THE MAKING OF A LEFTIST MILIEU: ANTI-COLONIALISM, ANTI-FASCISM, AND THE POLITICAL ENGAGEMENT OF INTELLECTUALS IN MANDATE LEBANON, 1920- 1948.

A dissertation presented

By

Sana Tannoury Karam

to The Department of History

In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

In the field of

History

Northeastern University Boston, Massachusetts December 2017

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THE MAKING OF A LEFTIST MILIEU: ANTI-COLONIALISM, ANTI-FASCISM, AND THE POLITICAL ENGAGEMENT OF INTELLECTUALS IN MANDATE LEBANON, 1920- 1948.

A dissertation presented

By

Sana Tannoury Karam

ABSTRACT OF DISSERTATION

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History in the College of Social Sciences and Humanities of Northeastern University December 2017

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This dissertation is an intellectual and cultural history of an invisible generation of leftists that were active in Lebanon, and more generally in the Levant, between the years 1920 and 1948. It chronicles the foundation and development of this intellectual milieu within the political Left, and how intellectuals interpreted leftist principles and struggled to maintain a fluid, ideologically non-rigid space, in which they incorporated an array of ideas and affinities, and formulated their own distinct worldviews. More broadly, this study is concerned with how intellectuals in the post-World War One period engaged with the political sphere and negotiated their presence within new structures of power. It explains the social, political, as well as personal contexts that prompted intellectuals embrace certain ideas. Using periodicals, personal papers, memoirs, and collections of primary material produced by this milieu, this dissertation argues that leftist intellectuals pushed to politicize the role and figure of the ‘intellectual’. Moreover, by blurring ideological and political boundaries, these leftists redefined, even if briefly, the terms of inclusion into their local political sphere and global movements. This dissertation inserts Arab leftist intellectuals and activists into the global moment of the interwar period and the context of

World War Two, examining their links with the League Against Imperialism and the Spanish

Civil War, their opposition to the fascist powers threatening the world before and during the

Second World War, and their overlap with the women’s movement.

3 AKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank the various individuals who have supported me throughout the journey of writing this dissertation. My committee has been a constant source of inspiration and support throughout this process. First and foremost, I want to thank Ilham Khuri-Makdisi, for being an exemplary and fabulous mentor, and for constantly pushing me beyond what I thought were my limits. She taught me to challenge myself intellectually, and reminded me amidst moments of despair and struggle why this work is important and why I love it so much. I am immensely grateful to Samer Frangie for encouraging this once political science graduate student to pursue her passion for history, and for always believing in me often (too often) when I doubted myself. I want to thank Philip Khoury for his dedication to the field of Middle East

History and to young scholars, for his humility, and for his exemplary ethics and scholarship. I would also like to thank Heather Streets-Salter for always providing solutions to any problem, for being so positive and intellectually stimulating, and for the dedication to World History that she instills in her students.

The History Department at Northeastern University has been a wonderful intellectual home the past few years, and I would like to thank the students, faculty, and staff – particularly

Bonita Knipfer and Kirsten Bilas – for making this department what it is. A substantial part of this dissertation was written during my fellowship year at the Humanities Center at Northeastern

University in 2016-2017. I therefore want to thank the Humanities Center and all the fellows who have read and commented on chapters of this dissertation, as well as provided moral support amidst dark times in the history of this country.

My research has been made possible through the use of several libraries and archives. I would like to thank the staff at the Jafet Memorial Library at the American University of Beirut,

4 the Centre des Archives Nationales in Beirut, Widener Library and particularly the Philips

Reading Room at Harvard University, the British National Archives at KEW, and the U.S.

National Archives in Maryland. I would like to thank the Gillis Family Fund in World History and the New England Regional World History Association (NERWHA) for funding research and travel for this dissertation.

While writing this dissertation, several scholars, teachers, and friends have offered support and advice. I especially want to thank Michele Louro, Ziad Abu-Rish, Fawwaz

Traboulsi, Timothy Brown, Naghmeh Sohrabi, Kate Luongo, Louis Walker, and Salim Tamari

(whose article on Najati Siqdi attracted me towards this topic in the first place). I also want to thank the Arab-Russian Workshop Group at Boston University for helping me think of geography and the longevity of the relationship between Russia and the Arab world. I especially want to thank Malakeh Khoury, not only for sharing books and material on her father, but also for being kind and knowledgeable, and for making me feel as if I had actually met Ra’if Khuri in person. A special thank you goes to Jacqueline Ibrahim, for sharing Imili Faris Ibrahim’s personal papers, and for her love for her late mother-in-law. I want to thank Maroun Yazbik, for opening his father’s home for me and sharing his papers and library, and I am grateful to Claire and Christiane Abou Adal who made that meeting possible. I would also like to thank the late

George Batal, for sharing knowledge and precious stories with me.

I have been very fortunate to be part of a writing group that my friend and colleague

Elizabeth Lehr has convened throughout the hardest months of this journey. I want to thank

Regina Kazyulina, Elizabeth Lehr, and Akin Sefer, who have all read multiple versions of my chapters, provided comments and tremendous support. A special thank you to Elizabeth for

5 always listening and for her exemplary perseverance. I would also like to thank Olivier

Schouteden for being a wonderful officemate and friend.

To our family in Boston, my dear friends Regina Kazyulina, Bengü Kurtege-Sefer, Akin

Sefer, Kirill Shubin, and little Nedim, thank you for all the laughs, dinners, support, and love. I am grateful for having had Akin as my dissertation ‘brother’. I want to thank Regina for the walks in our park and the long conversations, and thank her and Kirill for always taking me outside my comfort zone: camping, bears and all.

A big thank you is due to my dear family in Beirut and beyond. To my father Hanna, thank you for teaching me that ideas matter, and that faith can be a powerful force in changing the course of history. To my mother Sawsan, thank you for teaching me to love words and to read and appreciate Arabic literature. I am immensely grateful to my in-laws, Graziella and

Ghassan, and to my parents, for being our refuge during my research trips, and for providing me with support and comfort throughout this journey. I would like to thank my sister Hiba and my brother-in-law Tarek for their support, and for making me realize that debate and intellectual differences are an essential part of respect and growth. I am immensely grateful to my sister

Lama, for her encouragement both in Beirut and across continents, for forcing me out of Jafet for breaks, and for always making me laugh. She has been my Sam, reminding me of the Shire in the darkest moments of this journey.

Finally, words cannot express the gratitude I have for my husband, Jeffrey. Thank you for being my home and my rock, for being my first and last reader, and for your unfailing love.

Without you none of this would have been possible. You are my companion and one true comrade, rafīq al-darb, and to you I dedicate this dissertation.

6 DEDICATION PAGE

Ilā rafīq al-darb, Jeffrey

7 NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION AND TRANSLATION

When transliterating from Arabic, I have used the standard system of the International Journal of Middle East Studies (IJMES). The initial hamza is always dropped; the tā’ marbūta is rendered a (not ah), and in iḍāfa it is rendered at; al- is retained when Arabic names are shortened. Personal names, names of political parties, names of newspapers and journals, and titles of books and articles are spelled according to the IJMES transliteration system and without diacritics. Italics are used for titles of books and journals only, not for proper names or names of political parties and organizations.

All translations are my own unless indicated otherwise. I have chosen to often include a transliteration of a specific translated word when the Arabic is important to note for the sake of analysis.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract 2

Acknowledgments 4

Dedication Page 7

Notes on Transliteration and Translation 8

Table of Contents 9

Chapters

Introduction 10

Chapter 1 – The ‘East’ Has Awoken from Its Idleness: Anti-Colonialism, Capitalism, 32 and the Political Organization of the Left in Post-World War I Lebanon, 1922-1928

Chapter 2 – Between the Ivory Tower and the Marketplace: The Political Engagement 92 of Intellectuals and the Boundaries of the Public Sphere

Chapter 3 – This War is Our War: Anti-Fascism, Democracy, and the Friendship 132 of the Soviet Union

Chapter 4 – Leftist Feminists: Demanding Political Rights, Challenging Democratic 176 Promises, and Feminizing the Public Sphere

Conclusion 234

Appendix 238

Bibliography 243

9 INTRODUCTION

This dissertation is an intellectual and cultural history of an invisible generation of leftists who were active in Lebanon, and more generally in the Levant, between the years 1920 and

1948. It is a story of how intellectuals and activists interpreted leftist principles and struggled to maintain a fluid, ideologically non-rigid space, in which they incorporated an array of ideas and affinities, and formulated their own distinct worldviews. This dissertation in fact suggests viewing this group of leftists as a ‘milieu’, and that, for a given period of time, this milieu grew in parallel to, and often overlapping with, the communist movement.

This dissertation chronicles the foundation and development of this intellectual milieu within the political Left; it is a biography of that milieu. More broadly, it is concerned with how intellectuals in the post-World War One period engaged with the political sphere and negotiated their presence within new structures of power. It attempts to explain the social, political, as well as personal contexts that prompted intellectuals to adhere to certain ideas. It argues that leftist intellectuals pushed to politicize the role and figure of the ‘intellectual’. By blurring ideological and political boundaries, these leftists redefined, even if briefly, the terms of their inclusion into the local political sphere and global movements.

This dissertation contextualizes the circulation of leftist ideas within the boundaries of the period starting and ending with the end of World War One and the end of World War Two respectively, away from the Cold War lens and the binaries that came to characterize that period.

This in turn explains the ‘unorthodoxy’ of the ideas and the mélange of choices that distinguished these intellectuals in an interwar period where nationalism and internationalism, communism and socialism, were not seen as mutually exclusive, particularly in the non-western

10 colonized world. It was an era that produced the League Against Imperialism in 1929– where nationalists and communists saw their struggle as one – and the Popular Front; it was a global

‘moment’ in which the Soviet Union was seen by many colonized people as the beacon of anti- imperialism, and the road to national liberation and democracy. I insert leftist intellectuals and activists into this global moment, examining their links with the League Against Imperialism and the Spanish Civil War, their opposition to the fascist powers threatening the world before and during the Second World War, and their overlap with the women’s movement.

This dissertation has opted out of an attempt to establish particular affiliations, to assign certain labels, or embark on a quest to determine a certain individual’s membership or non- membership to a given political party – in this case primarily membership to the Communist

Party which was initially established out of the ranks of this milieu. Rather, this dissertation treats the Left as a heterogeneous space where affiliations across the leftist political spectrum converged and often overlapped during a time period when dogmatic lines dividing the Left, although were being redrawn, remained for the time being blurred. Therefore, intellectuals and activists who inhabited that space “moved about in entangled circles with shifting boundaries”1, circles that overlapped between communist party members and non-party communists, socialists, anti-fascists, anti-imperialists, and nationalists.

I have chosen to label this milieu as ‘leftist’ despite its proximity ideologically and organizationally to the communist party since some of its members did not openly proclaim their adherence to communism, and while others did so at some point during their political activism, they eventually chose, or were forced at some point, to distance themselves from the Communist

1 Marci Shore, Caviar and Ashes: A Warsaw Generation’s Life and Death in Marxism, 1918- 1968 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 4. 11 Party. I have therefore used the term ‘leftist’ to maintain this flexibility in ideological and political affiliation. This milieu, which was made up of intellectual, literary, and activist circles, started taking shape through political organization within a party in the mid-1920s in Lebanon, which soon became the base for the Communist Party of Syria and Lebanon. By the late 1920s and until the late 1940s, the boundaries between the milieu and the party often collided; however, the persistence of these shifting boundaries allowed those within this milieu to operate outside a political party that grew increasingly dogmatic throughout the interwar and World War

Two years.

Conceptualizing and Framing the Left

The story of this milieu and its relationship with the communist movement can be better understood when juxtaposed with the path that international communism took under the leadership of the Soviet Union, particularly between the 1920s and the 1940s. In the 1920s, the

Soviet Union built up and/or supported an infrastructure that fostered horizontal ties of patronage between anti-colonial activists and nationalists through the Communist International, the

International Workers’ Relief, and the League Against Imperialism among other organizations.

The reemergence of imperial competition and the rise of Stalin by the late 1920s prompted a dogmatic centralized policy from the Soviet Union that emphasized vertical bonds of patronage with Moscow. The Communist International, which met in its sixth congress in 1928, and through which Stalin announced his ‘socialism in one country’ policy, would not convene until

1935 in its seventh and final congress, later to be dissolved by the Soviet Union in 1943. This exemplified, as Kris Manjapra argues, the Soviet government’s move away from “their support

12 of communist laboratories of transcolonial interchange”.2 This move also preceded and coincided with the purge of intellectuals and “thinkers who did not ascribe to the Bolshevik orthodoxy”, and who were, “increasingly seen with suspicion and expelled by the Moscow center.”3

In hindsight, the categories that these purges and this ‘purification’ had created of what communism and being a communist meant, have failed to account for this ‘moment’ in which leftists across the political spectrum of the Left experimented with their local and global identities, actions, and affinities. This ‘moment’, though short-lived, allowed for the ‘national’ and the ‘international’ to be heavily intertwined. It was also a time where the ‘global’ and the

‘local’ converged in the lived experiences of individuals.4

This dissertation borrows from South Asian historians’ conceptualization of a heterogeneous Left with lenient boundaries, given the similarities with the Levant in the way the

Left developed among intellectuals in conjunction with anti-colonialism.5 It focuses on a group of individuals who believed in social justice, the international solidarity of the working class, the need to fight capitalism, and the interconnectivity between the class struggle and the anti- imperialist struggle; they also believed in achieving their political goals in some form of

2 Kris Manjapra, “Communist Internationalism and Transcolonial Recognition”, in Sugata Bose and Kris Manjapra, eds., Cosmopolitan Thought Zones: South Asia and the Global Circulation of Ideas, 2010, 171. 3 Bose and Manjapra, 171. 4 Ali Raza, “Straddling the International and the Regional: The Punjabi Left in the Interwar Period”, in Raza Ali, Franziska Roy, and Benjamin Zachariah, eds., The Internationalist Moment: South Asia, Worlds, and World Views, 1917-1939, 2014, 122–23. 5 Particularly recent anthologies that have engaged the national with the international while arguing for the overlap between various circulating ideas in the interwar period such as, Ali, Roy, and Zachariah, The Internationalist Moment; Bose and Manjapra, Cosmopolitan Thought Zones. See also Michele Louro, Comrades Against Imperialism: Nehru, India, and Interwar Internationalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018); Noor-Aiman I Khan, Egyptian-Indian Nationalist Collaboration and the British Empire (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). 13 revolutionary struggle. Although the Left of the interwar period drew heavily upon the tradition of socialism that had circulated in the Eastern Mediterranean since the late nineteenth century, it was also shaped by the political considerations of its own time, including the persistence of capitalism and imperialism and its growth throughout the world, and the success of the

Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. Similar to the way Ali Raza describes the Punjabi Left in the interwar period, for these leftists, “in political and intellectual terms, it was perfectly possible for many to ascribe to a politics of internationalism that was at the same time rooted and directed toward a specific sociopolitical context”.6 They created their own brand of politics that was a mélange of internationalism, nationalism, and anti-imperialism.

The Historiography of the Left and the Mandate

Scholars who have written about members or part of this milieu have labelled them as belonging to the Marxist liberal or Marxist progressive current, and have argued that they were active around the mid-1920s and disappeared by the late 1940s.7 This is the first study to write in depth about its members, their ideas, their relationship to communism and other ideas/parties at the time, and what that meant for Lebanon, the region, and the world.

6 Ali, Roy, and Zachariah, The Internationalist Moment, 123. 7 Primarily, Abdullah Hanna had identified the Marxist progressive current as separate from the Communist Party, see Abdullah Hanna, al-Ittijahat al-Fikriya fi Suriya wa-Lubnan, 1920-1945 (Damascus: Dar al-Taqadum al-Arabi, 1973); Abdullah Hanna, al-Haraka al-ʻUmmaliyya fi Suriya wa-Lubnan, 1900-1945 (Damascus: Dar Dimashq, 1973); Abdullah Hanna, al-Haraka al- Shuyu’iyya al-Suriyya: al-Su’ud wa-l-Hubut : Dirasa Tajma’u bayna al-Tarikh al-Shafahi wa-l- Tarikh al-Maktub (Damascus: Dar Nun, 2008). Others who wrote about the Mandate also identified a group of intellectuals that developed close to the Communist Party, see Jacques Couland, Le Mouvement Syndical au Liban, 1919-1946: Son évolution pendant le mandat français de l’occupation à l’évacuation et au Code du travail. Préf. de Jacques Berque. (Paris: Éditions sociales, 1970); Masʻud Daher, Tarikh Lubnan al-Ijtimaʻi, 1914-1926 (Beirut: Dar al- Farabi, 1974). 14 The marginalization of particular leftists from the historiography of the Left and the

Mandate period is caused by two main factors: the overemphasis that nationalism has received in the literature and the triumph of the nationalist paradigm in the post-independence states, and the monopolization of the history of the Left by the rise of the communist parties and thus the inability to perceive the Left during the interwar period as heterogeneous and complex.8 This historiographic gap has also caused the two histories of the Left and of nationalism to be written separately. Therefore, on the one hand, the history of the Levant during the Mandate period has been written with significant marginalization if not silence about the Left. On the other hand, the history of the Left has been predominantly written through the history of the communist parties, which in turn has presented that history through the establishment of parties in separate nation- states. This dissertation bridges this historiographic gap by inscribing into the Mandate the biography of a leftist milieu and its interactions with local and global currents.

The history of the Mandate has been consistently dominated by nationalism as a driving force for the political and social transformations of the pre-independence era. Within this historiography, two main trends have developed: a concentration on the traditional nationalist elite9, and a more recent trend that has tended to focus on mass politics10. Both trends have

8 For a discussion of this problem of marginalization in the context of the earlier nahda period, see Ilham Khuri-Makdisi, The Eastern Mediterranean and the Making of Global Radicalism, 1860-1914 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010). 9 Philip S Khoury, Urban Notables and Arab Nationalism: The Politics of Damascus, 1860-1920 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983); Rashid Khalidi, The Origins of Arab Nationalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991); C. Ernest Dawn, From Ottomanism to Arabism; Essays on the Origins of Arab Nationalism (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1973). 10 Elizabeth Thompson, Colonial Citizens: Republican Rights, Paternal Privilege, and Gender in French Syria and Lebanon (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000); James L Gelvin, “The League of Nations and the Question of National Identity in the Fertile Crescent,” World Affairs : A Quarterly Review of International Problems World Affairs 158, no. 1 (1995): 35–43; James L 15 produced histories of the Mandate that emphasize the changing nature of the structure of political organization through the emergence of new social classes by the post-World War One period that challenge the rule of the traditional elite, the formation of more conscious social classes and their mobilization, the changing nature of cities and the emergence of new spaces and institutions through which politics and ideas were contested and performed, and the redrawing of boundaries between state and society.11 The transformed social and economic landscape of the Levant in the post-World War One era had allowed for the weakening and eventual disintegration of the vertical ties of loyalty and patronage that had linked the mass population of the Arab Ottoman provinces with their elites, and the strengthening instead of horizontal ties, such as class, that brought about new identities and new concepts for political organization and imagination.12 Out of these changes emerged mass movements – of women and workers more specifically – that necessitated a transformation in the role of the elite as leaders of these movements and participants in mass politics.13 The rise of new social classes and the advancement of mass politics provided a fertile ground for the emergence of a class of intellectuals (muthaqqafīn) that would position themselves as vanguards of the masses and instigators of change.

This project contributes to the literature on the Mandate by presenting a history of intellectuals that supplements the narrative on the role of the nationalist elite in changing the

Gelvin, Divided Loyalties: Nationalism and Mass Politics in Syria at the Close of Empire (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998). 11 Philip S Khoury, Syria and the French Mandate: The Politics of Arab Nationalism, 1920-1945 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1987). 12 Gelvin, Divided Loyalties; Keith David Watenpaugh, Being Modern in the Middle East: Revolution, Nationalism, Colonialism, and the Arab Middle Class (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2006). 13 Couland, Le mouvement syndical au Liban, 1919-1946; Betty S Anderson, American University of Beirut: Arab Nationalism and Liberal Education (Austin: University Of Texas Press, 2012); Thompson, Colonial Citizens. 16 political organization of Mandate societies. However, the socio-political status of the various intellectuals that this project focuses on also complicates this category of the elite. The intellectuals at the center of this dissertation did not fit the traditional category of elites and therefore challenged inclusion and exclusion into the political sphere by creating a milieu that shaped a space for itself within the public sphere of the Mandate, a process that could only be understood in the context of the changing structures of political organization under the Mandate.

Moreover, this project presents a history of leftist ideas that circulated mainly within intellectual circles, yet their purpose and very success hinged on the development of mass politics and on popular mobilization of the masses, and particularly the workers; whether or not they succeeded in doing so is another story.

An examination of the intellectual space through which leftist ideas and leftists interacted reveals that the Left was not so homogenous. Moreover, the majority of the literature on communism has tended to focus on the history of the communist parties in the years following independence, in the case of Lebanon the year 1943, with the interwar period making an introductory and brief presence. The overwhelming literature on communism has also presented a deterministic history of the communist project in the Arab world by arguing that the structure and leadership of the communist parties had doomed their success by adhering to a strict Stalinist line and a strong Marxist-Leninist ideology stipulated by Moscow.14 While the latter did eventually become true in most of the post-independence cases, this project takes issue with this

14 Ilyas Murqus, Tarikh al-Ahzab al-Shuyuʻiya fī al-Watan al-ʻArabi (Beirut: Manshurat Dar al- Tali’a, 1964); Tareq Y Ismael, The Communist Movement in the Arab World (London; New York: Routledge, 2005); Tareq Y Ismael and Jacqueline S Ismael, The Communist Movement in Syria and Lebanon (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1998); Rami Ginat, A History of Egyptian Communism: Jews and Their Compatriots in Quest of Revolution (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2011). 17 deterministic approach by presenting a history of a multiplicity of ideas, identities, and affiliations within the Left in the mandate period, including from within the communist party and among communists, leading up to independence.

By diversifying the history of the Left, this project intervenes in this historiography by breaking the monopoly of the communist party over the interwar Left. Although this dissertation does not offer a comparison or examination of these various ‘lefts’, by focusing on one particular leftist milieu it shows the possibility for such hybridity and the existence of a Left outside the parameters of an official party line. This silence on the range of ideas and projects within the

Left has been largely caused by historians’ inability to categorize these ideas within the parameters of this prevalent dichotomy of communism vs. nationalism. The silence has also been caused by the inability of these ideas to find widespread mass appeal the way nationalism was capable of achieving during the interwar period. While the history of nationalism has dominated the historiography particularly due to the post-independence triumph of the nationalist paradigm, the history of the Left has largely been presented within the parameters of communism as a failed political and social project. This dissertation has chosen to focus on ideas and individuals who fell within the category of the Left, but who at the same time cannot be restricted within either the literature on nationalism – from which they have been excluded – nor history of communism – with which they sometimes competed and often did not strictly belong to. By failing to address these heterogeneous ideas and the position of the intellectuals who propagated and developed them, both ends of the polarized historiographies have been missing an element in their analysis.

One other historiographic field this dissertation speaks to is the relationship between the

Soviet Union and the Levant. While some historians have written on the relationship of the

18 Soviet Union with Arab states, it has been either limited within the context of the communist parties, or mostly framed through the lens of the Cold War.15 Recent scholarship has contributed towards the Soviet Union’s approach to the East, focusing on the Baku Congress and the

University of the Toilers of the East.16 However, the field lacks an examination of the perception of the Soviet Union by the peoples of the East themselves, particularly at a time period in which attraction towards the Soviet Union was shared by communists and non-communists alike. My dissertation sheds light on a rather untold story of the possibilities and hopes that the image of the Soviet Union brought to those who, for a period of time, saw it as a beacon of hope and democracy in an otherwise imperial capitalist world that was colonizing their lands and monopolizing their resources.

This dissertation therefore moves beyond binaries of success and failure, exclusion and inclusion, and membership and non-membership to examine the people and the ideas that fall into the cracks between these binaries. This is important if the vast possibilities, choices, and diversity of the political and intellectual scene of Lebanon during the French Mandate are to be seen.

15 Walter Laqueur, Communism and Nationalism in the Middle East (New York: Praeger, 1957); Ivar Spector, The Soviet Union and the Muslim World (Seattle: Distributed by University of Washington Press, 1958); Hanna Batatu, The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq: A Study of Iraq’s Old Landed and Commercial Classes and of Its Communists, Baʻthists, and Free Officers (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978); Ismael, The Communist Movement in the Arab World; Malcolm H Kerr, The Arab Cold War: Gamal ʼAbd Al-Nasir and His Rivals, 1958-1970 (London; New York: Published for the Royal Institute of International Affairs by Oxford University Press, 1971). 16 Masha Kirasirova, “The ‘East’ as a Category of Bolshevik Ideology and Comintern Administration: The Arab Section of the Communist University of the Toilers of the East,” Kritika 18, no. 1 (2017): 7–34; Stephen White, “Communism and the East: The Baku Congress, 1920,” Slavic Review 33, no. 3 (September 1, 1974): 492–514; Merav Mack, “Orthodox and Communist: A History of a Christian Community in Mandate Palestine and Israel,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 42, no. 4 (2015): 384–400. 19 Periodization: Interwar, Second World War, and the Mandate

This dissertation covers the period between the years 1920 and 1945, meaning the years of the French Mandate over Lebanon, with the conclusion touching upon the year 1948. It places this period within the global context of those years. It also recognizes the changes in the international and local contexts within the Mandate between the interwar years and the Second

World War period.

The debate of continuity versus change has remained salient in the historiography of the post-World War One period in the Middle East. While historians have viewed World War One as a watershed event for the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire, this dissertation emphasizes the importance of pre-World War One continuities within the intellectual traditions that emerge during the Mandate. It contextualizes and explains the factors that made World War One so important in the intellectual life that emerged in the years to follow. These were primarily the imposition of direct European colonialism through the French Mandate over Lebanon and Syria and the creation of newly defined nation states, and what both these factors allowed for, including changes in class structures as well as in the form and size of political participation.

Another component that characterized a post-World War One world and that was seminal for the changes in intellectual and political milieus was the Bolshevik Revolution and the establishment of the Soviet Union as the first socialist state. The latter’s position with respect to the colonial project and the newly imposed Mandates in the Levant established it as the leading world power in the struggle against imperialism. Therefore, the period this dissertation covers, which was one of heightened anti-colonial nationalism, was also a time when being affiliated with the Soviet Union meant commitment to anti-imperialism.

20 By definition, the interwar period was bookended by two world wars; however, this dissertation acknowledges that it should not be framed as a pre-World War Two period only, nor should it be seen in the hindsight of the Cold War. Rather, the interwar period was unique in its internationalism and the fluidity of ideas circulating around the world. This fluidity and the leniency of distinctions between party members and non-party members within communism has often been overlooked by historians who tended to read back the interwar period into the definition and concepts of the national as separate from the international. Therefore, the entanglement of the national and the international was central to interwar period and is highlighted in this dissertation.

The framework of the Second World War is significant in this context for two main reasons. First, it explains the urgency of political action that intellectuals felt in the years preceding the war itself, particularly the need to take sides in a conflict that started affecting them more directly as the war went on. While more dogmatic communist party lines were drawn in the 1930s, the Second World War witnessed a rigid demarcation of political lines that was not unique to Lebanon and Syria but rather to communism and its related organizations around the world. Therefore, this frame clarifies the subsequent estrangement of non-members from the communist party and the inability to find place for ideological flexibility at the end of the 1940s.

Second, the context of World War Two explains the changed discourse around ‘Europe’ and ‘the West’ in a way that was not possible before despite divisions within Europe during

World War One. With the division of the West between democratic and fascist, Arab intellectuals had begun to see Europe as far from monolithic, and maybe part of its power as a concept was shattered by this realization and the strong ideological divisions separating its different states. This became integral in the anti-colonial rhetoric that intellectuals continued to

21 develop during the war, whether through a general anti-imperial drive or a specific anti-French and anti-British struggle for independence. It also explains the transformation of the Soviet

Union and its competition with, if not complete replacement of, western Europe as a model of progress and military might in the eyes of Lebanese and Syrian intellectuals by the 1940s.

Another dimension to consider within the framework of the time period is the significance of Palestine to the Left and its role in the politicization of a significant number of leftists, particularly in the 1930s and 1940s. Palestine and the Palestinian struggle against

Zionism and British colonialism not only proved seminal for the radicalization of some of the major figures within this milieu, it also shaped their conceptualizations of nationalism, anti- colonialism, and anti-fascism. The end of the British Mandate over Palestine after the partition plan, and the creation of the state of Israel, would also prove to be fundamental to the future of this milieu and its relationship to the Communist Party, as this dissertation has revealed.

The Geographical Focus: Lebanon and Beyond

Another framework that needs to be addressed is the geographical focus of this dissertation. Although the intellectual milieu this dissertation examines was made up of a majority of Lebanese and its main center of action was Beirut, it was not geographically bound to the state of Lebanon. Nor does this dissertation frame it within the parameters of one nation- state. The intellectual circles that leftists of this milieu orbited could be identified as ‘Levantine’, since politically and intellectually this milieu was Lebanese but to a lesser extent Syrian, and had connections to and influences from Palestine, Iraq, and Egypt. Not only did individuals constituting this milieu come from different parts of the Levant, but they also moved within this geography, as well as between the Levant and Paris, New York, and Moscow among other places. Furthermore, this dissertation covers this intellectual milieu within its regional context,

22 mainly the surrounding Arab states, by primarily focusing on personal links with Syria,

Palestine, Iraq, and Egypt. Ideally, this project would have covered activists centered around major cities such as Baghdad and Damascus, and would have explored direct connections between leftists in the Levant and Egypt.

Third, this dissertation places this milieu in connection to the anti-imperialist and anti- fascist networks of the interwar and World War Two periods, and with the Soviet Union. I therefore position intellectuals within their view of the world that they saw themselves living in, particularly the connections they drew between themselves and other colonized people, India and its struggle for national independence being one important example.

The significance of the Soviet Union should also be seen within the dichotomy of

East/West and how it was perceived by those in the East during that period. While historically

Russia was perceived by easterners as the center of religious eastern orthodoxy, the Russo-

Japanese war and the First World War, including the Bolshevik Revolution, put into question its position on the scale between an advanced West and a lagging East. The interwar period and more so the Second World War allowed Lebanese and Syrian intellectuals to view the Soviet

Union within the East, but a developed, progressive, and modern East that socialism had equipped with the tools to defeat the strongest western powers, including Nazi Germany.

