents, Sanjib Mukherji and Bonnie Mukherji. From quizzing me after kindergarten to nudging me back toward graduate school, they have been there all along. I also thank my committee: Robert Lee, B. Anthony Bogues, Paul Buhle, and Naoko Shibusawa. Their guidance and support have been exceptional and I hope that they recognize some of their influence in these pages. The work was also helped along by an unofficial committee member, Susan Pennybacker, whose support in the final stages of this project was an unexpected blessing. As with all research projects, this dissertation relied on the support of a great many libraries and archives. I thank the staff at the Rockefeller Library at Brown University; Tamiment Library at New York University; National Archives and Records Administration at College Park, Maryland; Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; Beinecke Library at Yale University; Moorland-Spingarn Collection at Howard University; British National Archives; Russian State Archive of Social-Political History (RGASPI); Russian State Archive of Literature and Art (RGALI); State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF); Bancroft Library at the University of California at Berkeley; Young Research Library at UCLA; Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library (MARBL) at Emory University; the Labadie Collection at University of Michigan; Schlesinger Library at the Radcliffe Institute; and the Library of Congress. Special thanks to Peter Filardo, Randall Burkett, Larisa Ivanovna Reshetilo, Sharon Jarvis, and Andre Elizee. vii I would also like to recognize the immense help of friends and families of this dissertation’s subjects. Lily Golden made my research in Moscow possible. Jay Chen aided in an ill-fated attempt to gain access to KGB files. Esther Cooper Jackson shared her memories. Funding and support for this research was provided by Brown University, the Fulbright Program, Society of Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR), the Center for the Cold War at New York University, and the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America at Brown University. Fellow graduate students at Brown sustained me over the past seven years, offering intellectual stimulation, emotional succor, and idle thoughts served up between cocktails. For these gifts, I thank Tom Chen, Joe Clark, Gill Frank, Jessica Johnson, Gabriel Mendes, Matthew Quest, Margaret Stevens, Sarah Wald, and Susanne Wiedemann. Eric D. Larson deserves special recognition for his three-in-the-morning solidarity work as we completed our manuscripts. I also appreciate the feedback of my students at Brown University and Wesleyan University who helped me reflect on how to tell the story in this dissertation. Earlier lessons on what’s important in history were learned when I taught at Sturgis Public Charter School. A large collection of friends, colleagues, and mentors have assisted me in a myriad of ways over the course of my graduate career and deserve recognition. They include Molly Jo Brunson, Mari Jo Buhle, John V. Burke, James Campbell, Martha Case, Shawn Cole, Ryan Eyster, Matt Fry, Drew Gerkey, Paget Henry, Wesley Hiers, Peter Holquist, Evelyn Hu-DeHart, Carl Kaestle, Steven Lee, Andrei Levchenko, Summer viii McCorkle, Jason McGill, Julia Mickenberg, Michael Nash, Ariel Nevarez, Vijay Prashad, Nicole Reinert, Susannah Roff de la Cruz, Yuri Slezkine, Romy Taylor, Petia Topalova, Sonya Tsujimura, Alan Wald, Cory Wimberly, Siena Wimberly, Marilyn Young, and Reggie Zelnik. Ksenya Gurshtein helped with some persnickety translation questions, though I usually ignored her sound advice. The Smith-Hasegawa family allowed me to stay in their wonderful home in the final stages of the gestation and birthing of this project. I also have to thank my landlord in Moscow, because I promised him that I would. Ivan Gusev, may you never stop fearing capitalist encirclement. Finally, for coming along on this ridiculous journey—from dodgy hotels in London to road-rage-induced shoot-outs in Moscow—I thank Eliza “Ila” Bettinger. ix TABLE OF CONTENTS Signature Page iii Curriculum Vitae vi Acknowledgements vii Introduction 1 Chapter 1 14 Leninism in Asian America: Sen Katayama, M.N. Roy, and American Anticolonialism Chapter 2 50 “One Hundred Grams of Black Bread, Twenty Tons of Books”: Revolutionary Encounters between American Students and Soviet Ethnography at the Communist University of Toilers of the East Chapter 3 94 “The New Negro will not be an Aesthete”: Anticolonialism and Black Radical Politics in the Comintern Chapter 4 147 “Like Another Planet to the Darker Americans”: Anticolonial Cultural Work in 1930s Moscow Conclusion 192 Bibliography 198 x 1 INTRODUCTION Bachan Singh was born to a farming family in a Punjabi village in the first decade of the twentieth century. Like many small landholders in the Punjab, Singh’s father lost his farm when Bachan was a boy. Suddenly homeless, the father left for China where he worked for a British bank as a watchman while his sons moved to Lahore to find new opportunities. In the city, Bachan befriended Piara Singh, an older Sikh who had recently returned from America, where, Singh explained, many young Indians were working their way through college by picking up migrant agricultural work in the summers while attending classes in the autumn and spring. Struck by this idea, Bachan borrowed fare for passage from his family on the promise of future remittances, and left for California.1 Arriving in Marysville