Reexamining the Figure of the Intellectual

This particular milieu negotiated its own definition of what it meant to be an intellectual by linking the category with the political sphere and politicizing the figure of the intellectual. It did so particularly through founding a political party, calling for political activism and engagement through the intellectual’s literary and scholarly production, and directly participating and asking for the right to participate in the political process. This milieu then exemplified the

23 early attempts for intellectuals to forge the figure of the public intellectual and to pursue that role themselves. They attempted to breech the dominance of the politics of the notables by directly immersing themselves into the political process, arguing against neutrality of intellectuals.

By focusing on an intellectual milieu, this dissertation takes aim at and attempts to reexamine the definition of the category of the ‘intellectual’ in lieu of its historical meaning and the changes to that definition throughout the interwar and World War Two periods. The move away from the ‘ālim (scholar) category had already begun in the late 19th century, and those who produced, in comparison to those who consumed, ideas started being identified as well as self- identifying as ‘intellectuals’(muthaqqaf/muthaqqafīn), as Dyala Hamzah translates and defines these categories.17

More broadly, I approach the category of intellectuals as a non-monolithic and hybrid class whose political choices and allegiances should be derived from their “engagement with events”, and can only be understood by an examination and a recovery of that engagement.18 By adopting this approach, this dissertation thus acknowledges that these choices and allegiances are never static and should therefore be seen as continuously in flux and with permeable boundaries.

How to Write A Biography of a Milieu

This dissertation is a biography of a milieu, and therefore its main unit of analysis is the individual intellectuals, the ideas they adhere to and the choices they make. Intellectual historians of the Middle East have spent the last few decades since the publication of Hourani’s

17 Dyala Hamzah, ed., The Making of the Arab Intellectual (1880-1960): Empire, Public Sphere and the Colonial Coordinates of Selfhood (New York: Routledge, 2012), 1–2. 18 John Rodden, “On the Political Sociology of Intellectuals: George Orwell and the London Left Intelligentsia of the 1930s,” The Canadian Journal of Sociology / Cahiers Canadiens de Sociologie 15, no. 3 (1990): 269. See also Robert J Brym, Intellectuals and Politics (London, 1980). 24 Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age revisiting this seminal work and challenging its methodological focus on individual intellectuals.19 Social history became a necessary addition to the endeavor of intellectual history, with some historians even considering the latter as outdated and ‘dead’.20 What I am suggesting in my approach is not a return to the individual lens but rather finding a new way to focus on individuals while placing them in conversation with each other and with the world around them. By focusing on individuals and their lived experiences, I propose following what Marci Shore explained as drawing a public political narrative from, and alongside, a private one of personal relationships and choices.21

This methodology is particularly important since the time period covered by this dissertation was uniquely characterized by a multiplicity of ideas; and therefore, a focus on individuals, their choices to abide by certain principles, and their paths towards action can facilitate our understanding of ideology and its actual impact on people and their lives. This subjective approach to ideas gives agency to human actors while at the same time explains how these subjective ideas characterize a group of intellectuals and their interactions with the world around them.

Finally, focusing on individuals that were not confined to geographic and national boundaries also opens avenues on the transnational nature of the ideas, activities, and movements created by these individuals. A focus on individual lives lends itself to the idea of extracting the macro from the micro. The microhistory of individual lives allows me to understand how the

19 Albert Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 1798-1939, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983); Jens Hanssen and Max Weiss, Arabic Thought beyond the Liberal Age: Towards an Intellectual History of the Nahda, 2016; Hamzah, The Making of the Arab Intellectual (1880-1960). 20 Hamzah, The Making of the Arab Intellectual (1880-1960). 21 Shore, Caviar and Ashes, 1–9. 25 global was perceived, how these individuals conceptualized and imagined the ‘world’ in which they lived, and how they inserted themselves into it. While more work needs to be done with respect to the links between individuals and international organizations, parties, and movements, what this approach reveals that is also as important is the self-conscious identities and affinities these intellectuals claimed and saw themselves as belonging to. This trend of globalizing local actors has challenged the history of movement of ideas from the ‘West to the rest’ and emphasized the significance of microhistory in writing global intellectual history.22

Source Description

In this dissertation, I have relied on sources that fall into two main categories: periodicals, and writings of intellectuals and activists at the center of this project. For periodicals, I have consulted several newspapers and journals, primarily focusing on the journals al-Tali‘a (1935-

1939, in Chapter Two) and al-Tariq (between 1941-1945, in Chapters Three and Four). While al-Tariq has been used by historians to write about the Communist Party and anti-fascism, this is the first study that singles out its main founders and editorial board to argue that they belonged to a specific leftist milieu separate from the communist party. Moreover, Chapter 4 of this study constitutes the first attempt to single out and contextualize prominent women contributors to al-

Tariq, and to place them within the circles of the Left. Furthermore, while al-Tali‘a has also been previously used by historians, I have focused on some neglected conversations within this journal, primarily the debates on literature (Chapter Two), and placed this journal within this particular leftist milieu. I have also relied on the short-lived 5 issues of the newspaper al-

Insaniyya (May-June 1925), selections of the Zahle-based newspaper, al-Sahafi al-Ta’ih

22 Glenda Sluga, Internationalism in the Age of Nationalism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013); Michael Goebel, Anti-Imperial Metropolis: Interwar Paris and the Seeds of Third World Nationalism, 2015. 26 (between the years 1922-1925), and the Communist Party organ Sawt al-Sha‘b (between the years 1943 and 1945).

As for the second type of sources, I have consulted books, memoirs, letters, and personal papers of the main figures covered in this dissertation, some of which have been published.

Memoirs, biographies, and autobiographies while treated with caution especially given the sensitivity of retrospective writing, have provided important narrative junctures for this dissertation. I have consulted published letters, such as ‘Umar Fakhuri’s al-Rasa’il23, and unpublished memoirs kept within family papers such as Imili Faris Ibrahim’s, to extract biographical information and experiences that framed the ideas and actions of the protagonists, and that, in the case of Faris Ibrahim, were almost completely absent from published sources.

Apart from these two major types of sources, I have also consulted, but did not heavily rely on, institutional and state archives. These included the Centre des Archives Nationales in

Lebanon, the British National Archives, and the National Archives of the United States. I also benefitted from the online resources of the Marxists Internet Archive. Ideally, this dissertation would have consulted the Centres des Archives Diplomatiques de Nantes and archives of the

French Communist Party, but this will await future research on this topic.

Chapter Description

Chapter One, “The ‘East’ Has Awoken From Its Idleness: Anti-Colonialism, Capitalism, and the Political Organization of the Left in Post-World War I Lebanon, 1922-1928”, contextualizes the development of leftist political organization in Lebanon at the end of WWI and the beginning of the period of French Mandate rule, focusing on the years between 1922 and

1928. It argues that those who sought to organize along leftist principles belonged to a unique

23 Abd al-Latif Fakhuri, ‘Umar Fakhuri: al-Rasa’il (Beirut: Dar al-Afaq al-Jadida, 1981). 27 post-war trend of the non-elite – in this case a mix of workers, journalists, and self-appointed intellectuals – carving a place for themselves within the political sphere of interwar Lebanon.

They also utilized the ‘tools’ made possible in a post-war atmosphere, such as taking advantage of newly politicized public spaces to gather groups of people, organizing lectures and celebrations in theaters and cinema venues, as well as relying on the press and establishing new newspapers to propagate their ideas.

In a post-World War One world, there were several ‘options’ of ideas and worldviews.

However, for a group of Lebanese intellectuals and workers, communism became the dominant choice, even when other options were not for them excluded. This chapter unpacks the factors that led them to make these choices and presents a better understanding of the circumstances in which they lived and how they viewed the world they occupied. It reveals that the party founded by a group of leftists in 1925 emerged out of local grievances and realities. These were, more specifically, a widening social and economic gap, sectarian politics being propagated by both local elite and colonial administrators, and growing capitalist concentration in the city and in the hands of a few urban elite that caused workers further frustration and poverty with no labor law protecting these workers. This chapter also argues for contextualizing the attraction that

Lebanese leftists had towards the Soviet Union within the anti-imperial framework of an interwar world.

Chapter Two, “Between the Ivory Tower and the Marketplace: The Political Engagement of Intellectuals and the Boundaries of the Public Sphere”, argues that the intellectual leftist milieu that emerged alongside the Lebanese People’s Party/ Communist Party pushed the limits of the public sphere by propagating the political engagement of literature and the commitment of the figure of the intellectual to a changing reality. It questions the current periodization of iltizam

28 (commitment) in Arabic literature by examining the origins of the concept in interwar leftist circles and by tracing its development through central figures such as ‘Umar Fakhuri and Ra’if

Khuri.

This chapter addresses the relationship between socialist realism and the political commitment and engagement of leftist intellectuals, explaining the influence of Soviet socialist realism on these ideas, without overemphasizing its role. It argues that the calls for political engagement of men of letters and intellectuals was a process in which leftists negotiated their place in changing social and political categories, and redefined the terms of their belonging and relevance in a changing environment. Their pioneering views towards literature and the political engagement of the man of letters (al-adīb) were a seminal part of this process. This chapter places the leftist intellectuals of the interwar period into this history by specifically examining the way they discussed literature and engaged with the debate on commitment, arguing that by doing so, they pushed the boundaries of literature, of their status as intellectuals, and of the public sphere itself.

Chapter Three, “This War is Our War: Anti-Fascism, Democracy, and the Friendship of the Soviet Union”, focuses on the anti-fascist movement that developed within the leftist milieu leading up to and during the Second World War. It shows that responses to fascism by leftists prompted discussions about democracy, nationalism, the political role of intellectuals, progress, the position of the Soviet Union in the world, and anti-colonialism.

Leftist debates about fascism and the nature of opposition to it intensified by the beginning of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, reaching a climax by the end of the war in 1939 and the beginning of the Second World War, with the establishment of the League Against Nazism and Fascism in Syria and Lebanon. This chapter addresses the foundation of this League, and the

29 significance of its journal al-Tariq and the Friends of the Soviet Union organization, in creating a platform for debates on the future of Lebanon, the region, and the world. It also reveals how the threat of fascism pushed leftists to reexamine the meaning of the ‘national’ and to reposition themselves vis-à-vis the rest of the world. Leftists who framed anti-fascism as an active form of the national liberation struggle saw the opposition to fascism as a natural product of a long Arab tradition of freedom, and as a protector to that tradition from all kinds of oppression. The fight against fascism along with the friendship with the Soviet Union were also perceived in this light of a struggle for democracy, that fighting fascism meant standing with democracy and the democratic nations of the world. It also meant being globally connected. The chapter traces how these reassessments triggered the necessity of taking stronger political stances in a world that became increasingly polarized, arguing that by the end of the Second World War, the fuzziness and fluidity in political affiliations were no longer possible.

Chapter Four, “Leftist Feminists: Demanding Political Rights, Challenging Democratic

Promises, and Feminizing the Public Sphere”, highlights the voices of women within the leftist milieu that demanded social and political rights, primarily women’s suffrage. This chapter focuses on women’s activism within leftist circles, thus incorporating women’s voices within the history of communism and the Left in Lebanon and Syria. It complicates the communist party’s failure to address women’s rights by going beyond the outcome of failure to try and understand the ways in which women within the Left demanded these rights.

This chapter locates leftist feminists – journalists, intellectuals, and activists – within the history and activities of the women’s movement in Lebanon and Syria, arguing that they pushed back against considering women’s issues secondary by linking their political activism to the cause of women’s rights. They were engaged in the main debates that dominated leftist

30 intellectual circles in the interwar and World War Two era; however, they infused these debates with the feminist cause, making women’s issues and particularly participation in public and political life an integral part of these discussions. They argued that progress of humanity and the nation, independence, and democracy could not be fulfilled without the achievement of women’s rights, more specifically women’s political rights and their full engagement in the public sphere.

This chapter offers the most salient critique to the political project of the Left and its failure to address rights for subaltern groups, primarily in this case, women.

31 CHAPTER 1 The ‘East’ Has Awoken from Its Idleness: Anti-Colonialism, Capitalism, and the Political Organization of the Left in Post-World War I Lebanon, 1922-1928

Introduction

In an interview he gave in 1981, Yusuf Yazbik, one of the main founders of the Lebanese

People’s Party, the precursor to the Communist Party of Lebanon, explained the attraction towards communism at the time:

“We thought all the evil conditions of the world – poverty, ignorance, exploitation, corruption – could be eliminated with this new doctrine. This must be understood against the background of the early 1920s with the West in occupation of the Arab lands and the Soviet Union a revolutionary state extending its hand to the rest of the oppressed world. As young intellectuals disillusioned with the conditions of our society, we enthusiastically grasped the extended hand.”24

The history of communism in Lebanon is yet to be written with emphasis of those ‘evils’ that

Yazbik described, the Western occupation he identified, and the attractiveness of the Soviet

Union’s extended hand. The period of the early 1920s that Yazbik referred to, particularly the years between 1922 and 1925, has often been downplayed in the historiography of the Left in

Lebanon and reduced to a straightforward narrative of the foundation of the Communist Party in

1925; it has been almost entirely absent in the historiography of Lebanese political history.25 The

24 Ismael and Ismael, The Communist Movement in Syria and Lebanon, 1998, 12. This interview that Ismael conducted with Yazbik in 1981 should of course be handled with caution as a source, primarily because of the time lapse between the interview and the events described, and the fact that Yazbik is narrating his political trajectory in hindsight. Therefore, I have not relied heavily on this interview for factual information, but simply to reflect upon certain perceptions that have been corroborators with other sources. This is also how I have dealt with Yazbik’s own published recollections of events in Hikayat Awwal Nawwar and later Fu’ad al-Shamali’s Asas al-Harakat al-Shuyu‘iyya. 25 Abdullah Hanna, al-Haraka al-Shuyu’iyya al-Suriyya: al-Su’ud wa-l-Hubut : Dirasa Tajma’u bayna al-Tarikh al-Shafahi wa-l-Tarikh al-Maktub (Damascus: Dar Nun, 2008); Abdullah Hanna, al-Ittijahat al-Fikriya fi Suriya wa-Lubnan, 1920-1945 (Damascus: Dar al-Taqadum al- Arabi, 1973); Ilyas Murqus, Tarikh al-Ahzab al-Shuyuʻiya fī al-Watan al-ʻArabi (Beirut: Manshurat Dar al-Tali’a, 1964); Tareq Y Ismael and Jacqueline S Ismael, The Communist 32 main reason for the marginalization of this particular stage in the history of communism can be attributed to the ‘naïveté’ of the individuals involved and their perception in hindsight as

‘uneducated’ in the tenants of communism; therefore, their foundational story had not been dwelt upon heavily lest the authenticity and ideological soundness of the communist parties of

Lebanon and Syria be questioned.

The few historians who have covered this period have looked at ideology or lack thereof, and the extent to which ‘communism’ was understood and adopted, while there has been a silence about what Yazbik in hindsight highlighted, which was the attraction towards the Soviet

Union, and the worldview that the supporters of the Soviet Union adhered to.26 That attraction was founded on a spacial perception of the division of the world between east and west, between colonizer and colonized, between oppressor and oppressed. The Soviet Union projected this kind of image as much as those who sought solutions to their problems demanded it. As a result, little attention has been paid to the details of the foundation of the Lebanese People’s Party (Hizb al-

Sha‘b al-Lubnani, hereafter LPP) which was the party Yazbik co-founded in 1924 and that predated the communist party, and to its continued existence even after talk of a communist party were underway. What has been ignored is the extent to which the LPP was a product of postwar

Lebanese society and reflected its political culture.

Movement in Syria and Lebanon (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1998); Muhammad Dakrub, Judhur al-Sindiyana al-Hamraʼ: Hikayat Nushuʼ al-Hizb al-Shuyuʻi al-Lubnani, 1924- 1931 (Beirut: Dar al-Farabi, 1974). 26 Dakrub, Judhur al-Sindiyana al-Hamraʼ; Ismael and Ismael, The Communist Movement in Syria and Lebanon, 1998; Tareq Y Ismael, The Communist Movement in the Arab World (London; New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2005). Hanna Batatu, who focused on communism in Iraq, also covered the foundations of the Communist Party in Lebanon and Syria through this historiographic trend in Hanna Batatu, The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq: A Study of Iraq’s Old Landed and Commercial Classes and of Its Communists, Baʻthists, and Free Officers (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1978). 33 The main characteristics of that political culture were the rise in mass mobilization and the organization of political factions into official parties in the modern sense of the term.27 The post-war Levant saw the emergence of organized political parties, specifically ideological parties, in a way that had not existed within the Ottoman Empire before World War One.28 In the late Ottoman period, the accelerated integration of the empire into the world capitalist system and the state’s increased efforts to centralize and strengthen its control over its population, led to rapid urbanization and development of new means of communication. This in turn facilitated the dissolution of quarter-based loyalties, the creation of new urban spaces that allowed for public gatherings, and the proliferation of newspapers, coffeehouses, and literary-turned-political salons and clubs.29 These changes at the turn of the century, “all contributed to a heightened political atmosphere and the emergence of an ever-widening modern “public sphere” in Syria.”30 As

James Gelvin argues,

27 In comparison to factionalism that had existed before the establishment of the state of Lebanon in the late 19th century, see Farīd al-Ḫāzin, al-Aḥzāb as-siyāsīya fī Lubnān: ḥudūd ad- dīmuqrāṭīya fi ’t-taǧriba al-ḥizbīya (Bairūt: al-Markaz al-Lubnānī li-d-Dirāsāt, 2002), 27; see also Engin Deniz Akarlı, The Long Peace: Ottoman Lebanon, 1861-1920 (Berkeley: Univ. of Calif. Press, 1993). 28 Gelvin, Divided Loyalties, 1–22; Thompson, Colonial Citizens, 91–92. Thompson refers to a “frenzied postwar associationalism” in which the French would register 401 associations in Beirut and its environ in comparison to 31 registered associations under the Ottomans, and 338 in the rest of Lebanon between 1920 and 1942, Thompson, 91.The Mandate period also saw the formation of electoral political alliances that later developed into political parties for instance, Hizb al-Kutla al-Dusturiyya, led by Bishara al-Khuri and Hizb al-Kutla al-Wataniyya led by Emile Eddé. 29 Gelvin, Divided Loyalties, 13–14. For the intellectual transformations of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century see Hamzah, The Making of the Arab Intellectual (1880-1960); Christoph Schumann, ed., Liberal Thought in the Eastern Mediterranean: Late 19th Century until the 1960s (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2008). For the emergence of a middle class, and the changes in social, economic, and gender relations in the late Ottoman period see Akram Fouad Khater, Inventing Home: Emigration, Gender, and the Middle Class in Lebanon, 1870-1920 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001). 30 Gelvin, Divided Loyalties, 15. 34 “In the wake of these changes (pre, during, and post-World War I), complex and comprehensive political organizations frequently replaced, marginalized, or recontextualized traditional and parochial modes of organization, facilitating the programmatic mobilization of large numbers of constituents. These organizations not only induced the expansion of political participation, they broke the monopoly on authority held by the previously dominant categories of elites and redefined and politicized the ties that bound non-elites to their leaders. As a result, mass politics not only became possible in Syria during the immediate post-World War I period, it became inevitable.”31

The vertical ties of patronage that dominated relations of power in previous centuries were replaced with horizontal ties that the changes of the late Ottoman period made possible. With the end of the First World War and the breakdown of the structures of the state, these changes started manifesting themselves in locally organized committees, which in Syria have been identified by

Gelvin as the popular committees that emerged during the Arab government of King Faysal’s brief rule in Damascus between 1918 and 1920. This shift in the way structures of power were organized allowed for greater participation of the masses as well as the introduction into the political sphere of traditionally non-political, non-elite, actors.

The history of the Lebanese People’s Party, and ultimately the Communist Party in

Lebanon, cannot be separated from this particular moment. Those who sought to organize along leftist principles belonged to a unique post-war trend, with roots in the transformations of the late

Ottoman period, of the non-elite – in this case a mix of workers, journalists, and self-appointed intellectuals – carving a place for themselves within the political sphere of interwar Lebanon.

They also utilized the ‘tools’ made possible in a post-war atmosphere, like taking advantage of newly politicized public spaces to gather groups of people, organizing lectures and celebrations

31 Gelvin, 9. 35 in theaters and cinema venues, as well as relying on the press and establishing new newspapers to propagate their ideas.

This chapter contextualizes the development of leftist political organization in Lebanon at the end of World War One and the beginning of the period of French Mandate rule, focusing on the years between 1922 and 1928. I have chosen the years in which leftist activists in Lebanon had begun to consider the prospects of communism up until the political party they organized becomes officially recognized by the Third International in 1928. These years were significant in the unprecedented level of political organization, party formations, and mass mobilization that they witnessed within the Mandate. More importantly, they were momentous in the degree of threat and resistance that emerged against the colonial rule in ways that the following decades and the rise of nationalist politics would not be, particularly with respect to the central impact of the Syrian Revolt on the Levant and the colonial world. Although nationalist politics in Syria and

Lebanon would prioritize national liberation in the 1930s and 1940s, the 1920s were unique in the methods and frameworks through which anti-colonialism developed, not only in the Levant but around the world.

In a post-WWI world, there were several ‘options’ of ideas and worldviews. However, for a group of Lebanese intellectuals and workers, communism became the dominant choice, even when other options were not for them excluded. Understanding the factors that led them to make these choices allows us to better appreciate the circumstances in which they lived and how they viewed the world they occupied. It is also important to note that these choices were indeed personal choices that individuals took out of conviction because at the time, there was no gain, political nor social, in self-identifying as communists.

36 The Failure of the Wilsonian Moment and the Appeal of the Soviet Union

At the end of World War One, colonized people who saw the Wilsonian principle of self- determination as a way to legitimize their claims for national independence, set their hopes on the proceedings and decisions of the Paris Peace Conference. When the ‘Wilsonian moment’ failed, some of those asking for independence and hoping for the end of colonialism sought another worldview that would uphold those same principles.32 Although not all anticolonial activists became members of leftist and communist parties, those who did support communism as propagated by the Soviet Union, or were close to it, inextricably linked it with the anticolonial struggle during the interwar period. This is most evident in the diversity of people and ideas that came together in the late 1920s under the banner of the League Against Imperialism (LAI).33

During the 1920s, the world witnessed a post-war moment of internationalism and anti-colonial fervor as evident in the platforms created by various anti-colonial nationalist leaders and particularly manifested in the LAI in 1927. 34 The League and those involved in it took an obvious

32 The ‘Wilsonian Moment’ was coined by Erez Manela, The Wilsonian Moment: Self- Determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2007). 33 An organization that was founded by Willi Münzenberg along with Virendranath Chattopadhyaya, communist international activists based in Berlin, in Brussels in 1927. Opinions diverge regarding the role the Comintern played in the LAI. While there were definite political, organizational, and administrative links between the LAI and the Comintern, and the Brussels event was partly funded by the Comintern even if covertly, Fredrik Petersson argues that “the LAI has to be perceived as something different in comparison to the rather wrongful categorization as a communist front organization set up by enthusiastic communists. However, the organization functioned as the main portal and hub for anti-imperialist activists who had lived in Europe, or whose origins can be traced directly from the colonial and semi-colonial countries”. This does not deny the fact that the Comintern saw the LAI as part of its ambitions to create a gateway into the colonies. See Fredrik Petersson, “Hub of the Anti-Imperialist Movement,” Interventions 16, no. 1 (2012): 51–53. 34 For more on the fuzzy space that interwar anti-imperialists occupied between various ideologies, including communism and nationalism, see Louro, Comrades Against Imperialism: Nehru, India, and Interwar Internationalism. See also Carolien Stolte, “Social and Political Movements: Experiments in Anti-Imperialist Mobilization”, in Antunes C. and Fatah-Black K. 37 and opposing stance to the world powers that convened in Versailles at the end of the war and drafted the charter for the League of Nations. The word ‘league’ in the League Against Imperialism and for National Independence – its official name – was not chosen by chance; Prashad argues that

“the League Against Imperialism was a direct attack on the League of Nations’ preservation of imperialism in its mandate system…Brussels scorned and repudiated Versailles”.35 Moreover, those who attended Brussels perceived it as such. One of its most prominent members, Jawaharlal

Nehru, “conceived the congress as a haven where a range of left-wing, pacifist and radical organizations, European trade unions, and individuals involved in the anti-imperialist movement had managed to meet in one place”36. This first congress, in which 200 delegates of communist and socialist parties and radical nationalist movements came together from 37 states or colonized region representing 134 organizations, was also seen as a unifying moment for colonized people,

“the bedrock for the creation of sympathy and solidarity across the borders of the colonized world”.37 This anticolonial movement was very often intertwined with the results of the Bolshevik

Revolution and the apparatus of the Communist International.38

(eds.) Explorations in History and Globalization (London and New York: Routledge, 2016); Sugata Bose and Kris Manjapra, Cosmopolitan Thought Zones: South Asia and the Global Circulation of Ideas, 2010; Raz̤ ā ʻAlī, Franziska Roy, and Benjamin Zachariah, The Internationalist Moment: South Asia, Worlds, and World Views, 1917-1939, 2014; see also for more on the interwar period and internationalism Glenda Sluga, Internationalism in the Age of Nationalism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013). 35 Vijay Prashad, The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World (New York: New Press : Distributed by W.W. Norton, 2007), 21. 36 Petersson, “Hub of the Anti-Imperialist Movement,” 53. 37 Prashad, The Darker Nations, 20–25. “In Brussels, the Syrian delegation took the lead, mainly because Syria had just been in the midst of a heated struggle against the League of Nation’s mandate, here given to the French. The Egyptians, the Syrians, the Lebanese, and the Palestinians forged a united front in Brussels, although individual members disagreed over the role of religion as well as that of Jews in Palestine”, 25. 38 Vijay Prashad, The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World (New York: New Press : Distributed by W.W. Norton, 2007); see also Kris Manjapra, “Communist 38 Placing the attraction towards communism, and specifically the Soviet Union, by Arab intellectuals in the early 1920s within this interwar global context is important for understanding it. This attraction was part of this post-World War One moment and a direct result of the disappointment with French-imposed rule on Lebanon and Syria. Some, such as Yusuf Yazbik, were even physically present in that international scene, participating in the 1929 League Against

Imperialism (LAI) meeting in Frankfurt. The disappointments that colonized people felt with the results of the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 left a void that the Soviet Union and the newly founded Third International (also known as the Communist International or the Comintern) rushed to fill. The international atmosphere of the 1920s is important to consider, if one seeks to understand the appeal of communism for colonized people. While the interwar period has been often examined in hindsight of the Cold War, the 1920s have often been considered as a pre-war decade. Historians of the interwar period have shown that “on the contrary, the 1920s were a decade that witnessed the birth of new ideas and movements. The advent of these ideas and movements created vibrations that were felt in Europe and throughout the world.”39 It is also important to understand the 1920s, particularly in the colonized world, as a post-WWI decade that witnessed the promises and failures of the ‘Wilsonian moment’. Erez Manela argues that colonized people who put their hopes in the implementation of Wilson’s principles of the right of self-determination were disappointed when the great powers meeting in Paris did not apply that principle to them.

Many in the colonial world who had followed Wilson’s increasingly dramatic proclamations in the final months of the war, however, came to expect a more immediate and radical transformation of their status in international society. As the outlines of the

Internationalism and Transcolonial Recognition”, in Bose and Manjapra, Cosmopolitan Thought Zones (159-177). 39 Fredrik Petersson, “Hub of the Anti-Imperialist Movement,” Interventions 16, no. 1 (2012): 54. 39 peace treaty began to emerge in spring 1919, it became clear that such expectations would be disappointed, and that outside Europe the old imperial logic of international relations, which abridged or entirely obliterated the sovereignty of most non-European peoples, would remain largely in place. The disillusionment that followed the collapse of this “Wilsonian moment” fueled a series of popular protest movements across the Middle East and Asia, heralding the emergence of anticolonial nationalism as a major force in world affairs.40

What Manela mentions, but does not emphasize, was the ‘turn’ towards an alternative worldview that also promised self-determination, and an anticolonial discourse that a lot of those invested in self-determination adopted. This rhetoric was embodied in the person of Lenin and the ideology of communism. When Nguyen Ai Quoc’s petition to Wilson was not met with any response, “Within less than a year the man, who would later become known to the world as Ho

Chi Minh, adopted Bolshevism as his new creed, and Lenin replaced Wilson as his inspiration on the road to self-determination for his people”41. The “collapse of the Wilsonian moment” by the end of the peace conference made Lenin’s influence in the colonial world grow, specifically among those with anticolonial demands in colonized regions.42 This can be seen through the connections that anticolonial nationalist figures such as Jawaharlal Nehru built with the international communist movement.43

For the former Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire, the Soviet Union played a special role in the direct post-war period. The Bolshevik Revolution and the Soviet Union had initially been received positively by some intellectuals of the Ottoman Empire when the Soviets exposed

40 Manela, The Wilsonian Moment, 5. 41 Manela, 4–5. 42 Manela, 7. Moreover, during the Paris Peace Conference, the Soviets seemed to have approached certain delegations such as members of the Egyptian Wafd to offer support against the British, including financial support. See Batatu, The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq, 378–79. 43 See Michele Louro, “India and the League Against Imperialism: A Special ”Blend“ of Nationalism and Internationalism” in ʻAlī, Roy, and Zachariah, The Internationalist Moment, 22- 55. 40 the colonial ambitions of the French and British in the Levant by leaking their wartime agreements to divide the region amongst themselves after the war.44 This interest in the Soviet

Union was also a result of Soviet efforts directed towards the colonized people of the world, and more specifically to the ‘East’. The strong stance against colonialism that the Soviet Union took since its inception, and Lenin’s particular interest in people living under colonial rule in the

‘Near East’, further helped favor the Bolsheviks in the eyes of the inhabitants of the region – and all colonized people for that matter – who started feeling the brunt of colonialism more heavily as the new decade unfolded.

In 1919, Lenin spoke about the responsibility to awaken “the peoples of the East” and the significance of “awakening the East”, while positioning Russia as the frontier between “the West and the East”.45 Lenin built this ‘category’ upon a dichotomy of oppressed/oppressor nations that he had introduced in 1917, and framed the ‘oppressed people and nations of the East’ within this binary. The ‘East’, “a flexible and vague concept”, Masha Kirasirova argues, “accommodated both the revolutionary domestic program on the national question and the world struggle for socialism”.46 The “Eastern infrastructure”47 that the Soviets then set out to build consisted of

44 Masʻud Daher, Tarikh Lubnan al-Ijtimaʻi, 1914-1926 (Beirut: Dar al-Farabi, 1974), 395. For instance, in Egypt, Bolshevism was a topic of discussion in local newspapers and journals in 1919 when the Grand Mufti of Egypt, enticed by the British, proclaimed a fatwa against Bolshevism. Salamah Musa’s al-Ahali, the nationalist Wadi al-Nil, as well as al-Ahram defended Bolshevism and published interviews of Lenin explaining his definition of communism. An intelligence report to the British revealed that interest in Bolsheviks was high among the Egyptian public, and news of Bolshevik advances in Russia and Central Asia seemed to be met with joy and support, Batatu, 377. 45 Vladimir Ilʹich Lenin, Address to the Second All-Russian Congress of Communist Organization of the Peoples of the East, November 22, 1919 (Moscow: Foreign Languages Pub. House, 1954). 46 Masha Kirasirova, “The ‘East’ as a Category of Bolshevik Ideology and Comintern Administration: The Arab Section of the Communist University of the Toilers of the East,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 18, no. 1 (2017): 8–9. 47 Term borrowed from Kirasirova, Kirasirova, 9. 41 several institutions and organizations, including most prominently, the Communist University of the Toilers of the East (KUTV), the Comintern’s eastern section, and the Russian Communist

Party’s Central Bureau of Communist Organizations of the Peoples of the East.48 In the Second

Congress of the Third International in 1920, colonialism and ways to combat it were discussed within the parameters of the category of the ‘East’.49 Perceiving the anticolonial struggle as a gateway into colonized regions, the Comintern also organized the Baku Congress of the People of the East in 1920 where 2,000 delegates from across Asia and the world gathered. During that

Congress, the destiny of the people of the ‘Near East’, as those who were formerly under the

Ottoman Empire’s domains were identified, was discussed.50

The relationship between Russia and the ‘East’, including Russia’s complex relationship with its own spatial self-identification between East and West, was not new in the

1920s. Apart from religious and cultural exchanges between Russia and Orthodox communities in the Middle East that extend back to the sixteenth century, the period of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century witnessed an increase in schools opened by the Russian Palestine Society

48 KUTV was established in 1921 as a teaching and training school for revolutionary cadres from the ‘East’, including eastern territories of the Soviet Union, Central Asia and the Caucasus, India, Iran, China, the Arab world; it even admitted African American students from the United States. Kirasirova makes a seminal argument about the way Arabs with this infrastructure, and particularly Arab students at KUTV, chose to use “self-orientalizing language to refer to themselves as ‘Easterners’ or to emphasize their backwardness”, showing how “they navigated the dynamic field of privileges, exclusions, and expectations produced by these categories”, Kirasirova, 13. 49 Two lines grew out of that congress with regards to the solution for colonialism, allying with the national bourgeoisie and treat nationalism as a way towards socialism or rejecting the national bourgeoisie and nationalism, and opting for an international working class struggle. These two lines would create breaches within Comintern lines, and will continue to dominate the discussions on the colonial question both within and outside the Soviet Union. See Prashad, The Darker Nations. 50 For more on Baku see John Riddell, To See the Dawn: Baku, 1920--First Congress of the Peoples of the East (New York: Pathfinder, 1993). 42 and various educational and cultural exchanges with the Levant. These institutions and exchanges prompted a Russophile literary movement in the Levant that furthered interest in

Russian culture.51

Interest in socialism was not new either to the Middle East, and to Lebanon more specifically. The period between 1860 and 1914 witnessed a spread of socialist, anarchist, and radical leftist ideas in the Eastern Mediterranean with the increase in the circulation of people and ideas within new communication and organizational networks, as Ilham Khuri-Makdisi has shown.52 Although not all socialists and Marxists openly welcomed the Bolshevik Revolution, with the end of the First World War and the imposition of the Mandates on the former Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire, the position of the Soviet Union within the post-war world order cast a favorable light on the Soviet project of communism. Moreover, the socioeconomic and political conditions created by a devastating war left a fertile ground for the spread of socialist ideas that would gravitate towards the Soviet model.

A Wandering Journalist and a Crying Spirit: Yusuf Yazbik and Post-World War I Social

Inequalities (1922-1924)

The First World War undeniably disrupted social life at an unprecedented level. The tragic calamities that hit the Levant during the war – the famine, the locust invasion, and conscription – had reverberating repercussions for decades to follow. 53 For the inhabitants of

51 Garay Paul Menicucci, “The Russian Revolution and Popular Movements in Syria in the 1920s” 1993, 186–210; Kirasirova, “The ‘East’ as a Category of Bolshevik Ideology and Comintern Administration,” 19–20; Spencer Scoville, “Reconsidering Nahdawi Translation: Bringing Pushkin to Palestine,” The Translator 21, no. 2 (2015): 223–36; Hanna Abu Hanna, Tala’i‘ al-Nahda fi Filastin: Khirriju al-Madaris al-Rusiyya, 1862-1914 (Beirut: Institute for Palestine Studies, 2005). 52 Khuri-Makdisi, The Eastern Mediterranean and the Making of Global Radicalism, 1860-1914. 53 For more on World War I in the Levant see Leila Tarazi Fawaz, A Land of Aching Hearts: The Middle East in the Great War, 2014; Thompson, Colonial Citizens, chap. 1. 43 Greater Syria, the political changes, caused by the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the imposition of geographic divisions and foreign rule, were accompanied by deep social change along class, religion, and gender lines.54 As Elizabeth Thompson argues, “War and famine had set down a mortal line between rich and poor.”55 Not only did the gap between rich and poor increase, but

“the ranks of the poor grew” as well.56 Memory of the war was constructed along the lines of those growing gaps, and its legacy served to deepen class-consciousness and influence the post- war period in formative ways. Individuals who first became interested in class equality in

Mandate Lebanon began their engagement in public life within the contours of this legacy.

Yusuf Yazbik explained his own state of mind during the early 1920s,

[…] I was only a person who was deeply touched by the Lebanese starvations during World War One…I sympathized with the poverty stricken and needy people and was deeply touched by the conditions of my poor fellow citizens. I was an idealist who wanted to fight injustice and see that my people are freed from its burden. I was not aware of any theoretical ideas or any of their basic principles.57

Yazbik started to express his sympathies and opinions about the post-war society he lived in on the pages of al-Sahafi al-Ta’ih (The Wandering Journalist), a newspaper that had been established by Iskandar al-Riyashi in the town of Zahle in 1922.58 Al-Riyashi, a journalist and a return-immigrant from the United States, published the first issue of his newspaper on September

28, 1922.59 “In Lebanon a newspaper for the oppressed and in Zahle a journalist speaking about

54 Thompson, Colonial Citizens, 19–38. 55 Thompson, 28. 56 Ibid., 29 57 Interview with Yusuf Yazbik in Rabat, Morocco in 1981 in Ismael and Ismael, The Communist Movement in Syria and Lebanon, 1998, 4–5. 58 Zahle had a particularly well developed working class made up of railway workers who worked at the nearby Riyaq station. They had organized several strikes against the company since 1920 calling for increase in their wages and advancement in their working conditions. 59 Al-Riyashi identified as a socialist and continued to identify with the Second International even when his newspaper published articles from those who identified with the Third International, such as Yazbik. Dakrub, Judhur al-Sindiyana al-Hamraʼ, 177. 44 socialism?” questioned Yazbik in a response he mailed to al-Riyashi in 1922.60 Yazbik had written this in response to al-Riyashi’s declaration that as “the newspaper of the oppressed and the workers” (jarīdat al-bu’asā’ wa-l-‘ummāl) al-Sahafi al-Ta’ih would be “a friend to the worker (al-‘āmil), the peasant (al-muzāri‘), and the weak (al-ḍa‘īf), and will defend their interests…it (the newspaper) upholds equality between classes as an explicit right that it will fight for, and respects the poor and wretched more than the rich…”61. Al-Riyashi also claimed to adhere to ‘moderate socialist principles’ (mabādi’ al-ishtirākiyya al-mu‘tadila) and called for fraternity (al-ta’ākhi) between classes.62

Calling it a ‘good seed’ that would grow if well attended to, Yazbik urged al-Riyashi to

“cast my lot with the respect you have reserved for the oppressed, and I will be, from this moment forth, your faithful comrade and brother”. Yazbik signed the letter using the pen name

‘al-shabaḥ al-bākī’ (the crying spirit) – a pen name he would continue to use until 1924 – “from the red cottage in the city of the rich”. Yazbik dated the letter October 7 of the sixth year of the

Third International, which could imply his desire to associate himself with the Comintern, although how much exactly he knew about it in 1922, its history, and its relationship with regards to the Soviet Union, is questionable.63 Yazbik continued to send his ‘tears’ to al-Sahafi al-Ta’ih at a bi-weekly basis, often lamenting the state of poverty and inequality between classes

60 “Rafiq Majhul wa-Shabah Baki”, al-Sahafi al-Ta’ih, issue 5, (October 14, 1922) 61 al-Sahafi al-Ta’ih, issue 1 (September 28, 1922) 62 Ibid. Interesting to note that the same editorial first issue also concurred upon political support for the mandate, which it saw as necessary for the supervision of the country. 63 "Rafiq Majhul wa-Shabah Baki ", al-Sahafi, issue 5 (October 14, 1922). I say this about his knowledge of the Comintern since he confused the years of the Third International which was established in 1919, stating in 1922 that it was its sixth year; he also wrote in Hikayat Awwal Nawwar that he only started reading Lenin, the most central figure of the Third International, in 1924. But then again, his recollections in hindsight cannot be taken so accurately, therefore, it is safe to question his knowledge and assume his low level of knowledge than no knowledge at all. 45 that society had reached. He particularly referred to the miseries that World War I brought upon the population of Lebanon, emphasizing the unequal ways people from different classes experienced this misery. However, his lamentations were not a call for direct action even when they hinted to it: “…either come with me to hold accountable those who filled the earth with the corpses of our people…or let me be with my tears and my misery to mourn this country”.64

Harkening to the romantic lamentation-style that was influenced by Gibran Khalil Gibran’s literature (al-adab al-jubrānī al-bākī) Yazbik’s early articles described social problems, but never provided a solution.65 This latter issue became a point that many responders to his letters brought up. Correspondences were often anonymously signed, but they further emphasized the misery of the social circumstances and often asked for solutions.66 Although change was not initially at the center of this conversation, a lamentation of the tragic situation slowly but surely developed into a debate about social injustice and inequality.

The inhabitants of Lebanon who did not perish during the war or immigrate came under

French mandatory rule in 1920 granted by the League of Nations. During the first few years of their rule, the French administration, through its High Commissioners, intensified foreign and particularly French capitalist penetration into the Lebanese markets, creating an economic dependency for Lebanon on France that resulted in the development of a new Lebanese urban bourgeoisie intimately tied in its interests to French capital and foreign investment and trade. The

64 “Akhi al-Faqir al-Ba’is”, al-Sahafi, issue 6 (October 18, 1922) 65 For more on Gibran and his literature, see Imil Kubba, Dirāsāt fī al-irth al-Jubrāni (Bayrūt, Lubnān: Dār al-Fikr al-Lubnānī, 1995); For more on the literature of the mahjar and Gibran's role in it, see Aida Nasirovna Imangulieva, Gibran, Rihani & Naimy: East-West Interactions in Early Twentieth-Century Arab Literature (Oxford: Inner Farne, 2009) and Layla Al-Maleh, ed., Arab Voices in Diaspora: Critical Perspectives on Anglophone Arab Literature (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2009). 66 “al-Bakiya al-Kharsa’”, al-Sahafi, issue 7 (October 21, 1922); and “Shabah la Yabki wa-la Yadhhak”, issue 8 (October 25, 1922) 46 first five years of the Mandate were characterized by military rule exemplified by the military background of the High Commissioners that presided over Lebanon and Syria. During those years, the regional and administrative divisions of Lebanon were accompanied by decrees and decisions that divided the bureaucracy as well as the labor force between French and non-French employees and workers, with the former gaining consistently higher wages than the latter in all sectors of the economy. The public administration set up by the French, along with spending on security, amounted to 70% of the entire budget of Lebanon by 1927.67

While the Mandate period has been largely perceived in terms of the demarcation of lines between Lebanon’s Muslim and Christian population, with the former in opposition to the

Mandate and the latter cooperative if not fully supportive of the French rule, revisionist histories have revealed that the two separate ‘societies’ that formed during the interwar years were rather those of the rich and the poor. Muslim - and thus not only Christian Maronite - merchants, landowning urban families, and investors, benefited from the French mandatory policies, while social inequality that targeted both Muslim and Christian workers and peasants intensified.68

Al-Sahafi al-Ta’ih was amongst a number of other publications that had, since the end of

World War One, started increasingly publishing articles on socialism. While a tradition of socialist thought had developed among intellectuals and workers of the Eastern Mediterranean

67 Daher, Tarikh Lubnan al-Ijtimaʻi, 114–20. See also Elizabeth Williams, “Mapping the Cadastre, Producing the Fellah: Technologies and Discourses of Rule in French Mandate Syria and Lebanon”, in Cyrus Schayegh and Andrew Arsan, The Routledge Handbook of the History of the Middle East Mandates, 2015, 170–82. 68 For more on the Lebanese economy during the Mandate see Marwan Buheiry, Beirut’s Role in the Political Economy of the French Mandate, 1919-39 (Oxford: Center for Lebanese Studies, 1986); for more on the economic history of the Middle East more generally, see Charles Philip Issawi, An Economic History of the Middle East and North Africa (New York, NY: Columbia Univ. Press, 1984); and Roger Owen, Essays on the Crisis in Lebanon (London: Ithaca Press, 1976). 47 during the nahda69, a new interest in the Soviet Union, communism, and Bolshevism started appearing by 1920 among Lebanese newspapers such as al-Ma‘rad, al-Haqiqa, and al-Sahafi al-

Ta’ih. In 1920, the Beiruti al-Haqiqa published a series of articles on socialism and the Soviet

Union, and in 1921 al-Ma‘rad wrote on socialism and the development of Bolshevism in

Palestine and its anti-British nature, specifically reporting on the May 1, 1921 celebrations in

Palestine.70 Michel Zakkur, the owner of al-Ma‘rad, was a member in the Lebanese National

Party (al-Hizb al-Watani al-Lubnani), a party established in Egypt at the end of the war that called for the unity of Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine and attacked French rule over Lebanon.71

Zakkur and al-Ma‘rad played a major role in embracing leftist intellectuals such as Yazbik.72

In a series of articles that Yazbik published in al-Sahafi al-Ta’ih about socialism, he argued that, “…Few in our country know the principles of socialism and its system…they are ignorant of the fact…that socialism is more superior than they think, and closer to logic (al- manṭiq) than any other organization seeking peace and fraternity (al-ta’ākhi).”73 Thus, Yazbik cautioned against calling for a revolutionary socialism in a society that was not yet ripe for such ideas and was not versed in socialism. How did he understand this socialism? “Socialism, my brother worker, is a genius doctrine that came to being through democracy, and seeks to spread

69 Ilham Khuri-Makdisi, The Eastern Mediterranean and the Making of Global Radicalism, 1860-1914 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010) and Ilham Khuri-Makdisi, “ The Nahḍa Revisited: Socialism And Radicalism In Beirut And Mount Lebanon, 1900 1914,” in Christoph Schumann, ed., Liberal Thought in the Eastern Mediterranean: Late 19th Century until the 1960s (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2008), 147–74. 70 Daher, Tarikh Lubnan al-Ijtimaʻi, 396–97. 71 In late 1924, Zakkour established a party in Lebanon, Lebanese Youth Party (Hizb al-Shabiba al-Lubnaniyya) that called for the drafting of a constitution for Lebanon and the election of a president to preside over a national government. See Daher, Tarikh Lubnan al-Ijtimaʻi. 72 And in the following years Zakkur and his newspaper embraced Ra’if Khuri and Umar Fakhuri. 73 “Durus fi al-Ishtirakiyya”, al-Sahafi, issue 13 (November 12, 1922). 48 comfort and peace by dividing products according to the work done (al-aghlāl ‘alā qadr al- a‘māl), and by planting the seeds of equality…”74 Here, we see a very early symbiosis of socialism with democracy, as Yazbik saw it. This is a theme that continued to be relevant and gained further weight in the discussions of Yazbik in the years to follow.75 Between 1922 and

1924, his articles seemed to reflect a development from mere emotional reactions to the cleavages he saw in his society, to more nuanced and informed discussions of solutions. Yet, his ideas remain utopian, reformist, and hardly calling for any direct action.

In 1924, Yazbik started writing under his own name rather than the pen name al-shabaḥ al-bāki. On January 27, 1924, Yazbik mourned the death of Vladimir Lenin on the pages of al-

Ma‘rad. He portrayed Lenin as the scarecrow for European states, who have been relieved by his death. He added that although Europe will not mourn Lenin, history would fulfill that mission.76

It was this article on Lenin that, he later confessed, pushed him towards researching the life and teachings of this leader. “I started reading Lenin”, Yazbik explained, claiming in an obvious overstatement fifty years later that “…I can say with great likelihood, if not assertion, that I was the first Arab intellectual to own the writings of Lenin…it is what is the most holy in my library, it is my life partner (rafīqat ‘umrī) and the listener to my fears and worries…”77 He also began reading the French communist newspaper L’Humanité around that same time.

The deplorable social inequalities caused by the First World War and aggravated by the policies of the French mandate over Lebanon contributed to the attractiveness of an idea that promised to speak to these disparities. A tradition of socialism that had flourished during the late

74 Ibid. 75 I will be talking more about this in detail in later chapters of this dissertation 76 Opening Editorial, al-Ma‘rad, vol 277 (January 27, 1924) 77 Yusuf Ibrahim Yazbik, Hikayat Awwal Nawwar fi al-ʻAlam wa fi Lubnan: Dhikrayat wa- Tarikh wa-Nusus (Beirut: Dar al-Farabi, 1974), 57. 49 Ottoman period infused with a renewed hope through the victory of communism in the

Bolshevik Revolution, allowed for the development of intellectual circles that encouraged discussions on socialism in a Lebanese context, and for a ‘crying spirit’ to express his adherence to the third international. However, these discussions would remain until 1924 within the scope of utopian socialism, as historians have often defined the ideas circulating between 1920 and

1923. The increase in mass mobilization and party formation in the mid-1920s would however present an opportunity for these ideas to manifest themselves into organized political activism.

A Party for the People: The Rise of Mass Mobilization and Political Organization

The deterioration of the socioeconomic status of workers and peasants, as well as the growing gap between rich and poor that had staunchly emerged during and after WWI in

Lebanon, manifest itself in an increase in mass mobilization that reflected those grievances and demanded change. Thompson argues that the Mandate period was different in that it witnessed

“the rise of new urban social movements that did not merely discuss social reforms, but organized to demand them from the state as a right, as had never been done under the

Ottomans”78. The mobilization of these groups placed a challenge on France’s paternalistic order in Lebanon and Syria, seeking to question their position within an imposed socioeconomic and political system.

The first party to be organized in the name of the workers was Hizb al-‘Ummal al-‘Amm fi Lubnan al-Kabir (Labor Party of Greater Lebanon), established in 1921. The Party claimed to represent workers and call for their rights; however, its membership targeted both workers and their employers/business owners, arguing that they both shared a common interest. Practically, the Party’s high participation dues discouraged workers from entering its ranks, and therefore it

78 Thompson, Colonial Citizens, 71. 50 mostly consisted of non-workers.79 The Party program included the following: defending the

Lebanese flag (French flag with Lebanese cedar); defending French sovereignty over Syria; establishing economic ties with Syria and France; supporting industry, organizing working conditions, and maintaining unity between workers and capitalists; cooperating peacefully with the government to advance the life of the proletariat; and maintaining the Arabic and French as official languages.80 It was openly supportive of the mandate, and it was in the mandatory power’s own interest to support this party since it was non-revolutionary and pro-French.81 This

Party supported so-called syndicates, which were created along the older model of guilds, in which employers and workers were members in the same syndicate.82 With the increase in the number of public demonstrations and strikes by workers during the 1920s, the Labor Party refrained from supporting any of these labor mobilizations.83

Workers had reorganized their guilds (jam‘iyyāt) after the war, primarily printing press workers, tramway workers, and tobacco workers.84 In the summer of 1920, the workers of the

Damascus-Hama railway line (D.H.P.) held a strike demanding an increase in their wages, followed by another strike in 1921. The year 1921 witnessed more strikes and demonstrations

79 Elias al-Buwari, Tarikh al-Haraka al-‘Ummaliyya wa-l-Naqabiyya fi Lubnan 1908-1946 (Beirut: Dar al-Farabi, 1979), 105–6. 80 Abdullah Hanna, al-Haraka al-ʻUmmaliyya fi Suriya wa-Lubnan, 1900-1945 (Damascus: Dar Dimashq, 1973), 324. 81 Daher, Tarikh Lubnan al-Ijtimaʻi, 376-379. The party was almost solely Christian. 82 Based on the Ottoman Qanun al-Jam‘iyyat, see al-Buwari, Tarikh al-Haraka al-‘Ummaliyya wa-l-Naqabiyya fi Lubnan 1908-1946, 110–11. Some of these guilds were those of carpenters, barbers, and cooks. See Couland, Le mouvement syndical au Liban, 1919-1946, 95–96. 83 Daher, Tarikh Lubnan al-Ijtimaʻi, 390. 84 al-Buwari, Tarikh al-Haraka al-‘Ummaliyya wa-l-Naqabiyya fi Lubnan 1908-1946, 109–11. See also Couland, Le mouvement syndical au Liban, 1919-1946, 97. 51 against new taxes and trade laws.85 In 1922, around 300 demonstrators protested in Furn al-

Shubbak against an increase in the prices of the Tramway, and the demonstration was reported by none other than al-Ma‘rad as “a beautiful national demonstration against the tyranny of the company that is sucking our blood…”86. However, despite the obvious increase in labor mobilization, “the emergence of class-based labor unions and political parties would be a significant new trend in the years of the French mandate, but they were slow to emerge”, as

Thompson notes.87

The first syndicate in Lebanon that was created by workers and consisted of workers alone, was the tobacco syndicate of Bikfaya that Fu’ad al-Shamali established in 1924.88 By the early 1920s, the production of tobacco had increased, leading to the increase in number of workers in those factories that spanned the Lebanese map.89 By that time as well, a French company had been monopolizing tobacco production since 1883.90 Fu’ad al-Shamali, born in

85 See al-Buwari, Tarikh al-Haraka al-‘Ummaliyya wa-l-Naqabiyya fi Lubnan 1908-1946, 124.; Daher, Tarikh Lubnan al-Ijtimaʻi, 388–89. Couland, Le mouvement syndical au Liban, 1919- 1946, 97. 86 al-Ma‘rad, vol. 123 (July 9, 1922). 87 Thompson, Colonial Citizens, 29. 88 Artin Madoyan, Hayat ʻAla al-Mitras: Dhikrayat wa-Mushahadat (Beirut: Dar al-Farabi, 2011), 75-76. Madoyan claimed that it was the first syndicate in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Jordan to organize along a class lines. See also al-Buwari, Tarikh al-Haraka al-‘Ummaliyya wa-l- Naqabiyya fi Lubnan 1908-1946, 112. 89 Couland, Le mouvement syndical au Liban, 1919-1946, 112-113 and Daher, Tarikh Lubnan al- Ijtimaʻi, 409, around 2,000 workers by the mid-1920s. 90 Tobacco production was still in the 1920s controlled by the Régie de Tabac, a French company established in 1883, that had gained monopoly over tobacco production, taxes, and customs on imports and exports in the Ottoman Empire by 1904, see Khoury, Syria and the French Mandate, 31. The monopoly, which lasted 30 years, officially ended in 1913; however, French authorities ‘extended’ the company’s privileges in 1914 for 15 extra years. The monopoly was reinstated in 1930, causing a series of strikes and demonstrations – see Hanna, al-Haraka al- ʻUmmaliyya, 109–10. For more on workers in the tobacco industry in Lebanon, especially women, see Malik Abi Saab, Militant Women of a Fragile Nation (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2010). 52 1894 in what became the state of Great Lebanon, was working in a tobacco factory in Cairo by the end of World War One. When he later moved to work in another factory in Alexandria, al-

Shamali was introduced into the burgeoning labor movement within the workers in that city and found himself immersed in labor activism. Al-Shamali joined the Egyptian Socialist Party in

1921, right when the party was undergoing an internal war between its reformist wing and its

Marxist wing. He was also a founding member of Hizb al-‘Ummal al-Lubnani ( Party of

Lebanese Workers) established in Alexandria in 1922, that brought together Lebanese workers advocating for an independent Lebanon and better working conditions.91 Ultimately, al-Shamali took a public stance with the Marxist wing and, by summer of 1923, found himself in Beirut.92

Once in Lebanon, al-Shamali joined his brother Nasim in working in a tobacco factory, and moved from Antelias, to al-Shiyyah, and then to Bikfaya where he settled down and sent for his family from Alexandria. In Bikfaya, al-Shamali started organizing a syndicate among tobacco workers and gathering around him activists whom he saw as the possible basis for a communist

91 In July of 1922, the Party of Lebanese Workers presented a letter to the ambassador of the United States in Cairo protesting the French Mandate over Lebanon in the name of the “workers and proletariat of the Lebanese in Alexandria and the pass-word of the workers and peasants of the Lebanon, who, owing to the fact that the Imperialist forces occupy our country, are unable to speak…”, “Protest against the French Mandate in Lebanon. Letter from the Party of Lebanese Workers in Alexandria to U.S. Ambassador in Cairo, July 5, 1922” in Walter Browne, The Political History of Lebanon, 1920-1950, Volume I. Documents on Politics and Political Parties Under French Mandate, 1920-1936, (Salisbury: Documentary Publications, 1976). 92 The narratives vary as to why he left Alexandria in 1923. According to al-Shamali himself, he was sent by the Egyptian party to establish a communist party in Lebanon. See Fuad al-Shamali, Asas al-Harakat al-Shuyu’iyya fi al-Bilad al-Suriyya al-Lubnaniyya (Beirut: Matba’at al- Fawa’id, 1935). Rami Ginat says that al-Shamali was expelled from the Egyptian Socialist Party in August 1922 “for his anti-party actions and for arousing internal strife”, after being elected to serve in the ESP Central Committee (along with Husni al-‘Urabi, Joseph Rosenthal, Alexander Sawa, Ahmad al-Madani, Antun Marun, Bayumi al-Bassusi, Muhammad Sharif, M. Mursi Khalifa, Sayyid al-Haridi, and Mahmud Ibrahim) during the first ESP convention in Alexandria on June 30, 1922. His colleagues, including Yazbik, narrated that he was expelled from Egypt by Britain for agitating workers. See Rami Ginat, A History of Egyptian Communism: Jews and Their Compatriots in Quest of Revolution (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2011). 53 organization. Between July and August of 1924, the tobacco workers in Bikfayya established the

General Syndicate of Tobacco Workers (al-Naqaba al-‘Amma li-‘Ummal al-Dukhkhan fi

Lubnan).93 This syndicate would later establish contacts with other labor groups – such as printing press workers, carpenters, cooks, drivers, and shoemakers –and create the Supreme

Committee of Syndicates (al-Lajna al-Naqabiyya al-‘Ulya), the first such organization in

Lebanon, in October of 1925.94

Yusuf Yazbik had heard about al-Shamali’s activism in Egypt through the press. When al-Shamali’s ship sailed to Beirut on August 22, 1923, Yazbik, then an employee in the Beirut

Port authority, introduced himself to him. He explained that he leaned towards communism and would like it if al-Shamali would take him as a loyal comrade and close friend.95 This friendship would culminate in the creation of a political party, Hizb al-Sha‘b al-Lubnani (the Lebaense

People’s Party) in the fall of 1924, headed by both Yazbik and al-Shamali, following a series of events that begun with Yazbik’s mourning of Anatole France’s death.

Yazbik published an article on Anatole France on October 14, 1924.96 “Anatole France is dead, the friend of the workers and peasants is dead, the friend of the persecuted and the poor is dead, the friend of freedom and its messenger is dead. From the people of Lebanon…peace upon

93 The other leaders in the syndicate were: Farid Tohme, Butrus Hashimi, and Bishara Kamel. See Daher, Tarikh Lubnan al-Ijtimaʻi, 408–10. 94 Ismael and Ismael, The Communist Movement in Syria and Lebanon, 1998, 7. 95 Fu’ad al-Shamali, Asas al-Harakat al-Shuyu’iyya fi al-Bilad al-Suriyya al-Lubnaniyya (Beirut: Matba‘at al-Fawa’id, 1935), 11; Yazbik, Hikayat Awwal Nawwar, 62–63. 96 Anatole France (1844-1924), a French novelist and social and political critic, a member of the Académie Française who was awarded the Noble Prize in Literature in 1921. He was a socialist and a sympathizer with the Bolshevik Revolution. France had played a significant role in the Dreyfus affair and later joined French leftist intellectuals – Henri Barbusse, Romain Rolland, and Raymond Lefebvre – in publishing Clarté, the journal of the leftist literary Groupe Clarté, who closely adhered to the Third International. See Walter Laqueur and George L Mosse, Literature and Politics in the Twentieth Century (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), specifically on Clarté see in that book Nicole Racine's chapter , "The Clarté Movement in France, 1919-1921." 54 you (Anatole France)”, mourned Yazbik.97 These words would change his life forever. Joseph

Berger, a writer for the International Correspondent and a member of the central committee of the Palestine Communist Party (PCP), read those words and travelled to Lebanon in search of the socialist sympathizer who might help him establish a communist party in Lebanon.98 The PCP, which had been established in 1923 and had been officially recognized by the Comintern in

1924, had been struggling to attract more Arabs into its predominantly Jewish composition. The

PCP was ‘reluctantly’ admitted into the Comintern, given the latter’s fears of appearing to be supporting the Balfour Declaration and the Zionist movement. When admitted, the ECCI emphasized the PCP’s transformation into a ‘truly territorial party’, instead of a party for Jewish workers. 99 Wolf Auerbach, the chairman of the Palestine Communist Party, would later report in

1926 to a session of the Secretariat for Oriental Affairs of the Executive Committee of the

Communist International that the original plan of the PCP was to create a branch for the

Palestine party in Lebanon rather than have a separate party organized.100 This is important to

97 “Anatole France”, al-Ma‘rad, vol 344 (October 19, 1924) 98 Yazbik, who was approached by Berger in October 1924, planned a meeting between the latter and al-Shamali. Looking back at that meeting, Yazbik thought Berger was rather dismissive of al-Shamali. Al-Shamali also had some negative recollections of the events. When Berger announced to him his desire to organize a meeting in which a communist party was to be established, al-Shamali informed Berger the he had established a communist cell in Bikfaya among workers and asked him to go with him to Bikfaya and meet the comrades. Berger refused, even when al-Shamali offered to bring the workers to him in Beirut. Berger rather pushed aside the issue and kept insisting on him to be present at the meeting that he had organized with Yazbik to establish the communist party –see al-Shamali, Asas al-Harakat al-Shuyu’iyya, 14–16. 99 Musa Budeiri, The Palestine Communist Party 1919-1948: Arab and Jew in the Struggle for Internationalism (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2010), 6; Zachary Lockman, Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 80–81. 100 Batatu, The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq, 382–83. 55 keep in mind since this strengthens Yazbik’s claims that at the time, none of the Lebanese involved had asked for joining the Communist International.101

Yusuf Yazbik, at the request of Berger, called for a meeting in al-Hadath on October 24,

1924. Yazbik had invited al-Shamali, as well as a group of intellectuals that had shown interest in his socialist leanings. In the meeting, the idea of forming a party was put forth – with some sources stating that it was to be a communist party – and only four of the attendees agreed on it out of about 20 present.102 These four were Fu’ad al-Shamali, Yusuf Yazbik, Farid Tu‘mi, and

Ilyas Qash‘ami, and they were joined later by Butrus Hashimi.103

The historiography of the Communist Party of Lebanon104 assumes that Hizb al-Sha‘b al-

Lubnani (Lebanese People’s Party, LPP) established in that October meeting in 1924 became the

Lebanese Communist Party in 1925 (after the May 1925 gathering) and therefore treats the

October meeting in al-Hadath as the founding date of the Communist Party of Lebanon (and

Syria). While we do not have enough sources to refute or prove this claim, what is more significant is understanding what this short-lived party called Hizb al-Sha‘b al-Lubnani (LPP) stood for and how it sought in a short period to enter the Lebanese political sphere. 105 The first known public activity of the LPP was a May 1 celebration in 1925.

101 Yazbik claimed to Madoyan that the Comintern did not know of their existence, and that they were rather considered a branch of the Palestine party. See Madoyan, Hayat ʻAla al-Mitras, 80– 81. 102 It is important to note that the proceedings of this meeting appear in some published memoirs, including Artin Madoyan’s and Fu’ad al-Shamali, most of which were written decades later, and which do not agree on all the details of the meeting. Therefore, the fact that a proposal for a communist party was put forward should be taken with a grain of salt. 103 Madoyan, Hayat ʻAla al-Mitras, 78; Daher, Tarikh Lubnan al-Ijtimaʻi, 410–11. 104 Which became the Communist Party of Lebanon and Syria before splitting into two parties in 1943. 105 The individuals who signed the letter asking the French governor to issue a license recognizing the Lebanese People’s Party as an official party were: Yusuf Yazbik, Ilyas Srur, Bishara Kamil, Faris Ma‘tuq, Mikhail Abi Hanna, Ilyas Qash‘ami, Butrus Hashimi, and Farid 56 Workers of the World Unite: The People’s Party Becomes a Communist Party?

In April of 1925, the Lebanese People’s Party decided to celebrate May 1 by holding demonstrations and public meetings to speak about the historical significance of that day to workers around the world.106 The call for participation that was published by the LPP on April

29 directed to “ all the workers and peasants”, had the following as its introduction: “We want: eight hours of work, eight hours of leisure and education, eight hours of sleep/rest”.107 Then the call for participation explained the purpose for celebrating May 1 and the goals behind it.

“May 1 is drawing near, and it is the only day that is considered to be an official ‘holiday’ for all workers, all across the world. And so you should share this day with your brothers by striking, to prove that you are not animals serving the capitalists and feudalists without knowing your rights.”108

Referring to the 1889 Workers’ Congress in Paris, the Party’s call explained the universality of this day and how it was celebrated all over the world by “your brethren” workers. The call emphasized its origin in the syndicalist movements of the United States and Europe, and reiterated the main goal of the strike over and over again: limiting work to eight hours per day.

The call for participation was not only a call to strike, but it was also the first public declaration of the Lebanese People’s Party. The call therefore carried implications of how the Party sought to define itself and its opponents.

“Look at the rich man spending his money on lewdness, alcohol and profligacy and you cannot feed your families. Look at the castles that the capitalists have built from the sweat of your brows and you do not have a nest to take shelter in with your children in the cold of winter […] look at the capitalists’ women/wives how they dress in silk and

To‘me. Fu’ad al-Shamali’s name was intentionally left out to avoid the communist label that might hinder the license, since he was a well-known communist and syndicalist. The other individuals involved were a mix of syndicalist leaders and intellectuals, and some names overlap with those who were present during the October meeting. 106 Al-Shamali, Asas al-Harakat al-Shuyu‘iyya, 19; Yazbik, Hikayat Awwal Nawwar, 75. 107 “Nida’ min Hizb al-Sha‘b al-Lubnani ila Jami‘ al-‘Ummal wa-l-Fallahin”, in Dakrub, Judhur al-Sindiyana al-Hamraʼ, 472. 108 Ibid. 57 accessorize with precious gems while your wives are naked and hungry. Look at the sons of the rich how they are driven around in cars to their prestigious schools accompanied by servants while your sons are starving and freezing to death…”109

The Party framed the celebration within fraternal terms, emphasizing the unity that the workers shared with the workers of the world, the brotherhood they belonged to, and the social conditions that constituted a common denominator for all the workers. It emphasized, “Workers, you have to understand that you are all brothers in misery and desolation, and that you are the victims of the capitalists’ greed and injustice”.110 To this injustice, the response should be to “Wake up from your sleep! And raise up your voices! [...] Workers and peasants, unite on this 1st of May and support the demands of your brothers in the Paris Congress”.111

On April 30, 1925, the Lebanese People’s Party circulated pamphlets that they also posted on the walls of the city calling for people’s participation in the celebration the following day. The headline of the pamphlet was: “Participate in the May 1 Celebration, the Workers’

Holiday in the Whole World”. This circulated document was keener on identifying who the organizers of the celebration were – the Lebanese People’s Party – and what that Party stood for, fighting class-based injustice.

The Lebanese People’s Party, founded by the workers and peasants of Lebanon, has demanded lifting the injustice being brought upon the working class; it calls the workers of all this country to participate with the members of this Party in striking on the 1st of May, the only official holiday for all the workers of the world. 112

The call for the May 1 celebration that was published in La Syrie on April 29, 1925, caught the attention of an Armenian communist organization, Spartak. 113 In 1924, Artin

109 Ibid., 473 110 Ibid., 474 111 Ibid. 112 “Ishtariku fi Ihtifal Awwal Ayyar”, in Dakrub, Judhur al-Sindiyana al-Hamraʼ, 476 113 Madoyan, Hayat ʻAla al-Mitras, 83. 58 Madoyan founded with a group of Armenian students and workers in Beirut the communist

Spartak Youth organization. Madoyan, who had moved two years earlier to Beirut where his

Armenian family had sought refuge during and after the Armenian genocide, was a member of the Student Union of the Armenian Huntchag Party. In a letter sent to the central committee of the Communist Party of Armenia of the Soviet Union in January of 1925, Spartak announced their commitment to communism and the Comintern line, explaining that their choice of the name Spartak was prompted by their attempts to keep a low profile as refugees and by the fact that there was no local communist party.114

Deciding to take part in this celebration, Madoyan and around fifty of his fellow

Armenian communists gathered on the northern entrance to the city of Beirut awaiting the delegations they knew would be heading into Martyrs’ square from Bikfayya, the headquarters of the Lebanese People’s Party. Around 10 am that Friday morning, a convoy of cars came heading into Beirut carrying red flags and banners with the name of the Lebanese People’s Party on them.

The Spartak delegation joined the convoy heading into the designated square where, according to

Madoyan, around 500 to 600 people awaited the celebration to begin in the Crystal cinema theater.115

From the images of those gathered to celebrate May 1 in the Crystal Theater116, we can read the writings on the red banners they carried that day: “Long Live the Workers and Peasants, and Long Live the 1st of May” and “The Lebanese People’s Party, Central Command”.117 Fu’ad

114 Madoyan, 67. See also Batatu, The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq, 373–74. 115 Madoyan, Hayat ʻAla al-Mitras, 84–85. 116The image of the delegation consisted of the members of executive committee of the People’s Party as well as workers who were elected during the May 1 celebration to work with the party towards achieving workers’ demands. 117 “Tazahurat Awwal Ayyar”, al-Insaniyya, issue 1 (May 15, 1925): 5. 59 al-Shamali’s speech “Workers of the World Unite! Workers of Lebanon Unite!” was given in the name of the executive committee of the Lebanese People’s Party. Given that all the speakers other than al-Shamali were intellectuals or men of letters, he opened his speech by explicitly emphasizing his position as a worker and his words as directed to “workers from my class”

(‘ummāl min ṭabaqatī).

This day, in which we celebrate this great celebration, is but the greatest day for all the workers of the world. Through it, the workers of Europe have united, and for it, innocent workers have been killed and their blood has been spilled by the capitalists […] On this day, the workers of the world have united, and so we, in these destitute lands, should unite, and we should then extend our hands to the rest of our brothers in the world saying: we have been united and we have come to be united with you, so workers of the world unite!118

The gathered crowd stood in silence for three minutes as respects were paid to the souls of the victims who had died securing the workers their rights for such a celebration. Reiterating the significance of the sacrifices that other workers in the rest of the world had laid down for that specific day and for the struggle, al-Shamali lamented all the years that have passed since the

Paris Congress in which the workers of Lebanon, Syria and the rest of the Arab world have been dormant. He proclaimed that, “The workers of the world have celebrated thirty-six times while we have slept […] only today have we opened our eyes and looked around searching for the road to freedom.” 119 Now that they have seen that road and have started walking through it, al-

Shamali assured the crowd that there will be nothing that can stand in their way, the way of the people. This way, according to al-Shamali, could only be strengthened and made possible through organizing. He spent the rest, and the bigger part of his speech, explaining to the

118 Fu’ad al-Shamali, “Ya ‘Ummal al-‘Alam Ittahidu, Ya ‘Ummal Lubnan Ittahidu”in Dakrub, Judhur al-Sindiyana al-Hamraʼ, 467. 119 Ibid. 60 workers the importance of uniting in syndicates and of creating ones when needed. He was concerned with explaining how syndicates were to be formed, and according to which principles.

While al-Shamali’s speech focused on the ‘road ahead’ and the steps to be taken looking forward, Yazbik’s speech was primarily a history lesson directed to the crowd about the emergence of May 1 as a day of celebration for workers around the world. His tale started on

October 1884 with the Fourth Congress of the Union of Syndicates of the United States and

Canada held in Chicago. The legacy of that Congress, according to Yazbik, was the internationalization of May 1 as a day of remembrance for those who died demanding workers’ rights, a day for demanding those rights, and a day of celebration. Yazbik then declared: “And so comrades, the 1st of May emerged, a celebration of the struggle for workers everywhere […] And here we are now, workers of Lebanon, celebrating this day”.120 Yet, the link between the past and the present was not only symbolic, but practical in terms of demands, as Yazbik explained that:

“…the 1st of May is not just a festival as described by the press, but it is in its essence an idea of protest, it has been molded by time and supplemented by new demands that workers are struggling to achieve. And we too have our demands, and now we have our holiday of struggle”.121 However, in Yazbik’s own linear path drawn between the past and the present was another connection drawn between ‘East’ and ‘West’.

They said: “The East is the burial ground of parties!” Their words are false and misleading. The East has awoken from its deep sleep, and its workers have risen from their idleness, and from them has emerged a blessed renaissance (nahda) to organize their ranks. You are this blessed renaissance. And so workers of the world, and workers of Lebanon, unite!122

120 Dakrub, Judhur al-Sindiyana al-Hamraʼ, 183 121 Ibid., 127 122 Ibid., 183 61 Yazbik joined al-Shamali in referencing a nahda (awakening) after a period of idleness, both implying that by taking part in this international day of solidarity and by organizing along class-lines, the ‘East’ would awaken from its sleep. Therefore, the category of the ‘East’ was not only invoked by the Soviet Union. Yazbik and al-Shamali used this ‘self-orientalizing’ language as well to signify a civilizational identity that belonged to a larger debate on ‘East vs. West’ to which issues of progress and modernity were central. While in that context the ‘East’ invoked backwardness, Yazbik used it to justify the lag in political organization that he and his comrades were rectifying.

It is clear from observing the discourse around that event that the significance of that day as a commemoration of a particular past was exceeded by the organizers’ desire to be part of that global and local pasts.123 It served as a commemoration for the struggle of workers around the world and a point of admission into that historic struggle. The discourse of the May 1 celebration drew upon the trope of class differences heavily; it also revealed that those involved were looking outward and thinking of themselves as belonging to a more global space. Moreover, it brought to the open the LPP and a communist presence in Lebanon, in the eyes of the state and the people who witnessed the red flags flying in the streets of Beirut. It also brought to the attention of the LPP the Armenian communists who had been organized in Lebanon since late

1923, and vice versa.

123 The local past was particularly present at the gathering and represented by the figure of Khairallah Khairallah. His speech referenced the first May 1 gathering celebrated by a group of intellectuals and workers in 1907 north of Beirut. Apart from Khairallah, that group included Mustafa al-Ghalayini, Felix Faris, Jurji Niqula Baz, and Dawud Muja‘is. See Yazbik, Hikayat Awwal Nawwar, 49–50; Hanna, al-Haraka al-ʻUmmaliyya, 331. 62 That summer of 1925, al-Shamali, Yazbik, and Madoyan met under the auspices of Eli

Teper, a member of the central committee of the Palestine Communist Party.124 The move was an attempt to organize the communist ranks in Lebanon that Abu Zayyam (Joseph Berger) had originally attempted to assemble in autumn of 1924. 125 A temporary central committee of a communist party was established (Teper, Madoyan, Buyadjian, al-Shamali, and Yazbik)126; however, the first official party conference would not take place until December of 1925. 127

Spartak had established branches among Armenian workers in Zahle, Aleppo, Jabal

Musa, and Mosul. Spartak was dissolved when its various branches in Lebanon and Syria were merged with the Lebanese People’s Party in 1925. However, it was not until 1928 that a communist cell of Arabs and Armenians was established in Syria.128 This union, therefore, allowed the Lebanese People’s Party to expand geographically as well as to benefit from the

124 Madoyan mentioned that the meeting took place on May 2, directly after the May 1 celebration; while al-Shamali mentioned that it had happened while he was in Beirut working in al-Insaniyya (May and June of 1925). Madoyan, Hayat ʻAla al-Mitras, 87–88; al-Shamali, Asas al-Harakat al-Shuyu’iya, 28. 125 This went hand in hand with the pressure the Comintern was exerting on the PCP during those years to ‘Arabize’, primarily recruiting more Arabs than the majority Jews in its ranks. For more on the PCP’s relationship with the Comintern and the policy of Arabization see Musa Budayri, The Palestine Communist Party 1919-1948: Arab and Jew in the Struggle for Internationalism (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2010), particularly his chapter “The Arabization of the Palestine Communist Party”, 12-44. 126 Hiykazun Buyadjian was one of the early Armenian communists organized within Spartak along with Artin Madoyan. 127 The Communist Party was effectively established in Lebanon; however, upon the return of al- Shamali from participating in the sixth congress of the Comintern in 1928, the entry of the party into the Comintern was accepted under the name of the Communist Party of Lebanon and Syria. The naming however was a bit more complicated than this. The party had already started considering itself a ‘Syrian’ Party by the eruption of the Syrian revolt in 1925 since it took a political stance towards the independence and unity of Syria. But it would only officially become a party of Syria and Lebanon by 1928. Apart from the strong communist Armenian presence in Syria and its link to the Lebanese party, the central command would remain in Lebanon until 1932. 128 Madoyan, Hayat ʻAla al-Mitras, 68–79. 63 longer tradition of communist and militant activity that the Armenians had in comparison to the

Lebanese.129 It is however important to point out that even after the Armenian communists joined the Lebanese party, they continued to maintain a unified presence within the party by publishing declarations, newspapers, and programs in Armenian, as well as continuously mobilizing within Armenian neighborhoods and circles.

Between May and December of that year, the names of the Lebanese People’s Party and the Lebanese and Syrian Communist Party would be used in publications and by individuals to refer to the same organization that became public during that May 1 event. In those few months as well, activists and intellectuals worked on propagating the principles and ideas that the organization stood for.

Rejecting Sectarianism and Promoting Class-Based Politics

In the wake of the May 1 celebration, the Lebanese People’s Party established a newspaper, owned and edited by Yusuf Yazbik.130 Al-Insaniyya was short-lived, with only five issues published between May and June of 1925, before being shut down by the French High

Commissioner for agitating against the French and the state. While sources do not indicate the extent of the newspaper’s circulation and readership, Artin Madoyan claimed in his memoirs that the newspaper reached several subsequent members of the Communist Party such as Salim

Khayyata, who at the time resided in Tripoli. Al-Insaniyya reached Damascus and Aleppo, and was also sent to Alexandria through Fu’ad al-Shamali’s brother, Najib.

In the first issue of al-Insaniyya (L’Humanité, named in reference to its French counterpart), Yazbik inaugurated the first article by bemoaning the fate of a tortured

129 Yazbik’s account to Madoyan, Madoyan, 80–81. 130 Ibid., 95-97. 64 (mu‘adhdhaba) and disfigured (mushawwaha) humanity. Describing the injustice that prevailed in the world, Yazbik declared it a shame for the working class (al-ṭabaqa al-‘āmila), the sweeping majority in the world, to be enslaved by the wealthy minority; a shame that a segment of humanity should toil and produce the wealth that was to be enjoyed by another. Therefore,

Yazbik announced,

I have founded this newspaper – I, an oppressed worker (‘āmil madhlūm), within an oppressed people (sha‘b madhlūm)131 – and have placed it in the service of that victim (humanity) that is being murdered by injustice, monopoly, and dominance… to unite the voice of the workers and the ranks of peasants and raise their voices high, not to complain (‘iḥtijāj), but to recover the appropriated right (al-ḥaqq al-mahdūm).132

The ‘crying spirit’ had become an oppressed worker, and the class-inflicted language was a clear transformation from the days of al-Sahafi al-Ta’ih. This newspaper was a clear articulation of a more class-based, militant, form of socialism than the press that had previously tackled this issue. Yazbik further stressed the newspaper’s aim to be writing in the name of, and fighting for the sake of, “the sweat of the workers’ brow, and the fruits of the peasants’ labors”.133 Rejecting all reactionary forces (sulutāt raj‘iyya) and any social and political principles that were not concerned with workers and peasants, the newspaper declared itself at the side of one of two categories that split the world: a poor working majority against a lazy wealthy minority.

Grounding these issues more locally, the article explained that the political and economic decline the country was witnessing was due to the enslavement of the working class. Therefore, and in support of the destitute class (al-ṭabaqa al-bā’isa), the adopted slogan and marching call of the newspaper will be, “workers and peasants unite!”134

131 Interesting that Yazbik would chose to refer to himself as a worker when he did not exactly fit that category, especially in the Marxist sense. 132 “al-Insaniyya”, al-Insaniyya, issue no.1 (May 15, 1925): 1 133 Ibid. 134 Ibid. 65 The proclaimed principles of the Lebanese People’s Party revealed its adherence to this worldview, while also showing a clear engagement with issues plaguing Lebanese society at the time. The principles (mabādi’) of the Lebanese People’s Party as published in al-Insaniyya, concentrated on the following: the need to stimulate industry, agriculture, and trade; the need to fight religious, sectarian, and regional fanaticism by spreading brotherly cooperation (rūḥ al- ikhā’ al-‘āmm) and hindering religious men from interfering in political affairs; the importance of compulsory primary education for boys and girls, and of strengthening national schools; the organization of workers and peasants in syndicates that would defend their rights in a legal framework (criminalizing child labor, limiting the work day to eight hours per day, stipulating a minimum wage, and enforce maternity leave); working towards taxing inheritance and wealth while decreasing taxes on the people; transmitting ownership of the public waqf to the people under governmental supervision; and liberating women and helping them gain some of their suppressed rights (addressing polygamy and early marriages). The Party also emphasized its willingness to cooperate with people and parties that share its goals, and that it would use any means possible to achieve its demands.135

The issues covered by these principles, although not entirely new and clearly not strongly ideological, were being packaged for the first time within an official party and in the context of a newly created state of Lebanon. They were also important as a reaction to the issues taking shape in Lebanon during that time, particularly the heavy capitalist encroachment being felt on the economic level, and the sectarianism being formed on the political level.136 The French had

135 “Mabādi’ Ḥizb al-Sha‘b”, al-Insaniyya, issue 2 (May 24, 1925): 2- 3 . These ‘principles’ could also be found in the letter sent to the governor asking for a license for the LPP to operate on April 30, 1925. 136 Fawwaz Traboulsi, A History of Modern Lebanon (London; Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto, 2007), 88– 89. See Thompson, Colonial Citizens, 50–52 for more on how the constitution of Lebanon was 66 established sectarian quotas through an Administrative Council to be appointed by the High

Commissioner that was created in 1921 in Lebanon, vaguely modeled upon the Mutasarrifiyya system of Mount Lebanon. In 1922, the Administrative Council was replaced by a partly-elected

Representative Council that was also divided within sectarian quotas. In 1924, there were brief discussions about changing the sectarian nature of the Representative Council, however, the

French High Commissioner maintained the 1922 format until the 1926 constitution was drafted.

The Lebanese People’s Party initiated the first call in Lebanon to separate religion from politics by curbing the powers of the clergy in political matters. It also indirectly crossed into another sphere of influence of the clerical establishment, particularly the Christian one, by challenging the educational system, which was largely controlled by Maronite and Jesuit organizations. In its principles, the party called for supporting public education by unifying it, secularizing it, and making primary education compulsory for both sexes. In the 1920s, Lebanon witnessed the further development of the private education sector at the expense of public education. While in general, education did not constitute a major percentage of the budget of

Lebanon under the French mandate, the favoritism showed to private education by French mandatory policies allowed the latter to prosper at the expense of public education.137 This

drawn upon sectarian lines as well. For more on the history of sectarianism in Lebanon, see Ussama Samir Makdisi, The Culture of Sectarianism: Community, History, and Violence in Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Lebanon (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000). 137 Only 8% of the budget of Lebanon in 1927 went to education, both private and public, in comparison to the expenses on security and policing forces which exceeded 3 times that percentage. This was not something unique to the mandates in Lebanon and Syria. French colonialism had a similar approach to education across its colonies around the world, with its effects most blatant in French Algeria. By 1927, there were less than 579 public schools in Syria and Lebanon in comparison to 1517 privates schools, of which 980 existed within the borders of Lebanon. See Thompson, Colonial Citizens, 78–80; Daher, Tarikh Lubnan al-Ijtimaʻi, 259 67 discrepancy did not only lead to the persistence of high illiteracy rates,138 but it also led to a widening educational gap between the rich who could afford those private schools and the poor who couldn’t, as well as a gap between Christians and Muslims given the fact that a high percentage of the private schools were Jesuit or Maronite.139 The school system in Mandate

Lebanon was becoming a tool for religious, sectarian, and social discrimination. By calling for strong public schools with unified secular programs, for imposing these programs on foreign schools, and for making primary education compulsory for boys and girls, the LPP was challenging these problems in the educational system.

Although it was not the first party that called for cooperation between the different sects, as well as consisted of members from different sects, the Lebanese People’s Party was one of the first, if not the first, organized party to speak against political sectarianism.140 The anthem of the

Lebanese People’s Party emphasized cross-sectarian cooperation, specifically naming Christians,

Jews, Muslims, and Druze, united in fraternal cooperation, in similar fashion to its declared principles. Some of its verses identified clearly the problem of sectarianism while stating that communism could solve this issue:

“We refuse sectarianism (al-ṭā’ifiya), it is a loathsome disease Let communism embrace the honorable Lebanese

138 Numbers for Lebanon and Syria combined point at around 85% of the population remaining illiterate. This number whoever is skewed since we know that Lebanon had a higher literacy rate than Syria; however, it was still a substantial percentage of illiteracy by the late 1920s. See Daher, Tarikh Lubnan al-Ijtimaʻi, 259 139 The French were also discriminatory in that they preferred to hire into their administration students that had graduated from private vs. public schools, thus contributing to further disenfranchisement of public school graduates. Thompson, Colonial Citizens, 60; Khoury, Syria and the French Mandate, 409–11. 140 While we cannot be sure about the personal relationships within the party, the history as evident in the documents I and others have collected attests to the absence of a sectarian discourse within the party: there was never any reference to anybody’s communal belonging as either Muslim, Christian, or Druze, the only times these identities were mentioned was in the context of calling for a fraternal existence and cross sectarian cooperation. 68

We have always lived under a burden crushing our souls Let us destroy it my comrades, with hammers and sickles”141

The LPP did not come out as openly anti-clerical; however, in the principles that it published in its newspaper and continued to reiterate in its public celebrations, it insisted on relating ‘secularism’ (al-‘almāniyya) to education.142 This particular relation might have held an indirect anti-clerical inference. With the victory of the Left in France in 1924, General Sarrail was appointed as High Commissioner in Beirut. The anti-clerical secularist Sarrail was met with a campaign, primarily orchestrated by the Maronite clerical establishment and supported by the

Jesuit educational institutions, that painted his secularism as atheism (‘ilḥād). The campaign also targeted Sarrail’s reforms of public schools, which were based on the secularization of public education, by conflating secularism with immorality and framing it as the enemy of religion, tradition, and social values.143 By calling for secularization of education, the LPP seemed to have used Sarrail’s support of secularism to bolster its anti-sectarian position.144

The party’s reaction and position towards sectarianism was not only rhetorical. In the parliamentary elections of July 1925, the party openly protested the non-representation of the people in the electoral process and its product, the parliamentary system. They also protested the sectarian shape that political representation was taking.145 Members of the Lebanese People’s

141 Daher, Tarikh Lubnan al-Ijtimaʻi, 415. Daher found the anthem amidst the papers of the al- Tariq newspaper and Yazbik confirmed to Daher his authorship of the anthem. 142 “Mabādi’ Ḥizb al-Sha‘b”, al-Insaniyya, issue 2 (May 24, 1925): 2- 3. 143 Daher, Tarikh Lubnan al-Ijtimaʻi, 251-254 and 406-407. See on Sarrail, Thompson, Colonial Citizens, 45. 144 Sarrail’s anticlerical republicanism was accompanied by his legacy of violence when he oversaw the suppression of the early days of the Great Syrian Revolt in 1925. See Michael Provence, “French Mandate Counterinsurgency and the Repression of the Great Syrian Revolt” in Schayegh and Arsan, The Routledge Handbook of the History of the Middle East Mandates, 139. 145 “Ma‘rakat al-Intikhabat al-Niyabiyya”, al-Insaniyya, issue 5 (June 15, 1925): 7 69 Party saw this as unacceptable, something they should fight against, and they eventually decided to call for a boycott of the elections as a political stance against its sectarian nature.146 The elections of 1925 forced the Party and its members to confront their stances regarding the nature as well as the form elections took, and were to continue taking, in their country. First, they framed elections along a class-based struggle; second, they refused the sectarian electoral law that determined these elections.

In a declaration from the Lebanese People’s Party on June 1, 1925 titled “Workers and

Elections”, the party called upon the workers and peasants to ‘wake up’ and act upon the coming elections. The call identified the shortcomings of a parliament that had limited jurisdiction and called for one that would work towards the people’s interests (maṣlaḥat al-sha‘b) and impose their will (’irāda) on the ruling power. 147 The call went on to explain that although boycotting the elections would be the proper course of action given the condition of the parliament; however, against the fear of the victory of opportunists who abuse people, a decision had been made to engage in the electoral battle instead. Nevertheless, this participation had to be selective.

There will be those who will attempt to persuade the workers of working for their own interests,

“the rich who abused the poor during the war and starved them to death…” and “the lawyers who will pretend to who defend you since they are men of law”148.

“Let the rich elect the rich, and the lawyers elect the lawyers, and let the capitalists (al- ra’ismāliyyīn) and landowners, and traders and some journalists elect their representatives as they wish. But you, comrades, should elect workers from your class (‘ummāl min ṭabaqatikum)”, that would fight for workers’ rights in the elected parliament […] It is time you organized your ranks (tunaẓimū ṣufūfakum) and unite your voice. And it is time you send to the parliament representatives from your class that will defend you and work for your interests. Forward, comrades!”149

146 “Qati‘u al-Intikhabat Ayyuha al-‘Ummal”, al-Insaniyya, issue 4 (June 7, 1925): 7 147 “al-‘Ummal wa-l-Intikhabat”, al-Insaniyya, issue 4 (June 7, 1925): 8 148 Ibid. 149 Ibid. 70

Al-Insaniyya also hurled a direct attack on the election candidates. First, the newspaper asked the workers to launch a war against all slates that included capitalists and wealth investors as candidates.150 Second, another attack was specifically directed towards the candidates of the

Labor Party (Hizb al-‘Ummal), the pro-French party that consisted of a majority of employers rather than workers, and its president’s claim to run for elections in the name of the people and the workers. Accusing the president and candidate, Anis al-Hani, of theft and corruption, the author cautioned the workers of neither giving money nor voting for what he called an ‘imposter’

(dajjāl).151

The LPP thus framed the electoral process along a class-based struggle. It clearly saw the limitations of a parliament that had restricted jurisdiction, and yet saw the need to engage in elections as a way to demand the expansions of its powers. However, some party members realized that engaging in these elections meant acceptance of a sectarian political system that stood against their core principles and goals. Under the title “Workers, Boycott the Elections”,

Fu’ad al-Shamali published in al-Insaniyya a call for workers to take a stance against the French- imposed parliamentary system of sectarian elections. Sectarianism (al-ṭā’ifiyya), he argued, stood between the people and its road to freedom and true independence (al-istiqlāl al-ṣaḥīh).

The French mandatory authority had rescinded its earlier decision to hold elections based on a non-sectarian proportional law and rather opted for a sectarian electoral law. This decision according to al-Shamali was compatible with France’s ‘divide and rule’ principle (mabda’ farriq tasud). Based on this, al-Shamali argued, “we strongly object to the form of sectarian elections

150 “Ma‘rakat al-Intikhābāt al-Niyābiya”, al-Insaniyya, issue 5 (June 15, 1925): 7 151 Ibid., 1-2 71 (al-intikhāb al-ṭā’ifī) and call all workers and peasants to boycott it (the elections). Down with sectarianism, and long live popular elections (al-intikhāb al-sha‘bī).”152

Following the French decision to reinstitute a sectarian electoral law, the Lebanese

People’s Party retracted its earlier call for workers and peasants to engage in elections and announced on June 11, 1925 the decision of its members to follow al-Shamali’s decision and boycott the elections, and to urge the workers and peasants to follow suit.153 The Party saw it fit to call for the boycott of the sectarian elections following its own principles that called for spreading fraternity and fighting sectarian, religious, and regional fanaticism, and especially since “sectarianism (al-ṭā’ifiya) constitutes the biggest obstacle against the unity of the people and their true independence”. The decision to boycott was also an objection of the implementation of that law, and a declaration that “there is a free working class (ṭabaqa ‘āmila) in this country that strives to gain its rights and marches proudly to destroy injustice, oppression, and servitude…”154

Therefore, the Party linked class identity to the struggle against sectarianism, which in this case was manifested in the electoral process. By boycotting this process and refusing to engage with it, the Party took a strong stance against sectarianism while demarcating the non- sectarian struggle as well as the electoral process along class lines.155 With its strong connection

152 “Qati‘u al-Intikhabat Ayyuha al-‘Ummal”, al-Insaniyya, issue 4 (June 7, 1925): 7 153 Dakrub, Judhur al-Sindiyana al-Hamraʼ, 481. 154 Dakrub, 482. 155 Nonetheless, as we shall see, the communist party would start engaging directly with elections in the following years (including having some of its own run for elections in 1943). This, of course, can be explained with the changes in the political line the various parties, including the communists, started taking towards the mandate, and the realization of the need to work with it rather than simply oppose it. It can also be explained by the changes in the leadership of the party itself that happened in the early 1930s and heightened Soviet influence starting that decade. I will discuss these issues more in the following chapters. 72 to the syndicalist movement through Fu’ad al-Shamali serving as a vital link, the Party also supported workers’ political organization within syndicates and unions.

Fu’ad al-Shamali and Syndicalism

Fu’ad al-Shamali published a series of informative and prescriptive articles in al-

Insaniyya about syndicalism. In the first article, “The state of our syndicates today and how it should be”, al-Shamali argued that local syndicates, which were syndicalist by name and not by practice, suffered the following problems: there was no unity within a single syndicate; there was more than one syndicate for each profession; the syndicates were not connected to one another or did not coordinate with each other (such as the tailors’ syndicates and the carpenters’ syndicates); and the shameful fact that these syndicates included workers and their business owners/employers at the same time (such as the syndicate of journalists). He added that, “This mixture (al-khalīṭ) is what has caused the regression in the situation of workers in the Arab lands, something unheard of in any other land”.156

The other major problem plaguing syndicates that al-Shamali identified was the lack of a syndicalist idea (fikra naqābiyya). The dominant idea about syndicates, he argued, has revolved around humanitarian and charity work, which though important, was not the main purpose of a syndicate. A syndicate should organize the working class and educate them about their rights, their responsibilities towards their organization, and their interest as a class that differs from the interests of the class of capitalists, business owners, and landowners, al-Shamali argued.157

Along this prescriptive description, this column also criticized the Labor Party, also know as the

156 “Kayfa Hiya Naqabatuna al-Yawm wa-Kayfa Yajib an Takun”, al-Insaniyya, issue 1 (May 15, 1925): 3. 157 “Kayfa Hiya Naqabatuna al-Yawm wa-Kayfa Yajib an Takun”, al-Insaniyya, issue 2 (May 24, 1925): 3 73 Workers’ Party (Hizb al-‘Ummal), as the party that carried the banner of the workers and yet failed to work towards their benefit. This Party was accomplishing nothing besides accumulating fees from the workers and adding to their misery.

What, then, was the solution to these problems? Al-Shamali suggested rebuilding syndicates on a class basis, organizing each craft/trade (ḥurfa) into a syndicate and linking them all under a general union of syndicates, and extending this work and unity towards all workers under French rule regardless of their political stances. This was possible since the syndicates in both Lebanon and Syria had not been fully formed and could therefore be more easily deconstructed and rebuilt. This should go hand in hand with the education of workers towards these issues, explained al-Shamali.158

Al-Shamali identified further problems facing laborers in the workplace: a problem of mechanical inventions and mechanization that have come to replace workers in the labor force.

The solution should acknowledge the interest of the working class while at the same time not oppose progress (al-taqaddum) and social progress (al-ruqiy al-ijtimā‘ī).159 While inventions (al- ikhtirā‘āt) were considered not only inevitable but also necessary for the progress of society as well as the future relaxation of workers from straining tasks, machinery created through this innovation should not be in the hands of the monopoly-owners (al-muḥtakirīn) and individuals, but in the hands of the people (al-sha‘b). The latter could only be achieved when workers and peasants worked through their syndicates and parties to call for a law that protected them by allowing the state to confiscate this machinery. Al-Shamali cited the creation of a local committee within the tobacco workers that was tasked to negotiate with the government

158 Ibid. 159 Ibid. 74 regarding this issue.160 This was, according to Jacques Couland, the first such initiative created in

Lebanon to tackle a single specific demand.161

Al-Shamali had used his speech during the May 1 gathering in 1925 to emphasize the need for workers to form syndicates. He argued that the workers (al-‘ummāl) were a class

(ṭabaqa), “that has a right to live freely like other classes.”162 Other speakers during that celebration reiterated the idea that workers should unite together in syndicates. Article after another in al-Insaniyya continued to emphasize the importance of organizing along class-based syndicates. One article explained how workers in France and Britain managed to achieve minimum wage by uniting in syndicates.163 In another article, Yazbik drew connections between the various labor struggles of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, explained the gains achieved by western workers, and asked, “How do we achieve limiting the working time to eight hours? …You have to organize your ranks and found your syndicates”, emphasizing that these syndicates should be formed solely by workers.164

In September of 1925, a committee for the organization of workers in syndicates was formed, which was primarily led by Fu’ad al-Shamali.165 These syndicates would continue to

160 Ibid. 161 Jacques Couland, Le Mouvement Syndical au Liban, 1919-1946, 129. 162 Fu’ad al-Shamali, “Complete Speech of the May 1 Celebration in 1925”, in Dakrub, Judhur al-Sindiyana al-Hamraʼ, 467. 163 “Nurid Tahqiq Qima Adna li-l-Ujur”, al-Insaniyya, issue 3 (May 31, 1925):1 164 “Nurid Tahdid Awqat al-‘Amal Thamani Sa‘at”, al-Insaniyya, issue 2 (May 24, 1925): 1-2 165 The committee was made up of: Berjis Abu Saleh (carpenter), George Ayan (barber), Zahran Gharib (printing press worker), Nassim al-Shamali (cook), Fu’ad al-Shamali (tobacco worker), and an Armenian shoemaker whose name could not be identified, Couland, Le Mouvement Syndical au Liban, 136. The arrest of al-Shamali in December of that year, followed by the arrest of other major cadres of the party, put a strain on the development of the labor movement. However, still by late 1925 and even while the party leaders were in jail, more syndicates were formed along the format laid out by the party, Ibid, p. 338 75 represent some of the few political organizations in Lebanon that crossed sectarian and religious lines, bringing together workers from various sects.

“Economic Colonization of this Country”: Capitalism and the Anti-Colonial Struggle

Yazbik declared in a manifesto, explaining the purpose behind the establishment of al-

Insaniyya that, “This newspaper has been established to serve the workers and peasants, to fight for their rights, and to proclaim to the ruling powers – French, ‘national’! (waṭaniyya), and capitalist – their cries against injustice.”166 Al-Insaniyya, the mouthpiece of the Lebanese

People’s Party that was owned by Yusuf Yazbik, published critiques and analyses of French and

British colonialism. The attacks were always more openly directed against British rule, which the newspaper named clearly as colonialism, al-isti‘mār al-barīṭānī (British colonialism). The criticism of British colonialism was always more direct than that of France, probably for purely strategic reasons since anti-colonial political organizations were persecuted by the mandated authorities in Lebanon.167 The newspaper republished an article from the Palestinian journal

Haifa that attacked British authorities for refusing to allow workers to celebrate the 1st of May in

1925.168 Another attack on British colonialism in Palestine came after a group of workers in prison went on a hunger strike in Jerusalem to protest their maltreatment at the hands of British authorities.169 “British Colonialism Chokes Every Voice That Awakens the Working Class”, read a headline in the fourth issue of al-Insaniyya as a response to the British authorities stopping the

166 “al-Insaniyya”, al-Insaniyya, issue 1 (May 15, 1925): 4. 167 This was before Yazbik’s first arrest in January 1926. 168 “Awwal Ayyar fi Filastin”, al-Insaniyya, issue 1 (May 15, 1925): 8 169 “Sawt min Suriya al-Janubiyya Yastasrikh”, al-Insaniyya, issue 2 (May 24, 1925): 4 76 newspaper from entering Egypt, explaining that British colonialism constituted a danger to world peace.170

It is obvious from the instances when colonialism, British in these aforementioned cases, was mentioned that the colonial issue was brought up both to attack colonial practices – of censorship, maltreatment of prisoners, and suppression of workers – as well as to argue for one or another issue related to the class struggle and national liberation. Therefore, in these instances, class was intertwined with colonialism and the argument that al-Insaniyya in this case put forth was that the oppression of workers and the poor was primarily orchestrated and led by a colonizing power. This merging of the two was particularly developed in the context of discussing the status of the local economy and the role of capitalism. Considering the amounts and prices of merchandise exported and imported from and into the ports of Beirut and Tripoli, al-Insaniyya concluded that the balance of trade deficit created by the growing number of imports was, very bluntly, an “economic colonization of this country” (isti‘mār al-bilād al- iqtiṣādī).171

As previously mentioned, the Mandate period saw an increase in capitalist encroachment on the local market and businesses.172 The trade deficit sustained during the First World War increased during the 1920s, while trade was encouraged at the expense of industry and agriculture.173 French policies also encouraged the development of the service sector, as more

170 “Al-Isti‘mar al-Baritani Khatar Yuhaddid Salam al-‘Alam”, al-Insaniyya, issue 4 (June 7, 1925): 3 171 “Iqra’ wa-Tama‘an”, al-Insaniyya, issue 3 (May 31, 1925): 3 172 Already under the Ottoman Empire, and particularly after the defeat of the Egyptian campaign into Syria and the intervention of Western European powers, Greater Syria had witnessed a surge in capitalist encroachment and investments. 173 Moreover, France was the primary importer to Lebanon and Syria during the Mandate period and the trade deficit of Lebanon continued between 1923–1932. See Hanna, al-Haraka al- 77 French banks opened their doors in Beirut and major cities, monopolizing the financial sector. 174

Large French enterprises also managed to gain monopolies over certain industries and companies, most prominently the tobacco-producing company and the railway companies between 1923 and 1924. The gradual takeover of French financial institutions and companies of the Lebanese market allowed for the foundation of a modern capitalist state in Lebanon. While this system primarily benefited French nationals who invested in Lebanon, a small group of

Lebanese bankers, lenders, and merchants, some of whom greatly benefited during the war at the expense of the larger population, managed to tie themselves with French interests. This local bourgeoisie that emerged during the early years of French rule, was initially supportive of the

Mandate and opposing unity with Syria, but would eventually become strong enough to challenge French rule and achieve political prominence that would benefit from independence.175

The LPP’s attacks on capitalism became more direct and were intensified amidst al-

Insaniyya’s efforts to tackle the management of the water supply company of Beirut. What began as an effort to create awareness about this company’s wrongful tactics, which included high

ʻUmmaliyya, 167–71. See also Buheiry, Beirut’s Role in the Political Economy of the French Mandate, 1919-39. 174 The Mandate period also saw the expansion of Beirut at the expense of the Mountain and the countryside in general. Beirut, even before it became the capital of the Ottoman wilaya of Beirut that extended from northern Syria into northern Palestine, saw an economic surge in the mid to late 19th century, including the opening of a branch of the Ottoman Bank in 1850s, and the construction by a French company of the Beirut-Damascus carriage road in 1858. By the late 19th century, Beirut witnessed an expansion in the services sector and trade marked by merchant notable families moving into new suburbs and living in newly constructed ‘Italian-style’ mansions. During the Mandate, Beirut retained its economic power over the rest of the coastal cities of the Eastern Mediterranean, with the exception of the rivalry with Haifa. The French undertook the task of the ‘modernization of Beirut’, see Marwan Buheiry, “Beirut’s Role in the Political Economy of the French Mandate, 1919-1939”, in Papers on Lebanon, Center for Lebanese Studies (1986); Roger Owen, “The Political Economy of Grand Liban, 1920-1970” in Essays on the Crisis in Lebanon (London: Ithaca Press, 1976). 175 Daher, Tarikh Lubnan al-Ijtimaʻi, 177–84; Hanna, al-Haraka al-ʻUmmaliyya, 121–40. 78 prices and cutting off supply, turned into an attack against capitalism and the form it was taking in the Lebanese economy, that of foreign-owned companies. The issue of the Water Company of

Beirut was placed within the context of the larger problem of foreign companies in Lebanon that had managed to monopolize certain industries and in this case services.176

The newspaper started by reprinting a series of articles from al-Ahrar newspaper and several caricatures critiquing this company; however, it would also include its own commentary on these articles and specifically the caricatures, which primarily reflected the views of its owners and editors, Yazbik and al-Shamali, as well as the party it represented. 177 Comparing the water company to the tobacco régie, the articles argued that although unjust, the control of tobacco production was not as essential to human existence and to society as water. While the injustice of the tobacco company was limited, the same could not be said about water that was being cut off from people’s homes by the company’s employees.178 In one caricature, the water company was portrayed as the grim reaper, gathering the people of Beirut with his scythe.179

“This is how the company welcomes its Beiruti lovers”, the caption read.180 In another caricature, the company was depicted as an octopus taking hold of the ‘people’ (al-sha‘b), represented with a man in a fez, between its tentacles.181

Perhaps the most intriguing critique came in the form of a caricature that placed the water company more directly alongside other foreign and capitalist companies (sharikāt ra’ismāliyya)

176 Foreign capital, and particularly French, owned most of the basic infrastructure and services sector, including electricity, tramway and railway, port, and water. See Hanna, al-Haraka al- ʻUmmaliyya, 104–16. 177 “Sharikat Miyah Beirut”,al-Insaniyya, issue 3 (May 31, 1925): 6. 178 Ibid., also see issue 4 (June 7, 1925): 6 and 7. 179 “Sharikat Miyah Beirut”,al-Insaniyya, issue 3 (May 31, 1925): 5 180 Ibid. 181 “Aydan wa-Aydan Sharikat al-Ma’”,al-Insaniyya. issue 5 (June 15, 1925): 4 79 such as the tobacco régie and the tramway company.182 In this illustration, the companies represented stakes that a distressed damsel, representing the nation, could not avoid stepping on.183 On the woman’s eyes was a blindfold with the words ‘publishing law’ (qānūn al- maṭbū‘āt). The caption explained the country was being killed first by “capitalist companies”

(sharikāt ra’ismāliyya), “foreign companies over and above”, and second, by a publishing law that limited journalism’s criticism of these companies.184 The argument was that the current representatives brought about this law and therefore,

Workers and peasants should remember the status of the country as portrayed in this illustration ... They should remember that these spears stabbing the heart of the nation (al-’umma) rest in their chests. They should therefore elect their representative from their class (min ṭabaqatihim) to free (yuḥarirū) themselves and their country from these injustices.185

The LPP and its members identified capitalism with foreign capital and foreign-owned companies. They also defined the unequal balance of economic power between the local market and the foreign as ‘economic colonization’ of the country. The Middle East in general, and the

Levant more particularly, had become increasingly integrated into the world economic system by the turn of the twentieth century. By the beginning of World War One, European investment in the Ottoman Empire’s markets had increased to unprecedented levels. By the end of the war,

French capital invested in Greater Syria provided a strong claim for French rule over Lebanon

182 Al-Insaniyya, issue 4 (June 7, 1925): 5 183 To be more specific, and again this goes along with the very gendered discourse on the nation, the woman in the illustration was obviously sexualized with exposed legs and bare feet. 184 This caricature seems to have been original to al-Insanyiya since unlike the others it was not referenced to another newspaper. It is important to note that all of these visual depictions of capitalism and its victims were extremely gendered. 185 Al-Insaniyya, issue 4 (June 7, 1925): 5 80 and Syria, along with other religious and strategic claims, which culminated in the imposition of the French mandate by the League of Nations.186

Under the Mandate, the strong pull of the world capitalist system intensified on the inhabitants of the Levant, creating a heavy strain on the already widening gap between rich and poor that was brought upon primarily by the war. The intensification of capitalist power manifested itself in the increasing number of foreign-owned companies and factories, as well as

French-imposed monopolies on certain industries. In this context, attacks on capitalism and its agents became an attack on colonialism. Therefore, with the increase of worker mobilization against industrial factories and foreign-owned companies, a symbiosis between anti-capitalism and anti-colonialism occurred. This in turn explains why, as Beinin argues,

“Resistance to European plans to partition the Ottoman Empire and demands for political independence intersected with the economic grievances of peasants and urban working people which had been exacerbated by war. Nationalist movements, armed mobilizations, strikes, demonstrations, and newly formed socialist parties were part of the international popular upsurge inspired by the Russian Revolution.”187

This could not have been more evident than in the summer of 1925 and upon the eruption of the first major threat to French presence in the Levant, the Syrian Revolt.

The Syrian Revolt and the Framework of Anti-Imperialism

On July 19, 1925, in Jabal Hawran, some 100 kilometers south of Damascus, the first shot of the two-year revolt against the French Mandate was fired. Druze farmers shot down a

French surveillance airplane and later that day attacked French troops in that same mountainous

186 Joel Beinin, Workers and Peasants in the Modern Middle East (Cambridge, U.K.; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 71. 187 Beinin, 83. 81 region in southern Syria. However, what started as a local uprising led by Sultan al-Atrash would soon engulf all of mandate Syria and a huge part of mandate Lebanon as well.188

An exceptional meeting of the Communist Party was called on July 22, 1925 to discuss two pertinent issues, the erupted revolt in Syria and the events of a demonstration that turned violent on July 20.189 The Communist Party decided to support the revolt in Syria to achieve independence and liberation; it also supported the demands of the renters who demonstrated on

July 20 and decided to work towards punishing those responsible for firing on the demonstrators, and called for the release of all those arrested. A statement declaring these decisions was published and distributed around Beirut shortly after this meeting. This was the first public statement that was published under the name of the central committee of the Communist Party of

Lebanon and Syria. Artin Madoyan, who claimed to have been personally responsible for printing the statement, indicated in his memoirs that it was a clear indication of “a fine consciousness (wa‘ī) that formulated a historic turn in the political line of the party and a revolutionary stride in its struggle”.190 It is indicative and noteworthy that the Communist Party’s

188 Ibid., 91; Sultan al-Atrash had petitioned the League of Nations in 1922 to protest the creation of an autonomous entity of 'Jabal Druze' in Jabal Hawran, arguing for unity with Syria since the Druze community were in fact Syrian, and for self-determination for the Syrian nation, see Michael Provence, "French Mandate Counterinsurgency and the Suppression of the Great Syrian Revolt", 143. For more on the Syrian Revolt see also Michael Provence, The Great Syrian Revolt and the Rise of Arab Nationalism (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005). 189 The demonstration in Martyrs’ Square in Beirut was organized by the People’s Party/Communist Party against the government’s decision to repeal a rent law that limited amounts property owners could impose on renters. As al-Ma‘rad recounted, the crowds kept gathering from the various streets that led into martyrs’ square, “Dam al-Musta’jirin”, al- Ma‘rad, vol.415 (July 23, 1925). All was quiet, until around 2:30pm, when a group of Lebanese officers (cavalry) tried forcefully separating the crowds, and violence ensued. The police arrested a number of the demonstrators. The crowd demanded governor De Cayla to release them, but to no avail. Armed with rocks, the demonstrators attacked the governmental palace, besieging it and breaking its windows to pieces. The police and French Senegalese brigades responded with flying bullets and drawn swords, leading to the death and injury of a number of demonstrators. 190 Madoyan, Hayat ʻAla al-Mitras, 99–100. 82 first public appearance came in the context of a social demand combined with a call for anticolonial national liberation. The unfolding of events that day revealed the symbiosis of social and political opposition, where socioeconomic demands would go hand in hand with an anti- colonial agenda. It was also a strong prediction of the effects the events in Jabal al-Duruz would have on the French mandate in Syria and in Lebanon.

The revolt, or the great Syrian revolt as it would become known, changed the nature of the colonial rule in the region as well as the attitudes and approaches of the mandated population.

For the people living in Syria and Lebanon, the revolt, whether experienced directly or indirectly, represented an explosion of political as well as social frustrations. For the French mandate authorities, the revolt created justification for further repression of the population and allowed the mandated power to use it as a pretext to deal violently with any form of mobilization.191 For the nascent communist nucleus, the revolt became their initiation into the anti-colonial struggle. The direct and indirect involvement of these Lebanese communists with the Syrian revolt created a framework through which they incorporated a national liberation discourse within an anti-imperialist struggle.

In the weeks that followed its declaration, the Communist Party intensified its support for the Syrian revolt by publishing bulletins that encouraged the Lebanese people to support the revolt and join it. The bulletins were distributed and hung on walls in the streets of Beirut, as well as in the Biqa‘ and in Northern Lebanon.192 Lebanese newspapers, such as Zahle al-Fatat and al-Ma‘rad, described the streets of Beirut and Zahle filled with communist publications

(manshūrāt shuyū‘iyya) on several occasions throughout the remaining months of the 1925

191 For more on the Syrian Revolt, see Khoury, Syria and the French Mandate, 168–204; Provence, The Great Syrian Revolt and the Rise of Arab Nationalism. 192 Dakrub, Judhur al-Sindiyana al-Hamraʼ, 366–367, 373-376. 83 summer and well into September and October.193 As far as we know, this was the first anticolonial cause that rallied communist party members. The Syrian revolt thus became a foundational issue in the history of the communist party and the lives of its early members.

Abu Zayyam arrived in Beirut from Palestine in October of 1925 to discuss the possibility of direct contact with the revolutionaries (thuwwār) in Syria. After several secret meetings with Eli Teper and al-Shamali, they decided on the immediate travel of Abu Zayyam to

Paris, Berlin, and Moscow to ask for support for the revolt from the respective communist parties and the Comintern in the form of weapons, personnel, and money. They also agreed to lobby the international communist press to launch campaigns informing the world about the revolution, and to transport weapons and ammunition through the Turkish and Palestinian Communist

Parties, while the Lebanese Party worked towards enticing French soldiers and local volunteers/recruits to revolt against their commanders and refuse to fight in Syria.194

The central committee of the CP published a call to the soldiers in the French army fighting to suppress the revolt in Syria and Lebanon. Printed in French and on red paper, the call was circulated in the centers of concentration of French soldiers, mainly in Beirut, in Riyyaq and

Zahle in the Biqa‘, as well as in Aleppo and Damascus.195 The call asked the soldiers, sons of workers and farmers, to turn their weapons against their officers rather than use them to kill the

193 Provence, The Great Syrian Revolt and the Rise of Arab Nationalism, 90. 194 Al-Shamali, Asas al-Harakat al-Shuyu’iya, 32–34. 195 Madoyan, Hayat ʻAla al-Mitras,112 - The call, according to Dakrub, Judhur al-Sindiyana al- Hamraʼ, 400, was later published in Inprecor in 1926 under the name of the Syrian and Palestinian Communist Party (issue 98, August 1926), of course these were two separate parties but it was not until 1928 that LCP was recognized by the Comintern and renamed the Lebanese and Syrian Communist Party. The Comintern had seen best, under the insistence of the Jewish communists in the PCP, that the Lebanese and Syrian communists remain under the jurisdiction and guidance of the Palestinian party for the time being. See Ismael and Ismael, The Communist Movement in Syria and Lebanon, 14 84 revolutionaries who were, like their fathers, also workers and farmers.196 Emphasizing the violence and barbarism (waḥshiyya) of the French generals against the population of Syria, the burning of entire villages and terrible violence, the communists declared that the French “have made from every peasant (fallāḥ) a rebel, and from every worker a revolutionary (thawriyyan), and from every striker a communist.”197 The violence and atrocities were happening under the watching eyes of “the pioneers of European civilization” (ruwwād al-ḥaḍāra al-’urubiyya).

Oh proletariat of Europe! Your hands are producing the bombs, grenades, and planes that plant death and destruction among us…our call is directed to you, honorable proletariat; you are the faithful friends of our freedom. Form a coalition to fight with revolutionary Syria! We the millions persecuted in the colonies (al-musta‘marāt), and you the laborers of Europe, have one common enemy, European imperialism! Stand against French imperialism (al-imbiryāliyya al-Faransiyya). Long live the revolutionary alliance against imperialism!198

Class was identified as an integral pillar of the structure of imperialism and its mechanisms, since imperialism oppressed both colonized people and its own workers. What we also see in this call is the use of the term ‘imperialism’ instead of ‘colonialism’. At the same time the party published this call addressed to the French soldiers, they also published a statement on the event of the October revolution. According to Madoyan who undertook the task of printing and distributing it, this statement explained the historic and global significance of the revolution and its role as a pillar to national liberation struggles around the world. Not only was a direct connection made between the revolution and national liberation, but also the statement openly supported the national and liberating aspect of the anti-colonial revolution in Syria, asking recruitment and support from the people towards it.199

196 Madoyan, Hayat ʻAla al-Mitras, 111–12; Dakrub, Judhur al-Sindiyana al-Hamraʼ, 372. 197 Dakrub, Judhur al-Sindiyana al-Hamraʼ, 484. 198 Ibid., 484–85, document reproduced from Inprecor 98 (August 6, 1926): 1905. 199 Madoyan, Hayat ʻAla al-Mitras, 112–13. 85 While activists might not have been aware of the wording of their language, and the choice in using terms such as ‘colonialism’ and ‘imperialism’, their indirect engagement with the

Syrian revolt might have been the starting point for an expanded framework on imperialism.

According to Noor-Aiman l Khan’s recent work on Indo-Egyptian relations between the two wars, while anti-colonialism refers to a localized resistance to colonial rule in a given entity of an empire, anti-imperialism is a wider framework of thought and action in which actors sought to end imperial structures on a global scale.200 During the Syrian revolt, the framework of national liberation developed within the CP discourse from anti-colonialism to anti-imperialism, and it was linked to the class struggle in fundamental ways. This expansion of views within the Party was prompted by its participation in the Syrian revolt of 1925-1927, and its push against a world capitalist system that started materializing more solidly in its society under French rule.

By working to internationalize the conflict, intellectuals and activists attempted to stade as liaisons between the fighters in Syria and the international community. Ali Nassir al-Din, a close friend to Yusuf Yazbik and the liaison between the rebels in Syria and the communists, transmitted documents and information on the revolt that Yazbik would, in turn, carry to Paris to the French Communist Party and to Shakib Arslan to gain the support of the French CP and increase international agitation against French suppression of the revolt.201

The first conference of the Communist Party held in December 1925 was dominated by the issue of the Syrian Revolt. The first decision the fifteen delegates gathered from Beirut,

Bikfaya, Zahle and Aleppo took was to support the revolt, followed by the decision to intensify the struggle against imperialism and the demands for national independence and democratic

200 Khan, Egyptian-Indian Nationalist Collaboration and the British Empire. 201 Dakrub, Judhur al-Sindiyana al-Hamraʼ, 388–89. 86 freedoms. The conference also stressed the importance of fighting for workers’ rights in both

Lebanon and Syria, and for land reform.202

The indirect involvement of members of the People’s Party/Communist Party in the

Syrian Revolt begot them similar treatment by French authorities to the Syrian revolutionaries. In

January of 1926, Yazbik had just come back from Paris, and in a meeting with Nassir al-Din and

Madoyan, he gave the former a letter from Marcel Cachin and Shakib Arslan to Sultan al-

Atrash.203 As Yazbik was heading home from that clandestine meeting, the police arrested him.

The next day at the general security station, he saw Ali Nasser al-Din, Artin Madoyan, and

Hikazun Buyudjian.204 They were moved to the police station where they found Eli Teper and

Fu’ad al-Shamali, who had been in prison since December 1925. At the special criminal court headed by a French judge, they were accused of agitating for armed revolt, and of enticing people to rebel and the army to disobey their superiors.205 Awaiting their trial, some of those arrested managed to find contact with the outside world. Through al-Shamali’s brother, Nassim, they managed to get in contact with the Palestinian as well as the French Communist Party. The latter sent a French lawyer, Jacques Sadoul, to defend the accused, and the CP newspaper

202 Those gathered agreed on re-electing the current central committee – Fu’ad al-Shamali, Farid Tu‘mi, Artin Madoyan, Hikazun Buyudjian, and Eli Teper. This was considered the first enlarged gathering for the members of the party and not its first congress. Madoyan, Hayat ʻAla al-Mitras, 114–15; 203 Dakrub, Judhur al-Sindiyana al-Hamraʼ, 390. 204 Al-Shamali recounted his and Teper’s arrest and the rest’s arrest explained through the planted agent Vart Padrik, al-Shamali, Asas al-Harakat al-Shuyu’iya, 40–41; Madoyan, Hayat ʻAla al-Mitras, 117. 205 Al-Shamali said they were in prison for 45 days before they were joined by the others, al- Shamali, Asas al-Harakat al-Shuyu’iya, 36–40; Madoyan, Hayat ʻAla al-Mitras, 116–19; Dakrub, Judhur al-Sindiyana al-Hamraʼ, 390–92. Dakroub mistakenly claimed that al-Shamali and Teper were arrested the same time as the rest; however, according to al-Shamali and Madoyan, the two were arrested earlier in December while the rest were arrested on January 1926. 87 l’Humanité launched a campaign on its pages against the arrest of the communists and their maltreatment.206 A letter from an anonymous prisoner from Beirut’s prison was published in

Inprecor detailing the violent and deplorable conditions that prisoners were being held in, as well as their celebrations of May 1 in their cells.207 The walls of Beirut’s prison held the messages,

“workers of the world unite” and “Long Live Syrian Independence”208. Inprecor also published a call from the Palestine Communist Party asking for the international community’s action with regards to the atrocities perpetrated by the French against the Syrian people. It specifically addressed the imprisonment of activists within the Syrian national movement, naming Yazbik, al-Shamali, and Nasser al-Din.209 The imprisoned cadres of the LPP and the Communist Party would remain behind bars until 1928. All political activities of this group came to a halt between

1926 and 1928.

Conclusion

The French successfully crushed the Syrian revolt in Syria and Lebanon in January of

1928. On January 18, 1928, a general amnesty was released for political prisoners, including the

Lebanese arrested in 1926. After their release, al-Shamali went on to regroup and reorganize the party. Yazbik did not take part in the re-organization, but decided to rather leave the Party.210 He continued to be part of its ‘unofficial’ circles, and to be politically active in Lebanon as well as internationally. In 1929, Yusuf Yazbik would attend the second congress of the League Against

206 al-Shamali, Asas al-Harakat al-Shuyu’iya, 41–42; Madoyan, Hayat ʻAla al-Mitras, 120. 207 Inprecor, International Press Correspondence, was a multilingual periodical published by the Third International before it was closed in 1938. 208 Dakrub, Judhur al-Sindiyana al-Hamraʼ, 394. Dakrub’s source was Inprecor, number 71, 1926. 209 Dakroub, Judhur al-Sindiyana al-Hamraʼ, 400-401. 210 Yazbik never explained why he decided at that point to stop being officially affiliated with the party. 88 Imperialism (LAI), the largest venue that brought together anti-imperialists from around the world.

In 1928, at the Sixth Congress of the Communist International, Fu’ad al-Shamali was in

Moscow representing the Communist Party of Syria. The Comintern had agreed to officially recognize the party that had originated in Syria, but stipulated a change in its name for the sake of greater inclusivity.211 Al-Shamali led the CP from 1928 until 1932 when Khalid Bakdash, a

Syrian recruit into the CP, executed a coup that ousted and purged al-Shamali from the Party and its circles. The new leadership, consisting of Bakdash, Farjallah al-Hilu and Artin Madoyan, would gear the party into a new phase that was more in line with the Comintern’s policies and recommendations.

In the early post-war years, a number of intellectuals and activists in Lebanon experienced an ideological and political attraction to a nascent world power that represented an alternative worldview and promised to solve their society’s political and social problems. Those who founded the Lebanese People’s Party and created the political and intellectual nucleus for the Communist Party of Lebanon and Syria were attracted to an idea that, at the time, allowed them to combine a mélange of causes and identities, primarily a challenge to local religious and sectarian forces, a push back on the effects of an intensifying capitalist pull, and an opposition to imperialism.

211 During their incarceration, the Comintern continued to view the Palestine Communist Party ‘responsible’ towards the prospects of communism in Lebanon and Syria and rather placed the PCP in control of Syrian communists. The Oriental Secretariat of the Comintern sent Eli Teper to Aleppo in 1927 to organize communist centers around various Syrian cities and towns and to start sending Syrian communists to study in Moscow. Batatu, The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq, 384–86. Khaled Bakdash would be one of those Syrians sent to KUTV. 89 On the eve of the San Remo conference and the imposition of the French mandate on

Lebanon and Syria, political currents within Lebanon were, on a very basic level, divided between supporters of the Lebanese separation from Syria and those that opposed it and called for the unity of Greater Syria. Although the latter consisted of Lebanese from a wide political and religious spectrum, the former were predominantly Christian Maronites and were strongly supported by the Maronite clerical establishment.212 By 1920, the Mandate became a reality.

Within Lebanon, these two currents came to represent on the one hand an acceptance of the mandate and willingness to work with it and even support it, while on the other hand the second current continued to insist on union with Syria and a refusal to accept the mandate and/or cooperate with it.213 In this respect, the Lebanese People’s Party, whose initial members were predominantly Christian Maronites, broke this trend by being one of the first parties to openly oppose the mandate. It was also the first party in the Lebanese context to organize along class- based politics and to frame political, social, and economic issues within that structure.

In a newly-created country where religious differences and sectarianism began to dominate political discussions, a small group of workers and intellectuals organized a political party that introduced class-conscious politics. The party created the foundations for a class-based syndicalist movement by specifically calling for the formation of syndicates that broke away from the traditional guild system. These individuals, led by Fu’ad al-Shamali and Yusuf Yazbik, began questioning the merits of a nominal parliamentary system that was based on sectarian representation, and challenged it by boycotting elections and calling for non-sectarianism in

212 Daher, Tarikh Lubnan al-Ijtimaʻi, 355–64. 213 Ibid., 56 and 370. Of course, the second current eventually became more accepting of the mandated authorities, and saw in Lebanon as well as in Syria a cooperation between the national elite and the French that allowed for the drafting of treaties and the constitutions of both countries, while eventually leading to independence. 90 Lebanon politics. They also developed a worldview that allowed them to start thinking of themselves as part of a larger global fraternity of communists and labor activists. The party that they founded emerged out of local grievances and realities. These were, more specifically, a widening social and economic gap, sectarian politics being propagated by both local elite and colonial administrators, and growing capitalist concentration in the city and in the hands of a few urban elite that caused workers further frustration and poverty with no labor law protecting these workers.

The party that they established to reflect their ideological inclinations took a life of its own in the late 1920s, and by the early 1930s no longer resembled the 1924 Lebanese People’s

Party that Yazbik and al-Shamali had founded, and the two would no longer be part of it.214

However, these ‘pull factors’ towards the Soviet Union and communism would continue to attract a group of intellectuals and activists that would form a ‘parallel’ community to the

Communist Party. The story of this particular parallel milieu, which I tell in the chapters to follow, will echo some of the ideas laid out by the Lebanese People’s Party in the mid-1920s, mainly anti-colonialism, political engagement, and fighting capitalism. This milieu, which was made up primarily of intellectuals, would continue to carve a space of itself within the public sphere of Mandate Lebanon. The following chapter shows how members of this milieu challenged intellectuals to become more politically engaged and thus increase their relevance within the public sphere.

214 Fu’ad al-Shamali died in 1939. Yusuf Yazbik recalled that al-Shamali died in extreme poverty and alone, after being completely shunned by the party as well as estranged from Yazbik. See Yazbik, Hikayat Awwal Nawwar. 91 CHAPTER 2 Between the Ivory Tower and the Marketplace215: The Political Engagement of Intellectuals and the Boundaries of the Public Sphere

Introduction

In 1955, Ra’if Khuri and Taha Husayn,216 two Arab literary figures – one Lebanese the other Egyptian respectively – met at the UNESCO hall in Beirut to partake in the public debate on the nature and purpose of Arabic literature in a panel titled “Literature, for the private (al- khāssa) or the public (al-kāffa)?”217 This debate and the two intellectuals participating in it represented two opposing poles in the post-World War Two Arab literary circles, with Khuri arguing for the literary trend of iltizam (literary commitment) and Husayn opposing it. By the

1950s, commitment in literature (iltizam) as well as socialist realism (al-wāqi‘iyya al- ishtirākiyya) were trending among leftist intellectuals in Syria, Egypt, and Lebanon.218 Taha

Husayn had first coined the term iltizam in 1947 to describe the developing trend of viewing

215 I use the term ‘marketplace’ here in reference to the Arabic ‘al-suq’ that ‘Umar Fakhuri used to indicate the involvement of the man of letters in the day-to-day happenings of the people in the street in his book Adib fi-l-Suq. ‘Umar Fakhuri, Adib fi-l-Suq (Beirut: Dar al-Makshuf, 1944). 216 Taha Husayn (1889-1973), was one of the most influential figures in Egyptian and Arabic literature in the 20th century and a leading figure in the modernist literary movement. For more on Husayn see Ahmad Ulabi, Taha Husayn: Rajul Fikr wa-‘Asr (Beirut, Lebanon: Dar al-Adab, 1985). 217 Husayn’s lecture was titled “al-adib yaktub li-l-khassa”, while Khuri’s was titled “al-adib yaktub li-l-‘amma”. For more on this debate see Ahmad Ulabi, Ra’if Khuri Da’iyat al- Dimuqratiyya wa-l-‘Uruba (Beirut, Lebanon: Dar al-Farabi, 2013), 227–34. 218 For instance, Khuri Shahadi, Al-Adab fi-l-Maydan (Damascus: Matba‘at Dimashq, 1950); Suhail Idriss and his journal al-Adab; Husayn Muruwwa attended the Second All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers in Moscow in 1954 and published on socialist realism, including Husayn Muruwwa, Qadaya Adabiyya (Cairo, 1956); Husayn Muruwwa, Dirasat Naqdiyya fi Daw’ al-Manhaj al-Waqi‘i (Beirut: Maktabat al-Maʻarif, 1988). For more on this see A.N. Staif, “The Soviet Impact on Modern Arabic Literary Criticism: Husayn Muruwwa’s Concept of the ‘New Realism,’” Bulletin (British Society for Middle Eastern Studies) 11, no. 2 (1984): 156–71. 92 literature and those who were involved in it as committed to being politically engaged.219 His usage of the term was part of his commentary on Jean-Paul Sartre’s concept of littérature engagée, discussed in a series of articles titled “Qu’est-ce que la littérature?” that Sartre had started publishing in 1945 in Les Temps Modernes.220 The articles were a response to those who criticized Sartre when he announced by the end of World War Two that writers were politically responsible towards their age.221

Although the term itself appeared in the late 1940s, the idea of iltizam, of a responsible literature that emanates from a politically and socially committed man of letters (adīb), had begun taking shape earlier during the nahda, and was debated and expanded upon during the interwar period by leftist intellectuals. The emancipatory role of literature was not something new in the interwar period. The nahda had brought about new meanings for literature and linked it to social and political realities, creating a new consciousness among intellectuals of the early twentieth century about the uses of literature.222 Verena Klemm argues that “this consciousness created the impetus to overcome traditional ideas in literature and to find new forms and contents of artistic creation.”223

219 Verena Klemm, “Different Notions of Commitment (Iltizam) and Committed Literature (Al- adab Al-multazim) in the Literary Circles of the Mashriq,” Arabic & Middle Eastern Literature 3, no. 1 (2000): 51–52. 220 Klemm, 51–52. 221 Klemm, “Different Notions of Commitment (Iltizam) and Committed Literature (Al-adab Al- multazim) in the Literary Circles of the Mashriq.” 222 For more on this see Sabry Hafez, The Genesis of Arabic Narrative Discourse: A Study in the Sociology of Modern Arabic Literature (London: Saqi Books, 1993). For a discussion about literary commitment and links to the mid-20th and early 21 century see Friederike Pannewick, Georges Khalil, and Yvonne Albers, Commitment and beyond: Reflections on/of the Political in Arabic Literature since the 1940s, 2015. 223 Klemm, “Different Notions of Commitment (Iltizam) and Committed Literature (Al-adab Al- multazim) in the Literary Circles of the Mashriq,” 52. 93 When Ra’if Khuri stood in front of Taha Husayn in 1955 to represent the perspective of al-adīb al-multazim (the committed man of letters), he was in fact reflecting upon a trend that had flourished among Arab and specifically leftist intellectuals after the end of World War One, of which Khuri constituted a main pillar. ‘Umar Fakhuri and Ra’if Khuri “can be considered the pioneers of literary commitment. Their literary ideals dominated the discussions about a political role of literature”.224 However, although there have been studies about both Khuri and Fakhuri and their contributions to the Arabic literary field and to the Left, there has not been a historical contextualization of their ideas about the political engagement of literature, nor have these ideas been examined within the leftist circles both intellectuals orbited in the interwar and war years, particularly within communist milieus. 225 This chapter fills this gap by showing how leftists infused their perspectives on literature and its role in society with influences from the nahda and the times they lived in; particularly, their realism was shaped by their engagement in the anticolonial nationalist struggle, the political division of the world between fascism and democracy, and the predicament of the Lebanese political system.

This chapter also tries to explain the influence of socialist realism on these ideas, without overemphasizing its role. Soviet-articulated socialist realism started appearing in 1932 in Soviet literary journals; however, it was not until 1934 and after meetings between Stalin and Soviet

224 Klemm, 52. Klemm states that for Egypt, the two main figures were Salamah Musa and Luwis Awad. 225 See on Khuri, Samah Idriss, Ra’if Khuri wa-Turath al-Arab (Beirut, Lebanon: Dar al-Adab, 1986); Ahmad Ulabi, Ra’if Khuri Da ’iyat al-Dimuqratiyya wa-l- ’uruba (Beirut, Lebanon: Dar al-Farabi, 2013); Rabi‘a Abi Fadel, Ra’if Khuri: Turath Adabi fi Khidmat al-Thaqafa al- Arabiyya (Beirut: Dar al-Farabi, 2015); Mikhael Aoun, Ra’if Khuri al-Adib al-THa’ir (Beirut: Dar al-Mahazza al-Bayda’ li-l-Nashir wa al-Tawzi ’, 2013) ; see on Fakhuri, Hayat Kassab, ‘Umar Fakhuri: Siratahu, Adabahu, Afkarahu, Ibda‘ahu (Tripoli: Matba‘at al-Ghad, 1968); Wadad Sakakini, ‘Umar Fakhuri adib al-ibda‘ wa-l-jamahir (Cairo: Al-Hay’a al-Misriyya al- ’amma, 1970); Amin Albert Rihani, Qalam yafukku al-rasd aw ‘Umar Fakhuri (Beirut: American University of Beirut, 1971). 94 writers and discussions in magazines and journals did the first Soviet Writers’ Congress convene to make it an official policy.226 As defined by Andrei Zhdanov, the Soviet official who convened the 1934 Congress, socialist realism meant,

“knowing life so as to be able to depict it truthfully in works of art…to depict reality in its revolutionary development. In addition to this, the truthfulness and historical concreteness of artistic portrayal should be combined with the ideologically remolding and education of the toiling people in the spirit of socialism”.227

Some historians have argued that in the 1930s, socialist realism was not as strictly defined and implemented as assumed. They have explained that there was room for interpretation even within the Stalinist imposition of Soviet socialist realism on literature and the arts in general, and that as a doctrine socialist realism was empty, “content was to be provided by the writers themselves.

Socialist Realism may have been imposed by politicians, but it was created by writers”.228

However, it was still a state-imposed policy for literary production. Therefore, although the ideas of socialist realism influenced the debates on Arab literary political engagement, it is important to note that, at least in the period discussed in this chapter, commitment was not imposed on intellectuals and writers, but was rather a personal choice.

Part of this choice was related to how these intellectuals were bargaining for a place for themselves within the public sphere of the interwar world. This bargaining process constitutes

226 See Brandon Taylor, “Socialist Realism: “To depict reality in its revolutionary development””, in Matthew Beaumont, Adventures in Realism (Malden, MA; Oxford: Blackwell Pub., 2007), 142. Socialist realism was related to dialectical materialism as well. Those who advocated for socialist realism believed that literature was part of the superstructure determined by the infrastructure, but that it had an important role in stimulating and accelerating the process of change even from within the superstructure, see Staif, “The Soviet Impact on Modern Arabic Literary Criticism,” 164. 227 Andrei Zhdanov, “Soviet Literature: The Richest in Ideas, the Most Advanced Literature” (Marxist Internet Archives, 2004), https://www.marxists.org/subject/art/lit_crit/zhdanov/lit- music-philosophy.htm#s1. 228 Geoffrey A Hosking, Beyond Socialist Realism: Soviet Fiction since Ivan Denisovich (New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers, 1980), 6. Emphasis in original. 95 the framework through which this chapter approaches these individuals and their ideas.

According to Dyala Hamzah, the time period covering the late nineteenth century and until the mid-twentieth century had witnessed changes in the category of the ‘intellectual’, often allowing for overlaps in identifications and ‘coordinates of selfhood’. She argues,

“As the tax-farming scholar (‘ālim multazim) was taking a bow, and before the alienated figure of the modern intellectual (muthaqqaf) came to prevail on the cultural scene of contemporary Arab societies, novel types of intellectuals began to emerge and differentiate. Gradually, or less so, the scholar (‘ālim) and/or the man of Letters (adīb) morphed into the journalist (saḥāfī) and/or the public writer (kātib ‘āmm). […] Even more remarkably perhaps, it brought cohorts from among the new professionals (doctors, engineers, teachers and lawyers, but also functionaries) to endorse this new public role as an integral part of their own self-image.”229

What we witness when we examine the intellectuals of the Left during the interwar period, is a fluctuation between these various categories, a process in which they try to redefine the terms of their belonging and relevance in a changing environment. Their pioneering views towards literature and the political engagement of the man of letters (al-adīb) were a seminal part of this process. While such histories that depict this process and the interaction of intellectuals with the public sphere in the modern Middle East have been written230, this chapter places the leftist intellectuals of the interwar period into this history by specifically examining the way they

229 Hamzah, The Making of the Arab Intellectual (1880-1960), 1. 230 In Dyala Hamzah’s edited volume, see for instance Michael Gaspar, “Public deliberations of the self in fin-de-siècle Egypt”, 40-62; see specifically on the history of the left, Ilham Khuri- Makdisi, “Inscribing socialism into the Nahda: al-Muqtataf, al-Hilal, and the construction of a Leftist reformist worldview, 1880-1914”, 63-69; for the rise of mass mobilization and Syrian intellectuals of the early interwar period see James L Gelvin, Divided Loyalties: Nationalism and Mass Politics in Syria at the Close of Empire (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998); for Arab intellectuals in Syria and Lebanon in the late Ottoman and interwar periods see Leyla Dakhli, Une Génération d’Intellectuels Arabes: Syrie et Liban, 1908-1940 (Paris: Éd. Karthala : IISMM, 2009); for the latest intellectual history that revisits and questions Albert Hourani's Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age see Hanssen and Weiss, Arabic Thought beyond the Liberal Age. 96 discussed literature and engaged with the debate on commitment, arguing that by doing so, they pushed the boundaries of literature, of their status as intellectuals, and of the public sphere itself.

The Radiant Woman and the Rusted Mirror: ‘Umar Fakhuri and Literary Engagement with

Reality

In his 1938 book, al-Bab al-Marsud, the Lebanese intellectual and adīb ‘Umar Fakhuri published a letter he had written in 1924 to the singer and poet ‘Umar al-Zi‘inni.231 Fakhuri opened his letter with the following statement, “True literature (al-adab al-haqq) at a given time is that which portrays that time and expresses it”.232 Addressing al-Zi‘inni, Fakhuri commended him for his poems that reflected this ‘true literature’, specifically by his usage of modern standard (fusḥa) as well as colloquial (‘āmmiyya) Arabic. Unlike the udabā’ (men of letters) who lived on the margins of this adab al-haqq (true literature), Fakhuri declared that al-Zi‘inni had managed to appeal with his songs to both the public (al-‘āmma) and the elite (al-khāssa). “You have come to remind us that the connection (al-ṣila) between literature (al-adab) and life (al-

ḥayāt) should not be broken at any time”.233

‘Umar Fakhuri had known al-Zi‘inni as a child. Born in Beirut, in mahallat al-Shaykh

Arslan in the year 1895, Fakhuri was probably the oldest of the generation of interwar leftists and had come of age during the First World War. At the Kuliyya al-Islamiyya (also known as al- kuliyya al-‘uthmaniyya) in Beirut where he received his education after studying at a kuttab,

Fakhuri had studied alongside ‘Umar Hamad and ‘Umar al-Z‘inni, two ‘Umars who would shape

231 ‘Umar Fakhuri, al-Bab al-Marsud (Beirut: Dar al-Afaq al-Jadida, 1984). After suffering the loss of his wife and child in 1931, Fakhuri isolated himself for years and stopped writing and publishing. Al-Bab al-Marsud came out in 1938 as part of his decision to return to literature, and it included his work from “the happy time in his life”. Ra’if Khuri relayed this about Fakhuri in his introduction to the second edition of the book. 232 Fakhuri, 39. 233 Fakhuri, 41. 97 his ideas in many ways. The former was one of the poets who were hanged by Jamal Pasha in

1916 in what would afterwards become known as Martyrs’ Square in Beirut. The latter, also a poet, was known for his popular poems-turned-songs that were often written in colloquial Arabic dialect. The ‘martyr poet’, as he would refer to Hamad, symbolized the Arab nationalist struggle for Fakhuri. The ‘people’s poet’ (shā‘ir al-sha‘b), as he referred to al-Zi‘inni, exemplified the way art could be used to reflect reality.

Fakhuri had commenced his literary career by publishing Kayfa Yanhad al-Arab (How the Arabs Rise/Awaken) in 1913 as well as contributing to various local newspapers on political and literary matters. His disappointment with the outcomes of the First World War, magnified by the hanging of some of his close childhood friends during the war, and the French occupation of

Beirut following the end of the war, led him to leave Beirut for Damascus in 1918. In Damascus,

Fakhuri became involved in Faysal’s Syrian government and participated in editing the official governmental newspaper al-‘Asifa. His compounding disappointment came with the end of

Faysal’s government in Syria and the establishment of a French mandate over Syria and Lebanon in 1920. It was then that ‘Umar decided to continue his pursuit of a law degree at the Sorbonne in

Paris, and so he made the 12-hour trip from Beirut via Port Said, on January 13, 1920.234

In Paris, Fakhuri became attracted to interwar leftist currents, particularly to the ideas propagated by the Groupe Clarté, and he even established a Section Orientale du Groupe Clarté

(al-Shu‘ba al-Sharqiyya li-Shu‘bat al-Nūr) while in Paris.235 Groupe Clarté was founded by

234 Abdul Latif Fakhuri, ‘Umar Fakhuri: Al-Rasa’il. (Beirut: Dar al-Afaq al-Jadida, 1981), 9-17 235 For more on Clarté, see Nicole Racine, “The Clarté Movement in France, 1919-21,” Journal of Contemporary History Journal of Contemporary History 2, no. 2 (2016): 195–208. Incidentally, Joseph Rosenthal, one of the main figures in the Egyptian communist movement also founded a Groupe Clarté in Alexandria in 1921 along with the Communist Club and the Egyptian Socialist Party, see Batatu, The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq, 374–75. 98 Henri Barbusse in 1919 and included intellectuals such as Anatole France and Romain

Rolland.236 These leftist literati came out of a mid-nineteenth century tradition within French literature that became concerned about the absence of the working class in literary works.

Attempts to include more voices of working class people into French literature started appearing through realists such as Emile Zola, who after writing L’Assommoir in 1877 claimed that it had

‘the stench of the people’.237 The late-nineteenth century and early twentieth century saw an increase in attention given to the working class by Charles-Louis Philippe, Henri Barbusse,

Henri Poulaille, Lucien Bourgeois, and other writers who started questioning the role of the literati in reflecting the reality of their societies.238 Many of these intellectuals who had originally belonged to the anti-war movement turned towards communism during the First World War. In the post-war era, they established literary societies and journals such as Clarté and Monde, and were associated with the French Communist Party and its newspaper L’Humanité. Social realism as a literary genre was developed among these writers through contacts with the Soviet Union, whether by travelling there in the late 1920s or publishing reports and articles through Clarté,

Monde, and L’Humanité. Moreover, Barbusse was a founding member of the International Union

236 The group’s accompanying journal Clarté announced in its first edition the purpose of the group as– “a league of intellectual solidarity for the triumph of the internationalist cause”. 237 See J.E. Flower, “Socialist Realism without a Socialist Revolution: The French Experience”, in Scriven and Tate, European Socialist Realism, 99. Yusuf Yazbik had published an Arabic translation of Emile Zola’s L’Assommoir in several issues of al-Insaniyya in 1925. See al- Insaniyya, May 24, 1925 (issue 2) and June 15, 1925 (issue 5). Yazbik was also interested in Anatole France and translated some of his work, including a ‘free adaptation’ of Cranquebille (Faqir Amam al-Qada’) which he wrote while imprisoned in 1926 during the Syrian Revolt and published in 1938, Yusuf Yazbik, Faqir Amam Al-Qada’, (Beirut: Mu’assasat al-Kashshaf, 1938). Free adaptation and commentary was a popular within the genre of translation during the Nahda, see Samah Selim, “Pharaoh’s revenge: translation, literary history and colonial ambivalence”, in Hamzah, The Making of the Arab Intellectual (1880-1960), 22. 238 Flower, “Socialist Realism without a Socialist Revolution: The French Experience”, 99. 99 of Revolutionary Writers (RAPP), which was central in debating the tenants of socialist realism, before the Union was liquidated in 1932 and replaced by the Union of Soviet Writers.239

Fakhuri’s engagement with these movements in Paris was also reflected in his choices to translate their work into Arabic. Whether Fakhuri personally met Anatole France or not,240 he first started translating his books and articles into Arabic in 1924, including translating a compilation of France’s articles in Ara’ Anatole France (The Thought of Anatole France) that he published in 1925.241 Fakhuri also translated Romain Rolland’s book on Gandhi in 1924.242 His decisions to translate and publish the works of Rolland and France coincided also with his early writings about literary criticism and engagement.243 Fakhuri’s translation of these writers,

239 J.E. Flower, “Socialist Realism without a Socialist Revolution: The French Experience”, in Scriven and Tate, European Socialist Realism,100-102. The Soviet approach towards working class literature took an increasingly hard line by the 1920s. In the 1930 conference of the RAPP, French literature was accused of being decadent and remaining bourgeois literature. In an article in Literature of World Revolution, published in Moscow, the need for a new proletarian artist was advocated, an artist that was not satisfied with only observing the real world, but participated in its revolution. In 1933, after the RAPP was dissolved, the review Literature of World Revolution was replaced by International Literature where socialist realism began to be discussed. In 1932, the Association des Ecrivains et Artistes Révolutionnaires (AEAR) and its review Commune were formed, with an editorial team that included Barbusse, Rolland, Nizan, and Aragon. The association and the publication adhered closely to Soviet directives of socialist realism in the 1930s. 240 Some of the authors who wrote about Fakhuri indicated that he had personally met France while in Paris, see Hayat Kassab, ‘Umar Fakhuri: Siratahu, Adabahu, Afkarahu, Ibda‘ahu (Tripoli: Matba‘at al-Ghad, 1968); Wadad Sakakini, ‘Umar Fakhuri adib al-ibda‘ wa-l-jamahir (Cairo: Al-Hay’a al-Misriyya al- ’amma, 1970); while his brother Wajih refuted that indicating that Umar had seen France in various cafes in Paris but had never met him, see Rihani, Qalam yafukku al-rasd aw ‘Umar Fakhuri. 241 The book consists of several sayings and ideas of Anatole France that Fakhuri had collected in no particular order and translated. The introduction to the book was written by Amin al-Rihani who emphasizes the importance of France to Fakhuri. The book also contained an article “Mirthat” that Fakhuri had published in Al-Ahrar in 1924 about France and King Faysal, given the two had a relationship while in Paris. ‘Umar Fakhuri, Ara’ Anatole France. Edited by Faruq Sa‘d (Beirut: Dar al-Afqaq al-Jadida, 1982). 242 ‘Umar Fakhuri, trans., Romain Rolland: Mahatma Gandhi (Beirut: Dar al-Afaq al-Jadida, 1981). 243 He later compiled and published these articles in 1938 in Al-Bab al-Marsud. 100 however, does not only reveal their influence on him. Rather, translation in and of itself was “a defining practice of the Nahdawi intellectual”.244 The Nahda’s influence on Fakhuri also permeated through his choice to identify as an adīb (man of letters) whose interests lay not in the novel as a genre, but literary realism.245

In what eventually became a four-part series on his childhood friend, the poet ‘Umar al-

Zi‘inni, Fakhuri compiled his work on al-Zi‘inni under the title “Hunayn, Sha‘ir al-Sha‘b” (the poet of the people)”. 246 Al-Zi‘inni wrote poetry and published it in vernacular Arabic starting in the 1920s, and he would often put his poems into songs and perform them in theaters and later on radio stations.247 The language and content of al-Zi‘inni’s poems and their accessibility to the public through their transformation into popular songs contributed to the spread of his fame, especially among the working classes. This ability to connect to the public as well as the elite

244 Hamzah, The Making of the Arab Intellectual (1880-1960), 11. 245 For a discussion on the novel and translation in the turn of the twentieth century Arabic literature, see Samah Selim, “Pharaoh’s revenge: translation, literary history and colonial ambivalence”, in Hamzah, 22. See also Hafez, The Genesis of Arabic Narrative Discourse. 246 Hunayn was the pen name that ‘Umar al-Za‘ini used to publish his poetry. As an employee of the state – al-Zi‘inni worked at the Municipality of Beirut – the law forbade him of publishing in newspapers. He therefore adopted the pen name Hunayn in reference to the 8th century Arab poet Hunayan bin Balu‘ al-Hayri who wrote and sang his poetry. See Tarif Khalidi, “Umar al-Zi‘inni and Mandate Lebanon” in Ramzi Baalbaki, Salih Said Agha, and Tarif Khalidi, eds., Poetry and History: The Value of Poetry in Reconstructing Arab History (Beirut, Lebanon: American University of Beirut Press, 2011), 397–412. 247 According to Khalidi, while al-Zi‘inni could be classified within the genre of chansonnier, it was more accurate to position him within the traditions of the Cairo mawwals and the Lebaense- Syrian zajal, specifically belonging to “a tradition of satirical poetry in the vernacular which, in Egypt at least, can be traced back to the 14th century, when anonymous poets would circulate humorous, sometimes scurrilous, ditties criticizing the ruling Mamluk regime”, Tarif Khalidi, “‘Umar al-Zi‘inni and Mandate Lebanon”, 397. Al-Zi‘inni used his satire as a form of anti- colonialism; he was imprisoned several times for his anti-mandate lyrics and agitation against the French mandate through mockery. 101 was seen by Fakhuri as al-Zi‘inni’s contribution to the world of literature (‘ālam al-adab)248.

Fakhuri explained this contribution,

Every era needs someone who could testify for it or about it. Hunayn’s songs are true testaments (shahādāt ṣādiqa) of a time whose false literature (adabahu al-zūr) is not performing this task. They are testaments about the era and its people that reveal their indecencies (‘awrāt) and hardships (masāwi’).249

Fakhuri lamented the absence of guiding pillars in literature and accused literature of his time to be rhetorical (lafdhī) and not live (adab ḥayy), questioning,

Isn’t it strange that only in Hunayn’s popular colloquial songs do you find a true representation of our lives, and an honest portrayal of our social morals (akhlāqina al- ijtimā‘iyya)? In these songs the public (al-‘āmma) find clear and prominent images of their pains and hopes and their various matters […] were it not for Hunayn, this age would be mute (abkam), with no one to testify for it or about it. He is then the poet of our age.250

According to Fakhuri, al-Zi‘inni had accomplished this through his invention of a type of satirical poetry: social satire (al-hijā’ al-ijtimā‘ī). For through laughter, he had managed to masquerade the reality he described, while revealing through satire ‘our national vices and discrepancies’ (radhā’ilana wa-naqā’isana al-qawmiyya).251 Referring to the historical use of satire in Arabic poetry, Fakhuri argued that unlike earlier Arab poets who had used satire for

248 Which was most probably an exaggeration, since al-Zi’inni was not a typical man of letters who wrote high forms of literature. But again this is precisely the point, as I will discuss later. Fakhuri, “Hunayn wa-l-Shi’r al-Qawmi (Hunayn and Nationalist Poetry)” in al-Bāb al-Marṣūd. 249 Fakhuri, 42. 250 Fakhuri, 46. 251 Al-Zi‘inni’s satire touched upon a few major themes: class inequality and the absurdity of class differences, the French mandate and colonialism, and social customs and tradition. For instance, when Charles Debbas assumed the office of first president of the Republic of Lebanon in 1926, al-Zi‘inni came out with the song “Bidna Bahriyya, ya Rayyis” (We need true seamen, O captain!) ridiculing the power of the presidency. The last verse of the song goes: “God’s decree it was, and his judgement, O rayyis!/ And they handed you the flag, O rayyis! With a stroke of a pen, O rayyis/ They made you a rayyis, O rayyis! The wind blows northerly O rayyis/ Where are you taking us, O rayyis? I tell you, we need true seamen, O rayyis!/ You’re not fit to be a rayyis, O rayyis!”, Tarif Khalidi, “‘Umar al-Zi‘inni and Mandate Lebanon”, 404. 102 various, sometimes personal, reasons, Hunayn’s description came from an honest reflection of reality.252 Fakhuri declared that through Hunayn’s poetry, he had not only redefined the borders of art and literature, but has become a benefactor reformer (musliḥ muḥsin). Therefore, Fakhuri questioned, more like demanded from his reader, “Do you want a true literature (adaban

ṣaḥīḥan)? Then let us abandon false modesty (al-ḥayā’ al-kādhib). And do you want moral reform (iṣlāhan akhlāqiyyan)? Then let us let go of social hypocrisy”.253

What Fakhuri’s commentary on al-Zi‘inni did, first and foremost, was to define the parameters through which he identified and evaluated literature. He had elevated to the status of adīb and poet, a popular song-writer who often wrote his lyrics in vernacular Arabic. Not only that, but his songs were characteristic, according to Fakhuri, of a ‘true literature’. The boundaries between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture, as well as between disciplines and genres, were well defined by the 1920s and certainly by the 1930s when Fakhuri republished his critical essays on al-

Zi‘inni.254 However, Fakhuri crossed these boundaries in a testament to his Nahdawi influences as well as his advocacy of literary realism.

According to Fakhuri, ‘Umar al-Zi‘inni was a ‘witness’ from and of his age, thus not allowing it to be a ‘mute’ age; he was from and of the common people, and therefore could reflect their realities. To Fakhuri, the content, and more particularly the purpose of a given cultural production was more important than its form. The form was only meant to be the means through which a higher end was to be achieved: a true and clear representation of life and of reality, no matter how ugly that reality may be.

252 Fakhuri, “Hunayn wa-l-Haju al-Ijtima‘i” in Fakhuri, al-Bab al-Marsud, 48. 253 Ibid., 49. 254 See Selim, “Pharaoh’s revenge: translation, literary history and colonial ambivalence”, in Hamzah, The Making of the Arab Intellectual (1880-1960), 26. 103 Fakhuri argued repeatedly against the literature being produced in his time claiming that,

“Our literature does not reflect our lives except for the way a rusted mirror (mir’āt ṣadi’a) reflects the bride or the radiant woman (al-mar’a al-majluwwa).”255 As an illustration to this type of literature that does not represent reality clearly, Fakhuri brought in the issue of women in literature. He argued that “the woman is concealed (maḥjūba) from our literature to the extent that she is concealed from our lives.”256 Rather, he followed up, she is even more concealed in our literature than in our lives; “for in this “masculine” literature (quotations used by Fakhuri) she is the shadow of a shadow and the shade of a shade”.257 Here Fakhuri’s critique evolved into a double take on both literature and society, as he concurred that even in the latter women had not been given their rightful deserving place.258 However, his critique on literature’s treatment of women particularly revolved around not only the silence but also distortion of the image of women. Not only had literature concealed the existence of the woman, but it had reduced her presence to a vague and mysterious image, a ‘thing’ that does not have a definite and distinct character.259

Fakhuri viewed the need to represent women in literature as part of a larger need to include different, and particularly what seemed to be marginalized, groups of people in society in literature. He illustrated this point by comparing the inclusion of women in literature to al-Jahiz’s treatment of the class of thieves and beggars in al-Bukhala’. According to Fakhuri’s explanation,

255 Fakhuri, “Al-Mar’a al-Majluwa wa-l-Mir’at al-Sadi’a” (The Radiant Woman and the Rusted Mirror), in Fakhuri, al-Bab al-Marsud, 69. 256 Ibid., 70. 257 “Fahiya fi hādha al-adab al-mudhakkar ẓul al-ẓul wa-khayāl al-khayāl”, Fakhuri, 70. 258 Ibid. 259 “Ṣūrat al-mar’a fī adabinā…sūra ghāmiḍa mubhama ḍā’i‘a, lā dhātiyya wa-lā mīza wa-lā shay’a ta‘rifuha bihī, aw huwa thālika al-shay’ al-ladhī la shakla lahu yūṣaf”, Fakhuri, al-Bab al-Marsud, 71. 104 al-Jahiz described this separate group (ṭabaqa min al-nās ‘alā ḥida) and even brought them to life. Shouldn’t we take him as an example? asked Fakhuri.260 And what could happen, wondered

Fakhuri, if the literati chose to “describe the woman as she is in life in her various forms (‘alā anwā‘ihā) and all of her circumstances”?261 The keepers of morals and the guardians of halal and haram would hinder anyone from achieving this task, concluded Fakhri, alluding to the constraints of society on the freedom of literature, a topic he continued to explore in that article and throughout his life.

When al-Bab al-Marsud was published, it particularly caught the attention of another literary figure who was struggling with similar questions, Ra’if Khuri. Upon receiving the book,

Khuri contacted the press asking, “Where has ‘Umar Fakhuri been until today?”262 He later narrated their first meeting one evening at Dar al-Makshuf in 1939. Khuri was reciting some poetry by al-Mutanabbi when the owner of the press, Fu’ad Hubaysh, introduced him to ‘Umar as “one of our best udabā’”263, to which Fakhuri replied, “How can I contradict you when he

(Khuri) has not forgotten about al-Mutanabbi during these days?”, referring to the beginning of the second world war that everyone was talking about. “And he is a communist”, added

Hubaysh. “I see you have been affected by this”, Khuri replied. “No”, answered Fakhuri, “but I love rare specimens (al-maṣāṭir al-nādira)”.264 And Fakhuri wondered as he stepped out with

Khuri to one of the cafes of al-Burj in Beirut, “Do we speak about al-Mutanabbi tonight, or about communism?”265

260 Fakhuri, 72. 261 Fakhuri, 72. 262 Ra’if Khuri, “‘Umar Fakhuri fi Khamsina Sanatan”, al-Tariq 5, no.9/10 (1946): 1-5, 37-40. 263 Ibid. 264 Ibid. 265 Ibid. 105 Literature for the People: Maxim Gorky and Socialist Realism

Incidentally, both al-Mutanabbi and, in a way, communism were discussed within the same publication when the journal al-Tali‘a dedicated its August-September 1936 issue to al-

Mutanabbi, on his millennial anniversary, and to Maxim Gorky the Soviet writer, upon his death in June 1936.266 What this ‘mix’ of al-Mutanabbi with Gorky represented was the convergence of various intellectual and political trends within the Left, reflecting the nahda tradition combined with Soviet and socialist influences, a blend that characterized the journal al-Tali‘a.267

Al-Tali‘a was a political literary journal that was published in Damascus from 1935 to

1939.268 The journal was a product of a conference of intellectuals (Mu’tamar al-Muthaqqafin) that took place in Zahle, Lebanon in March 1934. The congress was organized and led by the communist party, primarily by Salim Khayyata, an intellectual and member of the Communist

Party of Lebanon and Syria.269 This congress, which brought together a group of intellectuals

266 al-Tali‘a 2, no. 6/7 (1936) 267 Of those who contributed to that issue of al-Tali‘a: Amin al-Rihani, “Abu al-Tayyib Rasul al- ‘Uruba”; Abd al-Rahman Shahbandar, “al-Mutanabbi Sha‘ir Nahdatana al-Haditha”; Sami al- Kayyali, “al-Mutanabbi fi Bilat Sayf al-Dawla”; Mary ‘Ajamy, “Inna lil-Mawti ma Za‘amu (shi‘r)”; Salim Khayyata, “Gorky ‘Unwan Jihad al-Ishtirakiyya”; and Ra’if Khuri, “Gorky al- Lathi Faqadathu al-Insaniyya”. 268 The first issue of the journal al-Tali‘a was published on August 16, 1935. That first issues’ editorial board was Fu’ad al-Shayib, Kamil ‘Ayyad, Salih al-Din al-Muhayiri, and Michel ‘Aflaq. See Hanna, al-Ittijahat al-Fikriya, 109–10. The second issue was edited by: Salim Khayyata, Ra’if Khuri, Michel ‘Aflaq, Ali Nasir, Kamil Ayyad, and Fu’ad al-Shayib. In the fourth issue of al-Tali’a, Fouad al-Shayib’s name went missing and so did ‘Aflaq’s at some point soon after, possibly given that Khayyata and ‘Ayyad pushed for al-Tali’a to become ‘the voice of communists in the capital of the Umayyads’. Hanna, 111. 269 Salim Khayyata was born in 1909 in the United States to emigrant parents from Tripoli. He came back to Tripoli by the end of the First World War, before moving first to Beirut in the mid- 1920s to study at the American University of Beirut, and then to Damascus between 1929 and 1932 where he earned a law degree. It was during these years, 1928-1929, that he became involved in the communist party and became a member according to Madoyan, see Madoyan, Hayat ʻAla al-Mitras, 139–40. After his graduation in 1932, Khayyata went on an exploration journey to, among other countries, the United States and the Soviet Union. He had begun his journalistic career in 1928 by publishing in al-Hadith, an Aleppine journal; however, it was after 106 from Syria and Lebanon, focused on the importance of Arab unity in the face of its enemies, identified as: colonialism, poverty, ignorance, social backwardness, and religious extremism.270

Unity was to be achieved through successful liberation struggles led by each Arab state independently. The congress in its essence was based upon the collaboration of the communists with the nationalists, between what Abdullah Hanna called the leftist/Marxist current and the democratic revolutionary current of the national liberation movement.271

Publishing a journal that represented the ideals put forth in the congress was one of the issues the congregated intellectuals decided upon.272 Al-Tali‘a was a literary project that sought to bring together intellectuals and writers to discuss contemporary issues publicly.273 Published under the slogan risālat al-taḥrīr al-fikrī (a message of intellectual liberation), the various discussions around the nature of literature and the role of al-adīb were at the very core of al-

Talī‘a as a literary project.

his journey that he began publishing extensively books and articles about the inevitability of a coming war, fascism, and communism. See Muhammad Kamil al-Khatib, Salim Khayyata al- A‘mal al-Kamila (Damascus: al-Fayha’, 1989), 5-11. His books include, Hamiyat fi al-Gharb (1933) and ‘Ala Abwab al-Harb (1934). He published extensively in al-Muqtataf, al-Hadith, al- Duhur – which he was chief editor of in 1934 before being exiled by the French authorities to Palestine and returning in 1935 – and al-Tali‘a which he contributed in establishing in 1935. He was imprisoned and according to al-Maghribi, tortured by the French authorities in 1940. See Mahir Sharif, ed., Mudhakkarat al-Qa’id al-Shuyu‘i Mahmud al-Atrash al-Maghribi (Beirut: Institute for Palestine Studies, 2015). By the mid-1940s, Khayyata stopped being publicly and politically active, for unknown reasons, and died in 1965. For more on Khayyata and his ideas and contributions see also Hanna, al-Ittijahat al-Fikriya, 179–97. 270 The meeting, which took place at the house of Ilyas al-Harawi in Zahle, brought together Salim Khayyata, Kamil ‘Ayyad, Michel ‘Aflaq, Salah Bitar, Mustafa al-‘Ariss, and Yusuf Khattar al-Hilu. See Hanna, al-Ittijahat al-Fikriya, 110. 271 Hanna, al-Ittijahat al-Fikriya, 110–12; see also Muhammad Dakrub, Judhur al-Sindiyana al- Hamraʼ: Hikyat Nushuʼ al-Hizb al-Shuyuʻi al-Lubnani, 1924-1931 (Beirut: Dar al-Farabi, 1974), 217–18. Ismael and Ismael, The Communist Movement in Syria and Lebanon, 1998, 21. 272 See Sharif, Mudhakkarat al-Qa’id al-Shuyu‘i Mahmud al-Atrash al-Maghribi, 226–27. 273 Although we do not have sources on circulation and impact of al-Tali‘a, we do know that it was sold primarily in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Palestine, and Egypt. 107 Ra’if Khuri was in Palestine when he became involved in al-Tali‘a as one of its major contributors. He had moved from Beirut in 1936 to teach Arabic literature at the Bishop Gobat

School in Jerusalem. Born in Nabay, Lebanon in 1913, Ra’if Khuri was drawn to Arabic literature and poetry at an early age. He graduated with a high school degree in 1927 from

Brummana High School – a school established by the Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers, in 1876 – before enrolling as a freshman at the American University of Beirut (AUB).274 The degree he earned at AUB – a bachelors in History and Arabic Literature that he earned in 1932275

– as well as the political and social environment he was exposed to on its campus, would prove formative in young Ra’if’s life. The social and political environment at AUB during the late

1920s and early 1930s was saturated with nationalist as well as leftist ideas. One professor who taught Khuri history particularly influenced his political inclinations, Roger Henry Soltau (1887-

1953). Soltau, who taught at AUB between 1930-1932 and occasionally until 1945 before he left

Lebanon back to England in 1952, was a socialist and had connections to H.J. Laski, the British

Labor Party leader, prominent socialist, and professor of politics at the London School of

Economics.276

Ra’if Khuri’s graduation from AUB signaled the beginning of his engagement in politics as well as his long teaching career that started in Syria (1933-1935), Palestine (from 1936-1939),

274 ‘Ulabi indicates that Khuri had to add a year to his age to be allowed entry to AUB since he had graduated at a young age from high school due to excelling in his studies, see ‘Ulabi, Ra’if Khuri Da‘iyat al-Dimuqratiyya wa-l-‘Uruba, 61. 275 Khuri had started, but did not continue, a Masters thesis on al-Jahiz under the supervision of Qustantine Zurayq. 276 Roger Soltau was an intellectual historian on Europe and France and published several books including, Roger H Soltau, French Political Thought in the 19th Century. (Benn, 1981); Roger H Soltau, An Outline of European Economic Development (Place of publication not identified: Longmans, 1941); Roger Henry Soltau, The Economic Functions of the State. (London: Pitman, 1931); Roger Henry Soltau, French Parties and Politics, 1871-1921: A New Supplementary Chapter Dealing with 1922-1930. (New York: Russell & Russell, 1965). 108 and continued in Lebanon until he died in 1967. Syria, and particularly Kulliyyat al-Sharq in

Tartus, also marked Khuri’s literary career when he published his first book Umru’ al-Qays in

1934. It was in Jerusalem, however, that Khuri started building his relations with Palestinian,

Syrian, and Lebanese communists. By the time Sawt al-Sha‘b, the organ of the CP in Syria and

Lebanon started being published in 1937, and while still in Palestine, he was already publishing articles in its first issue.277 Through Sawt al-Sha‘b, he built ties with communist party members such as Niqula Shawi, Yusuf Khattar al-Hilu, and Antun Tabit, three particularly important militants and intellectuals within the communist movement.278 At the onset of the Arab revolt in

1936, Khuri published Jihad Filastin279 as well as Thawrat Baydaba (1936) a poetic play. His public lectures on Arabic literature, Arab youth, and the French revolution coincided with his participation in establishing in Jerusalem Jam‘iyat ‘Usbat al-Qalam that included leftists such as

277 The newspaper Sawt al-Sha‘b, which was the mouthpiece of the Communist Party of Syria and Lebanon, was also publishing lectures that Khuri gave while in Palestine, for instance the 1938 lecture “Madha a‘tat al-thawra al-faransiyya al-‘alam” which he gave at the French Cultural Center in Jerusalem, see Sawt al-Sha‘b, June 19, 1938; and a lecture in Bethlehem “Shababana al-‘arab wa-qiwahum al-da’i‘a”, see Sawt al-Sha‘b, July 31, 1938. He was also publishing in al-Tali‘a by that time. For more see ‘Ulabi, Ra’if Khuri Da‘iyat al-Dimuqratiyya wa-l-‘Uruba, 139–42. 278Khattar al-Hilu was a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Lebanon and played a seminal role in the 1950s when the CP decided to relocate the main leadership of the party to Damascus and he was left to manage the CP in Lebanon. See Yusuf Khattar al-Hilu, Awraq Min Tarikhina (Beirut: Dar al-Farabi, 1988), 403; ‘Ulabi, Ra’if Khuri Da‘iyat al- Dimuqratiyya wa-l-‘Uruba, 141. Ra’if Khuri closely collaborated with Antun Tabit in the 1940s within the League Against Nazism and Fascism and the journal al-Tariq owned by Tabit. Nicola Shawi became the secretary of the Communist Party of Lebanon in 1944 when the party decided to split into two separate parties, one Lebanese and one Syrian and its Secretary General in 1965. See Niqula Shawi, Tariqi ila al-Hizb (Beirut: Dar al-Farabi, 1984). 279 A book published under the pseudonym al-fata al-arabi and whose proceeds went to Palestinian fighters. Ra’if Khuri, “Jihad Filastin” in Thawrat al-Fata al-Arabi: A‘mal Mukhtara min Turath Ra’if Khuri, edited by Ilyas Shakir (Beirut: Dar al-Farabi, 1984), 127-150 109 Raja Hurani and Khalil al-Budayri.280 Apart from his teaching, publications, and lectures, Khuri was one of the Arab representatives to the Second World Youth Congress held in Vassar

College, New York, in August 1938.281

While he was still speaking about al-Mutanabbi when he met Fakhuri at Dar al-Makshuf in 1939, Khuri was particularly fascinated with Maxim Gorky, as evident in that special issue of al-Tali‘a in 1936. Ra’if Khuri’s interest in socialist realism was modeled upon Gorky’s figure as a writer of the people. Gorky, the honorary chair of the Union of Soviet Writers, was also one of the main figures at the 1934 Congress of Soviet Writers which officially declared Socialist

Realism as the policy towards the arts and literature in the Soviet Union.282 According to Khuri, although Gorky happened to be born in Russia, he was not exclusive to one nation or the other, but rather belonged to the oppressed around the world. Khuri assumed that Gorky was probably not well known in the Arab world, and yet “…how dire the need of the Arab regions to know

Gorky – and the likes of Gorky – in a deep and comprehensive way!”283 This knowledge was necessary for the Arab udabā’ to “…take him as an example for who is the adīb (man of letters)?

280 ‘Ulabi, Ra’if Khuri Da‘iyat al-Dimuqratiyya wa-l-‘Uruba, 140. Hurani, a Syrian intellectual, was part of the leftist milieu around al-Tali‘a along with Khuri. Budayri became a prominent figure in the Palestine Communist Party. 281 Around 550 delegates from around 55 countries attended the Second World Youth Congress, which had first met in Geneva in 1936. In New York, Khuri presented his report to the congress on the Palestine situation, condemning Zionism as a colonial movement that served British interests, and explaining that the only solution to the Jewish problem was a democratic state in Palestine. For the speech Khuri presented at New York see al-Tali‘a 4, no.8 (1938): 645- 656. See also the interview with Khuri upon his return from the congress in al-Tali‘a 4, no.8 (1938):720-724. ‘Ulabi narrates that Khuri was welcomed upon his return by masses of people and festivities, ‘‘Ulabi, 202–3. 282 The epithet Socialist Realism started appearing in 1932 in Soviet literary journals; however it was not until 1934 and after meetings between Stalin and Soviet writers including Gorky and discussions in magazines and journals did the Congress in 1934 convene to make it an official literary line/policy. 283 Ra’if Khuri, “Gorky al-Ladhi Faqadathu al-Insaniyya”, al-Tali‘a 2, no. 6/7 (1936): 614 110 What is the role he plays in the life of his nation and in the life of human kind?”284 Khuri explained that as a cook, a shipyard worker, a baker, a gardener, and a street vendor, Gorky experienced poverty and deprivation first hand, while continuously seeking to fulfill his love for knowledge and his fascination with literature.

He accompanied the naked and barefoot homeless of all kinds, and became their brother; he worked alongside the laboring poor in the basins of ships, or the ones buried alive in the dark depths of the gas mines […] he experienced firsthand the savagely brutalized human life […] the life the tortured humanity (al-insāniyya al-mu‘adhaba) lives! This was Gorky’s genuine school, and he strengthened it with the school of famous writers that he managed to break the fence towards despite the poverty barrier surrounding him.285

According to Khuri, once Gorky managed to become an adīb, this connection with tormented life as experienced by people was not something he was going to cover up. He was not an adīb who “ran away from reality, but was an adīb of confronting reality boldly”; using his literature, “he drew a genuine and strong portrayal of it (this tormented humanity)”.286 And yet,

Khuri argued, Gorky’s literature was not satisfied with simply portraying this life, rather

“literature that stops at the limits of portrayal (al-taṣwīr) cannot be fertile nor productive. Gorky worked on intentionally tearing down the curtain on the causes for such tormented life that humanity lives”.287 He then worked on teaching the oppressed how to detect these causes and eradicate them. He even participated wholly in that process of eradication, making him a full participant in the revolution. This, according to Khuri, was what made Gorky a “revolutionary”

(thawrī); and therefore given his life and work as an example, Khuri deduced the ingredients that to him made up a revolutionary writer. First, the courage to face reality without running away

284 Ibid., 615 285 Ibid., 617 286 Ibid., 618 287 Ibid. 111 from it; second, understanding correctly the factors that had led to that reality; third, planning a way to remove this reality and replace it with a better one; and finally, moving forward in this path without hesitation until the goal is achieved.288 These characteristics that made up the revolutionary adīb differed from those that made one an adīb of the people. Gorky the revolutionary stood in stark difference to al-Zi‘inni the poet of the people. Gorky was of the people, but he was also for the people; he portrayed their reality, but he also sought to change it.

Khuri continued explaining that Gorky identified the causes for the reality he portrayed, summed up in the problem of private ownership. He announced his war against this problem and attacked the social groups he perceived responsible for creating an inequality, which were the feudal lords and large landowners in Russia and their control of the impoverished peasants, the capitalists and huge business owners who abused workers, and the regime of Czarist Russia that provided protection for the continued suppression of human beings.289 He was imprisoned and exiled for his convictions and behavior, and even with his deteriorating health, continued to fight and cooperate with emerging revolutionary forces in Russia.290 As Khuri chronicled the Russian revolution, he emphasized Gorky’s role in it and the dedication of his life as service to it, concluding, “in Gorky, there is a great lesson to the udabā’ in the Arab lands”.291

Khuri argued for the role of the adīb himself within his literature, as did the communist

Salim Khayyata. One of the figures behind the publication of al-Tali‘a, Khayyata shared Khuri’s view of the man of letters as an agent of change. He argued that Gorky was the adīb of the people (adīb al-sha‘b) and thus adīb of humanity (adīb al-insāniyya), and that he was a soldier

288 Ibid., 618-9 289 Ibid., 619 290 Ibid., 620 291 Ibid., 622 112 of the first socialist nation.292 Gorky was the adīb of the people because he wrote about the life of the working classes (al-ṭabaqāt al-‘āmila) and reflected the realities of the oppressed. These classes have toiled in the past to create the structures and progress of present societies. Thus, by being their voice, Gorky became the “heir to the glories of their past”.293 According to Khayyata, in their struggle against the enemies of socialism – ignorance, war, capitalism, colonialism and fascism – these classes also represented the progression of humanity towards the future. By reflecting their lives, Gorky becomes the emblem of this humanity. The author thus concluded by substitution, the incarnation of Gorky as the adīb of humanity by in fact being the adīb of the people. Here we see the recurring theme of colonialism, and not just capitalism, as the enemy, as we also observe the inclusion of another main enemy that will continue to dominate this communist group’s writing and discussions even beyond the end of World War Two, fascism.

Similar to Khuri, Khayyata did not see Gorky as merely a mirror reflecting human reality; he was also a soldier who sought to change that reality. For both Khuri and Khayyata writing about the figure of the adīb for the people, it was not enough for him to represent this reality; he had to actively work to change it. Moreover, by changing it, the adīb became revolutionary. For Khayyata, the adīb was supposed to actively participate in the socialist revolution, as Gorky did, and that was what Khuri wanted the Arab udaba’ to learn from and emulate.294

A Modern Sun Within Dark Clouds: Democracy and Literature

292 Salim Khayyata, “Maxim Gorky ‘Unwan Jihad al-Ishtirakiyya wa-Intisariha”, al-Tali‘a 2, no.6/7 (1936): 556 293 Ibid., 558 294 Other articles on Gorky in that issue included a biography, a translation of Romain Rolland’s eulogy of Gorky, and translations of excerpts from his novels Pain and My Life as a Boy. The October issue of 1936 in al-Tali‘a also featured translations of Maxim Gorky. 113 Although most leftists discussing literary commitment concentrated on the role of the writer, discussions also covered the kind of literature that needed to be produced, including defining its purpose. While most such discussions in the early to mid-1930s centered around social revolution, the eruption of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 and its end result in 1939 constituted a turning point with regards to a nuanced variation in the discourse and the urgency of choosing a side between fascism and democracy.

The overwhelming majority of the discussions split literature into two clear factions: literature written about and for the elite and bourgeoisie, and literature written about and for the masses. As the world prepared for war, the lines demarcating the opposing poles became defining features for the debate on literature. The lines that were being drawn between democratic versus fascist camps, became symbolic of the lines to be drawn between ‘backward’ literature of the bourgeoisie that did not represent society, and progressive humanitarian literature that sought to reflect and change society and reality.

Yusuf Yazbik addressed this issue in an article in 1937 in al-Tali‘a about the literary movement in Iraq in the post-war period.295 .Yazbik portrayed a division between different forms of literature being written in Iraq, and more generally in Arabic literature, “the struggle (al-ṣirā‘) between the voices of truth and revolution and the trumpets of backwardness and slavery”296.

Although his concern stems from his assessment of levels of education and literary development

295 Yusuf Yazbik, “Al-Haraka al-Adabiyya fi-l-Iraq”, al-Tali‘a 3, no.1 (1937): 24-29. Yazbik published this article as an aftermath to a three-month visit to Iraq he had made in 1937. We don’t know why and in what capacity he made that visit; however, we do know from the article that Yazbik had a positive impression of the 1936 military coup in Iraq led by General Bakr Sidqi against the Prime Minister Yasin al-Hashimi, since according to him, the Hashemites represented the colonialism of Iraq, had been repressing communism, and were opposed by the people of Iraq. 296 Ibid., 24 114 in Iraq, Yazbik indicated that it was the way literature was developing rather than its speed that was troubling. He used the example of Iraqi literature to extrapolate about Arabic literature, arguing for a division between two forms (colors) of literature: white and black. He explained that a silent clash existed between ‘white and black’ literature,

Meaning between humanitarian literature (al-adab al-insānī) and selfish literature (al- adab al-anānī). Between useful literature written for the masses, about the masses, and for its own good and freedom, and entertainment literature written for the bourgeoisie for the sake of and about bourgeois issues.297

Backwardness in the state of Iraqi literature was due to the fact that it was tainted by ‘black/dark literature’ or the literature of the bourgeoisie, Yazbik argued.

According to Yazbik, most udabā’ writing in Arabic at the time were producing ‘black literature’ and have therefore failed to represent society beyond its conservative elements, from colonialism to feudalism. These udabā’ were “living on the margins of public life” because authentic and ‘pure’ literature is in fact “a real picture of society with all its contradictions, and the mission of the adīb is to translate that image to his readers”.298 Therefore, more udabā’ should be concerned with the state of the common people rather than reproduce conservative bourgeois literature. According to Yazbik, it was time to have a serious conversation about the kind of literature and character of men of letters that is needed. He explained that, “The literature that we want is humanitarian literature, white and pure: it is the voice of truth, justice, equality, freedom, and humanitarian bliss, meaning it is the literature of the revolution in the literal and not metaphorical sense”.299

297 Ibid., 25-26 298 Ibid. 299 Ibid., 27 115 Yazbik did not only introduce or describe the kind of literature that needed to be written, but he also provided the antithesis to that literature. This was accomplished through the juxtaposition of two sets of characteristics/qualities: on the one hand ignorance, darkness, backwardness, and slavery; on the other hand, knowledge, enlightenment, progress, liberty and freedom. These two separate sets represented the struggle between the two kinds of literature that

Yazbik described, and they also came to represent the struggle between two forms of political systems: democracy and fascism. This clash became particularly salient with the growing threat that leftists felt in the face of rising fascism.

In the June-July 1937 issue, in a regular segment of al-Tali‘a, Hawadith wa-Ahadith

(Events and Conversations), the editorial team compiled a series of articles from various newspapers discussing the significance of democracy in literature and asking to convene a conference on Arab democratic literature.300 The editorial declared full support for the idea of holding such a conference, adding that the journal is willing to offer its pages for debating these ideas. The excerpts taken primarily from the newspaper Sawt al-Ahrar echoed various voices calling for the need to unite as Arab men of letters under the banner of democracy.

This direct call for action enabled those like Yusuf Yazbik, whose piece was cited, to correlate the adīb’s necessary fight towards democracy with his political engagement. Yazbik argued that an adīb who was to effectively support the principle of democracy could not exist for the sake of literature alone.301 Building on this same point, another article in al-Tali‘a also emphasized the strict division of the world into two warring factions, “the backward/reactionary

300 “Adab al-Dimuqratiyya Yatla‘: Hawla Fikrat ‘Aqd Mu’tamar Dimuqrati ‘Arabi (Literature of Democracy Rises: About the Idea of Holding a Conference on Arab Democracy)”, al-Tali‘a 3, no.6/7 (1937): 601. 301 “al-Adib…an Yakuna li-l-Adab Wahdahu fa-Qawlun Hara’”, Ibid., 603 116 (raj‘iyīn) faction and the liberated (mutaḥarrirīn) faction”.302 Calling upon the udabā’ of democracy (al-dimuqrāṭiyya), Raja Hurani argued that their unity and cooperation (ta‘āwun) were fundamental since “our future is connected to the triumph of just democratic principles (al- mabādi’ al-dimuqrāṭiyya al-ḥaqqa) in the world”.303 According to Hurani, for Arab writers, this was not a novel innovation (bid‘a jadīda); rather, by organizing behind democratic principles

Arab udabā’ would be harkening back to “the foundations of our glorious Arab history

(tarīkhina al-‘arabī al-majīd). For the democratic spirit is an instinctive (gharīziyya) character in the Arab people”.304 In an interesting temporal and thematic combination of Arab intellectuals,

Hurani supported his point by referencing Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, Shibli Shumayyil,

Muhammad Abduh, Ahmad Fares al-Shidyaq, Qassim Amin, Adib Ishaq, and Abdel Rahman al-

Kawakibi, as examples of this democratic spirit. While the trend to appropriate classical heritage was practiced by proponents of socialist realism more generally,305 the creation of a genealogy of authors who embodied a democratic spirit in Arab history was also a nahdawi trend that leftists, among others, used to legitimize their claims within an Arabo-Islamic heritage that was independent from any foreign influence. It was also their way of connecting themselves to earlier generations of nahdawis.

Subsequent responses in al-Tali‘a reflected support to the concept of democratic literature and reiterated the need to form an organized body for Arab men of letters that would function as a forum for promoting democratic values.306 Raja Hurani’s editorial of the March

1938 issue of al-Tali‘a specifically targeted this topic under the title “al-Dimuqratiyya wa-l-

302 Ibid., 605 303 Ibid., 606 304Ibid., 606 305 Staif, “The Soviet Impact on Modern Arabic Literary Criticism,” 167. 306 “Hawadith wa-Ahadith”, al-Tali‘a 3, no.8 (1937): 710 117 Udaba’”. Hurani painted a picture of a barbaric (hamajī) and troubled world in which dictatorships were conquering democracies. If there was any hope for humanity, it was contingent upon the Arab men of letters’ realization that they need to “set up their pens

(aqlāmakum) in the service of your peoples (shu‘ūbakum), so that you bring them to the harbor of genuine democracy”.307 Referring back to the self-interest of the men of letters, Hurani reiterated that it should not be forgotten by our udabā’ that their goals and their dreams will not materialize except under a true Arab democracy.308 Therefore, again, the destiny of the udabā’ was linked to democracy and vice versa.

At no point was there a clear definition, discussion, or explanation of what was meant by the use of the terms ‘democracy’ or ‘democratic principles’, for that matter. The various contributors to this discussion however did often place these terms within a binary relationship where on the one hand, they were in connection to other concepts such as liberation (taḥarrur), freedoms (ḥurriyyāt), progress (taqaddum), civilization (madaniyya), humanity (insāniyya). On the other hand, ‘democracy’ stood in opposition to other concepts such as dictatorship

(diktatūriyya), reactionary (raj‘iyya), barbarism (hamajiyya), and colonialism (al-isti‘mār).

The ‘movement’ of democratic literature that al-Tali‘a had tried to portray culminated in the establishment of the League of Democratic Intellectuals (Rabitat al-Muthaqqafin al-

Dimuqratiyyin).309 An article in al-Tali‘a written on the occasion of the founding of this league by Qadri al-Qal‘aji, the communist journalist and friend of Ra’if Khuri at the time, elaborated on

307 Raja Hurani, “al-Dimuqratiyya wa-l-Udaba’”, al-Tali‘a 4, no.3 (1938): 150 308 Ibid. 309 I have not been able to find anything on this specific League outside these articles in al- Tali‘a, and it seems to have brought together those debating the role of democracy and literature in al-Tali‘a. 118 the meaning and repercussions of such a movement.310 He reproduced the dichotomies that had dominated the discourse on literature to signify the political divisions in the world, explaining that two convoys (qāfilatān) were racing to lead the world (qiyādat al-‘ālam). The first, a monstrous (māsikha) convey, being pulled by reactionaries and counterfeit writers whose pens were ‘dipped in blood’. The second convey was that of young, free writers (kuttāb aḥrār), democratic writers (kuttāb dimuqrātiyyīn), those who had seen in their own eyes the suffering of the oppressed classes (al-ṭabaqāt al-sha‘biyya al-maẓlūma). The article claimed that there was no point anymore in critiquing the theory of art for the sake of art, for this was a game that the bourgeoisie had invented to distract the udabā’ from the real world and the destructive burdensome pain that people suffer, adding “For what is the purpose of literature if the adīb is the only one reading literature? What is its purpose and its message if it spoke only about a limited faction and a particular class and narrow trends (muyūl ḍayyiqa) that it could not overcome?”311

Qadri al-Qal‘aji did not limit himself to describing how literature should be, but rather added to the points already being made by prescribing another benefit to the existence of a democratic environment. He argued, “for we understand art as a method to express life, critique it, and elevate it to the pinnacle of perfection; and this will not be fulfilled without a democratic popular system (niẓām dimuqrāṭī sha‘bī) that opens the way for all members of the working class.”312 According to al-Qal‘aji, the significance of democracy, which the adīb fosters and makes possible through his leadership, was that it allowed an environment of increased appreciation of art, in this case particularly literature, and the artist himself. He argued that “..if it

310 Qadri al-Qal‘aji, “Adab al-Jil”, al-Tali‘a 4, no.4 (1938):299-304. 311 Ibid., 301 312 Ibid. 119 (al-umma) was blessed with economic prosperity (al-rafāh al-iqtiṣādi) and social freedom (al-

ḥuriyya al-ijtimā‘iyya), art would be elevated and exalted and the artists would occupy their proper position in cultural history.”313 Therefore, the ultimate purpose for achieving a democratic society that fosters social freedom and economic prosperity was for the adīb’s own benefit again.

Although this was a reiteration of most of what had already been discussed, in this article, the men of letters were elevated to a point of glorification.

Oh democratic udabā’, you are a modern sun (shams ḥadītha), do not let the dark clouds cover your nascent emanating light […] your tunes are of a new world […] So cooperate, and do not stray and lose the way.314

Not only was literature a player in the division between democracy and fascism, but for it to be a catalyst for democracy, the preliminary premise of literature as a politically engaged field should be fulfilled. The responsibility of the adīb and his mission was to be politically engaged for the purpose of safeguarding democratic principles by producing ‘democratic literature’. This form of literature was the kind which was in touch with reality and reflected the needs and desires of the people. While intellectuals discussed the discourse on revolution and literature on the pages of al-Tali‘a in 1936, the prospects of the coming war seemed to have demarcated a specific goal towards which a revolutionary adīb should work, democracy. Revolution was to take a backseat in the face of the threat of ‘backwardness’, ‘ignorance’, and ‘darkness’.

The role of the man of letters to safeguard democracy was to be the mission of every adīb regardless of his political or ideological inclination. However, since a democratic-type of literature meant one that reflected society and was of and from the people, then ultimately, only writers who believed in and wrote this kind of literature could bring about this change. The

313 Ibid. 314 Ibid., 304 120 contributors to this discussion reemphasized and argued repeatedly that democracy depended on the leadership of the men of letters (qiyādat al-udabā’). What the debates on the pages of al-

Tali‘a reveal, is a certain degree of narcissism315 among those intellectuals who appointed themselves as vanguards of their time.

The Avant-Garde and the Vanguard: The Responsibility of Leading the People

The opening editorial of the May 1937 issue of the journal al-Tali’a, “Muhimmat Adibina al-Arabi fi al-Marhala al-Hadira (the mission of our Arab man of letters at our current stage)”, defined the current stage as one of political and social turmoil in all Arab countries that were experiencing varying stages of independence or seeking to obtain it.316 This situation was coupled with confusion and turbulence in the literary circles in which the adīb found himself at a crossroads, either to isolate himself from what was happening around or to engage in the complexities of his surroundings by assuming the position of the leader.

The adīb was asked to “respect the responsibility (al-mas’ūliyya) he carries towards himself, his generation and those to follow”.317 What was that responsibility? Given the political turmoil surrounding him, should it be his concern to engage in politics? al-Tali‘a refrained from discussing this issue by stating that it might be a subject for later discussion; however, what was vital to discuss was the stakes involved if the adīb chose to be politically unengaged. Since only in a democratic political system (jihāz siyāsi dimuqrāṭī) that preserves liberties (al-ḥuriyyāt) would an adīb truly prosper, his political engagement towards such goals would only ensure his

315 To borrow from Marci Shore’s description of Warsaw’s Marxist intellectuals which she coined as “pathological narcissism”, see Shore, Caviar and Ashes, 4. 316 Editorial, “Muhimmat Adibina al-Arabi fi al-Marhala al-Hadira”, al-Tali‘a 3, no.5 (1937): 323-326. 317 Ibid., 323 121 own good.318 He had to be a barometer that senses social and political changes and detected the emergence of movements, using his ‘pen’ to straighten out any deviation and point out to dangerous trends. The destiny of the udabā’ and the people were therefore linked. By being politically aware, the adīb thus benefits his own interests while also benefiting society at large.

Your interest (maṣlaḥatakum) is the interest of the entire people (al-sha‘b) […]Because its (the people’s) evolution (irtiqā’ahu) is your evolution and its decline (inḥiṭāṭahu) is your decline. The spread of your art and your literature – and that is the wish of every adīb – depends in the first degree upon the people’s prosperity, levels of education, and high income. Therefore, act according to what brings you and them progress and with that you would have fulfilled your duty”.319

This editorial articulated the need for a liberal democratic setting and placed it within the context of the perpetual link between the destiny of the adīb and that of the people. Again, knowledge and enlightenment as embodied in the wellbeing of the people and their levels of education and income was portrayed as the antecedent to decline and backwardness. This was an active call for the udabā’ to safeguard their own liberties, by safeguarding the democracy of the people.

Salim Khayyata utilized the term ‘muthaqqafīn’ (intellectuals) to set a plan of action for this particular group in society.320 He lamented the fact that the lack of intellectuals in the recent past had caused a lag in Arab societies’ quest for independence and the establishment of socialist soviets.321 However, according to Khayyata, the significant recent rise in the number of intellectuals did in fact create an opportunity that should not be missed. He argued that if ‘our umma’ was to progress, “we are to appoint ourselves as dedicated vanguards to the people

318 Ibid., 325 319 Ibid., 326 320 Salim Khayyata, “Nida’ ila al-Muthaqqafin”, al-Tali‘a 2, no.4 (1936): 291-300 321 Ibid., 292. 122 (talā’i‘ li-l-sha‘b), teaching them and learning from them”.322 The purpose for assuming a leadership position was to eradicate the hurdles standing in the way of progress; these hurdles were manifested in colonialism and its entire apparatus. The continuous invocation of the theme of colonialism throughout this article as well as the journal in general was particularly relevant in the context of the issues raised by Khayyata and other intellectuals who attended the Zahle

Congress in 1934.

Khayyata emphasized that through their leadership, the intellectuals were to educate and direct the people, primarily by going ahead of them.

Lead the people (al-sha‘b) with organization and discipline and prudence so they can walk behind you. Walk ahead of them, and they will place their breasts as shields to the common cause of their and your freedom. Bring them to you, and let them bring you to them. Then will you realize that the rubble of colonialism (rukām al-isti‘mār), backwardness (al-raj‘iyya), and conspiracy (al-mu’āmara) will be swept under the stable steel wave of your anger.323

How was this unity to be achieved? Through working within a popular party (ḥizb sha‘bī) in which intellectuals and the people come together. This cooperation would work towards “erasing any trace of basic competition and class conflict between the intellectuals and the masses of people (jamāhīr al-sha‘b)”324; furthermore, it would solidify the unified goal of achieving independence and establishing Arab socialist soviets (kayān arabī ishtirākī majālisīy).

Although the discussions in the pre-war years continued to emphasize democracy and the role of intellectuals and men of letters in guiding the people towards that goal, it was not until the breaking of the Second World War that more direct action became necessary as well as possible.

We Cannot Live on the Margins of History: World War Two and Political Engagement

322 Ibid., 293. The author maintained a certain level of vagueness when referring to various concepts, including muthaqqafīn while shifting between first-person plural and second-person plural when referring to the intellectuals. 323 Ibid., 294 324 Ibid., 297 123

Ra’if Khuri narrated that upon seeing Fakhuri editing a draft of his 1941 book, al-Fusul al-Arba‘a, Fakhuri declared to him that this would be his last work on aesthetics (al-astatīq).

When Khuri questioned him for the reason behind his decision, Fakhuri explained:

“There are other pressing problems that are shaking the world, and that relate to us. We cannot, and do not have the right, to live on the margins of the world and of history (‘alā hāmish al-dunya wa-l-tārīkh). It is not enough to live, but we should think of how we are supposed to live (kayfa yaṣuḥḥ an na‘īsh)”.325

For Fakhuri and his leftist comrades concerned about their role in society as literati, political engagement was no longer a choice by the early 1940s, and particularly during the Second World

War. It was a duty, something he and they did not ‘have the right’ to ignore. This was something

Fakhuri particularly stressed in his book Adib fi al-Suq (A Literati in the Marketplace), published in 1944.

This book consisted of short stories and essays that addressed several issues, including the rise of fascism, Fakhuri’s parliamentary electoral bid in 1943, and discussions on literature and society. Fakhuri called upon the adīb to descend to al-sūq (the marketplace), placing the term in quotations to insinuate the meaning for the marketplace as the day-to-day activities of people and society rather than its literal meaning. Being in al-sūq meant seeing, knowing, feeling, and reacting to the elements that exist in the daily lives and activities of regular people, he explained, adding that “these elements – tragically (being sarcastic) – would become material for his literature”.326 This in turn meant that the adīb would have to leave his ivory tower (burjihi al-‘āji) and forgo the ‘vocation’ (al-risāla), replacing it with the ‘function’ (al-waẓīfa) of the adīb.327

325 Ra’if Khuri, “‘Umar Fakhuri fi Khamsina Sanatan”, al-Tariq 5, no.9/10 (1946): 39. 326 Ibid., 38 327 Ibid. 124 In summer of 1943, ‘Umar Fakhuri ran for elections in the Lebanese parliament for a seat in Beirut. The Communist Party, which in May of 1943 had organized its first national congress and took the decision to split the party into two separate Syrian and Lebanese entities, had decided to nominate candidates for parliamentary elections taking place in July and August in

Syria and Lebanon respectively.328 Fakhuri was one of the candidates who was supported by the

Communist Party, campaigning with the other nominees, Farajallah el-Hilu, Niqula Shawi, and

Artin Madoyan. Khaled Bakdash was also nominated in Syria.329 Campaign rallies were held around Beirut, in Ashrafieh and the pre-dominantly Armenian Burj Hammud neighborhoods, in which Fakhuri, often accompanied by Ra’if Khuri, spoke alongside Bakdash, el-Hilu, and

Madoyan. His electoral program emphasized national independence, constitutionalism, democratic liberties, and non-sectarianism.330 The 1943 elections brought sweeping victories to the nationalist elite in both Syrian and Lebanon.331 None of the candidates supported by the communists won any parliamentary seats, however, the “relatively penniless Communists made a surprising showing”.332 While Bakdash qualified for second-round balloting in Damascus, those who ran in Lebanon received a significant 12 percent of all votes cast.333

Responding to criticisms that emerged against Fakhuri’s involvement in politics as an adīb (ishtighālihi bi-l-siyāsa), Fakhuri argued that if it were his role traditionally to safeguard human morals and values, shouldn’t it also be his concern when these very values are being

328 For more on the congress, see Ismael and Ismael, The Communist Movement in Syria and Lebanon, 1998, 33–38. 329 Madoyan, Hayat ʻAla al-Mitras, 347, 352–353. Madoyan would later withdraw from the race as per Bakdash’s decision, citing internal Armenian politics as well as the party’s fear that he might take away votes from Fakhuri. Madoyan, 367–69. 330 Madoyan, Hayat ʻAla al-Mitras, 366–67. 331 See Ismael and Ismael, The Communist Movement in Syria and Lebanon, 1998, 34. 332 Thompson, Colonial Citizens, 249–50. 333 Thompson, 250. 125 threatened? Shouldn’t he react or even take sides (yahtuf li-aḥad al-mu‘askarayn)?334 He wondered, “is not the adīb or the artist (al-fannān) but a man from the umma, and a member of society…he speaks our language, draws from our environment, lives in our atmosphere…he takes, how could he not give?”335 For if he does not ‘give’, but rather chooses to separate himself from these roots (al-usūl), he moves closer to suicide. According to Fakhuri, most of the udabā’ of his time might have been scared that by being engaged, they had to continuously change with the changing society. What they did not understand, Fakhuri argued, was that life and society were inevitably going to change. If the adīb did not reflect and accommodate that change, he and his literature would cease to be relevant and would wither away; however, society and its life would continue to exist.336

Fakhuri’s own ideas about this issue had developed from his earlier writings in the 1920s and early 1930s. While initially, he had critiqued the state of literature itself – as being

‘masculine’, not representative of society, and constrained by society’s codes of morals and tradition – his later fears had become existential. By 1944, literature could not only reflect realities of society, it had to take sides. Therefore, what was ‘political’ had expanded into the realm of literature and thus forced it to be engaged. Commitment (al-iltizam) was this willingness to engage. Ultimately, it was society and its reality that changed literature and the role of its writers, rather than the opposite. Literature, and those who were responsible for writing it, became political.

334 Fakhuri, Adib fi-l-Suq, 39. The reference was clearly being made towards the two camps of WWII and the threat of fascism 335 Fakhuri, 40. 336 Fakhuri, 41. 126 The debate on the role of the intellectual continued to feature in the discussions of the contributors to the journal al-Tariq (1941-), in a similar vein as it did in al-Tali‘a. Al-Tariq (the

Path) was a bi-monthly cultural journal published by ‘Usbat Mukafahat al-Naziyya wa-l-

Fashistiyya fi Suriya wa-Lubnan (League Against Nazism and Fascism in Syria and Lebanon), a gathering of intellectuals and activists established in 1935 as a response to the spread of fascism in Lebanon and Syria and around the world.337 The journal also represented the same network of intellectuals and activists whose names appeared both in the League conferences and in al-

Tali‘a.338

Within the pages of al-Tariq, the context of the war added a more polarizing dimension to the debate on political engagement and emphasized its pertinence. In the opening article of the first issue of al-Tariq, Qadri al-Qal‘aji explained in Risalat al-‘Usba (Message of the League)339 that part of this journal’s mission was to create and support an adīb “who refuses to live in

337 Chapter 3 of this dissertation covers in detail this League, its members, and its activities. 338 The first issue of al-Tariq was published on December 20, 1941 in Beirut. The editorial board consisted of: ‘Umar Fakhuri, Antun Tabet (head of the League), Ra’if Khuri, Yusuf Yazbik, and Qadri al-Qal‘aji as its editor in chief. Kamel Ayyad would join the editorial board in 1943. The journal represented the collaboration of the leadership in the League with various Arab writers and thinkers; however, an overview of the indexes indicates the overwhelming contributions of the members of the editorial board, both individually as well as collectively under the authorship of the editorial team. For instance, in volume 2, year 1943, and out of total of 20 issues, the editorial team contributed 70 articles, Ra’if Khuri 20, Qadri al-Qal‘aji 9, ‘Umar Fakhuri 7, Antun Tabit 5, and Yusuf Yazbik 4. Al-Tariq, similarly to al-Tali’a and other journals of the time, included reprints of articles from other newspapers, republications of Arab writers, and translations of non-Arab writers, with emphasis on Russian writers, specifically on Ilya Ehrenburg and translations of his articles and various other literary works. Moreover, al-Tariq included a significant portion of contributions by women activists within the League and literary figures, primarily Imili Faris Ibrahim, Falak Tarazi, and Maqbula al-Shalaq. These particular contributions, as well as the activities of women within the League and communist circles, will be the topic of chapter 4 of this dissertation. 339 In reference to the League Against Nazism and Fascism Syria and Lebanon, more on this in chapter 3. 127 intellectual isolation, looking down upon the umma”340. He argued that literature has historically posited a threat to tyranny and oppression, and therefore the adīb, a messenger of humanity, should not stay silent in the current conflict.341 Another opening editorial reiterating the mission of al-Tariq emphasized the journal’s belief “in the power of ideas, and the influence of literature in liberating nations and reviving them”.342

In a speech he gave at a League gathering in Tripoli that was published by al-Tariq, al-

Qal‘aji responded to those who were surprised that members of the League, intellectuals who were never involved in politics, went “down to the public squares” and stood at the forefront of politics.343 ‘Umar Fakhuri also responded to the same questions of what does he, an adīb, have to do with politics (mā laka wa-l-siyāsa). Both responded by citing the threat of fascism and

Nazism and a responsibility to ‘take sides’. “We should not only live the way we live, we should think of how we are supposed to live”, Fakhuri argued. The war, according to him, came down to a fight over how they should live as individuals but also as nations. “Therefore, there is no escape for us from choosing a position with regard to this fight. […] This is a call to work in politics: this politics”.344 By explaining/justifying the move into politics, leftists writing in al-

Tariq also defined what was to be considered ‘political’ and how it was to be approached.345

Although this argument seems to reverberate earlier discussions in al-Tali‘a about political engagement, the period of al-Tariq and the League witnessed a shift, maybe we can even consider it an expansion, in the social category that should be engaged politically. The

340 Qadri al-Qal‘aji, “Risalat al-‘Usba”, al-Tariq 1, no.1 (December 20, 1941): 2 341 Ibid. 342 Editorial, “Hadhihi al-Tariq”, al-Tariq 2, no.5 (March 31, 1943): 2 343 Qadri al-Qal‘aji, “al-Muthaqqafun wa-l-Siyasa”, al-Tariq 2, no.12 (July 18, 1943): 15 344 ‘Umar Fakhuri, “Qalil min al-Siyasa”, al-Tariq 1, no.4 (February 20, 1942): 12-13 345 See also ‘Umar Fakhuri “Min al-Adab ila al-Siyasa”, al-Tariq 1, no.5 (March 6, 1942): 7-8 128 interwar period, and particularly the 1930s and 1940s in Arab cultural spheres witnessed the emergence of the significance of the professions and professional titles that tended to replace prestigious hereditary titles, such as amīr, shaykh…etc.346 This trend seemed to have been particularly prevalent within the network of activists and intellectuals of the League.

Declarations of branches of the League in which names of members involved were listed included the profession of each member accompanying their name, and so did lists of representatives in the conferences of the League. 347 The declaration for the establishment of the organization of the Friends of the Soviet Union was also signed by member names accompanied by their profession.348

In their speeches, declarations, and signed documents, members of the League and contributors to al-Tariq referred to this professional group as muthaqqafīn (intellectuals). The category of muthaqqafīn, as different from adīb/udabā’, was used to refer to a group of individuals in society who had a leading role in the fight against fascism while striving to more generally achieve ideals of freedom, independence, and justice. An article in the first issue of al-

Tariq first defined muthaqqafīn as an educated group of people, “a group of Arabs who have completed their secondary or higher education and who practice as amateurs or professionals a certain intellectual work”.349 This group of educated individuals did not represent a separate

346 On this discussion, see Dakhli, Une génération d’intellectuels arabes, chap. 9. 347 A declaration on the occasion of one year after the League’s branch opening in Damascus signed by the members of the League with their professions accompanying each name: lawyer, engineer, doctor…etc. See the list of participants and representatives in the second League congress in 1942 in al-Tariq, Special Issue (1942):29; see also Michel Baddura, “Wajib al- Muthaqqafin al-Arab fi al-Harb al-Hadira”, al-Tariq 1, no.5 (March 6, 1942): 8. 348 A signed document from Yazbik’s personal papers. 349 “Dawr al-Muthaqqafin al-Arab fi al-Hayat al-Qawmiyya al-Arabiyya”, al-Tariq 1, no.1 (December 20, 1941):12, the article singled out occupations such as: teachers, poets, journalists, lawyers, engineers, and employees in general. 129 single social class, but rather represented the interests of the social classes they each belonged to.

By using this term in their designation of the categories of individuals that should be involved in politics, those who made up the network of the League and its journal widened the scope of political engagement beyond the literary field, and by doing so expanded the parameters of involvement in the public sphere.

Conclusion

Those who argued for greater involvement in politics also argued that the war had changed the nature of the political sphere. Before their ideas and practices were defined and coined within certain concepts (iltizam, al-wāqi‘iyya al-ishtirākiyya), these leftist intellectuals preceded post-World War Two intellectual self-reflections by calling for the political engagement and commitment of literature and those who produced it. By making literature political, they stretched the limits of what was ‘political’. They also questioned the categories that allowed individuals to be involved in the public sphere, first by arguing for literature for and by the people, and then for conceptualizing a category of intellectuals (muthaqqafīn) that brought together more than men of letters and the traditional category of scholars. They transformed/moved the adīb (man of letters) into the category of an ‘intellectual’ in the nahdawi/modern sense of the term. The calls for the political engagement of literature and the man of letters were just a means to that end.

In a lecture he gave at al-Kulliyya al-‘Almaniyya in Aleppo, Ra’if Khuri argued that one of the characteristics of war is that it brings people out of their ‘narrow circles’ and into ‘public outlooks’ (āfaq ‘āmma), forcing them to engage in problems and issues that they probably never felt the need to deal with.350 World War Two, which Khuri was referring to in this lecture, had

350 Ra’if Khuri, “Arabi Yanzur ila al-Amam”, al-Tariq 1, no.8 (April 30, 1942): 2-3. 130 allowed him and his generation of leftist intellectuals to carve a space for themselves in the public sphere. As we will see in the following chapter, it also opened for them new avenues for political activism with their local environments as well as the world, particularly through their anti-fascist struggle.

131 CHAPTER 3 This War is Our War: Anti-Fascism, Democracy, and the Friendship of the Soviet Union

Introduction

In 1944, ‘Umar Fakhuri addressed the ongoing world conflict and his nation’s relation to it. He argued, “Our country and those in it are connected to the universe and the life of its nations

(umamihi) and peoples (shu‘ūbihi), so there is nothing in it that does not concern us […] we are part of a whole...”351 He further maintained that by virtue of being “an inseparable and non- isolated part of this world”, that they were part of the earlier world conflict, World War One, and that “…there is no doubt that this war (World War Two) is our war too,” adding that the war will most probably offer a chance to decide their own destinies.352 ‘Umar Fakhuri, along with Ra’if

Khuri, Yusuf Yazbik, and other prominent leftist intellectuals, founded the League Against

Nazism and Fascism in Syria and Lebanon, and the League’s mouthpiece journal, al-Tariq.

Fakhuri also established the Friends of the Soviet Union organization in 1942. Fakhuri and the leftist milieu he was part of saw the conflict that enveloped the world, starting with the Spanish

Civil War in 1936 and until the end of World War Two in 1945, as directly related to their lives and their political cause. They made World War Two ‘their war’ by spearheading the anti-fascist front, and by doing so, they intensified their political engagement and participation within the public sphere.

The Lebanese leftist press had a close eye on the developments in Europe and around the world post-World War One.353 With the ascension of power of the Nazi party in Germany and

351 Fakhuri, Adib fi-l-Suq, 75. 352 Fakhuri, 77–78. 353 To give just one example, al-Insaniyya reported as early as 1925 the election of Marshal Hindenberg as president of Weimar Republic. The newspaper noted Hindenberg’s classification as a war criminal, and commented on his election as the victory of the capitalists who were 132 the nomination of Hitler as Reich chancellor, various voices rose in the Lebanese and Syrian press commenting on this issue. Mixed responses emerged; while some praised Hitler and his actions with the ‘Röhm affair’ in 1934,354 others opposed this view. For instance, Michel Zakkur of al-Ma‘rad criticized the apparent authoritarianism and brutality of the German regime.355

Discussions of Mein Kampf in newspapers such as al-Nida’, a Lebanese newspaper with an Arab nationalist orientation, garnered debates about national identity and racial theories, with writers often offering both praise and criticism.356 When Mussolini occupied Ethiopia in 1935, leftists raged against Italian fascism and the threat it posed to the Levant indirectly and to the world.

Salim Khayyata, a member of the Communist Party of Lebanon and Syria published two scathing commentaries on the rise of fascism in Europe and specifically Italian aggression on an

African country.357

Recent revisionist histories on Arab responses to fascism and Nazism have altered the earlier historiographic narrative that had emphasized the appeal of these ideas to Arab intellectuals and activists. The earlier narrative had focused on the rise of pro-Nazi movements

seeking revenge for their losses during World War I and the Versailles treaty, and those who opposed socialists. See al-Insaniyya 1, no.1 (May 15, 1925): 2. 354 Also known as “the Night of the Long Knives” were a series of assassinations of critics of the Nazi regime ordered by Hitler in 1934 that included the SS’s assassination of Ernst Röhm, SA Chief of Staff. 355 See Götz Nordbruch, “A Challenge to the Local Order: Reactions to Nazism in the Syrian and Lebanese Press” in Israel Gershoni, Arab Responses to Fascism and Nazism: Attraction and Repulsion, 2015, 38; for more on Nazism see Götz Nordbruch, Nazism in Syria and Lebanon: The Ambivalence of the German Option, 1933-1945 (London; New York: Routledge, 2009). 356 For instance, Kazim al-Sulh admired Hitler’s plan to resurrect and defend his nation and national identity while rejecting Hitler’s racial theories and denouncing any disrespect to others’ ‘national dignities. See Nordbruch, “A Challenge to the Local Order”, 39. 357 Primarily Hamiyyat fi al-Gharb (1933), which was written as a reflection of Khayyata’s travels across Europe and the United States and his take on fascism after visiting Italy, in which he argued among other issues that fascism emerged as a reaction to the failure of a social revolution. He also published ‘Ala Abwab al-Harb (1934). See also Muhammad Kamil al- Khatib, Salim Khayyata al-A‘mal al-Kamila (Damascus: al-Fayha’, 1989), 5-11. 133 and forces in various Arab countries by the 1930s and 1940s, and had argued for their significance in the development of post-war Arab history.358 It fell short of explaining the failure of the Arab-Nazi project and the swift triumph of the Allies in the Middle East during WWII, and could not account for the rise of anti-fascist and anti-Nazi movements. Rather, a reframing of the question has allowed revisionist historians such as Wien, Bashkin, and Nordburch, among others, to move beyond the paradigm of collaboration and examine the debates and activities that emerged in the Arab East primarily in opposition to fascism and Nazism.359

In the most recent edited volume on this topic, Arab Responses to Fascism and Nazism:

Attraction and Repulsion, the various authors make a case for Arab liberal voices that opposed fascism and Nazism and rejected authoritarianism, totalitarianism, and imperialism. Israel

358 In various instances, the appeal of fascism had been linked to the rise of authoritarian regimes in Iraq, Syria, and Egypt, see Lukasz Hirszowicz, The Third Reich and the Arab East (London; Toronto: Routledge & K. Paul; Toronto U.P., 1966) and Eliezer Beeri, Army Officers in Arab Politics and Society. (New York: Praeger, 1970). For Iraq see Reeva S Simon, Iraq between the Two World Wars: The Creation and Implementation of a Nationalist Ideology (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986). On Syria see Labib Zuwiyya Zuwiyya - Yamak, The Syrian Social Nationalist Party an Ideological Analysis, Harvard Middle Eastern Monographs 14 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966). The historiography on Palestine had overemphasized the role and significance of the Mufti al-Husayni and his support of fascism and Nazism, see Philip Mattar, The Mufti of Jerusalem: Al-Hajj Amin Al-Husayni and the Palestinian National Movement (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988). 359 12/8/17 2:53:00 PM See also Peter Wien, Iraqi Arab Nationalism: Authoritarian, Totalitarian and pro-Fascist Inclinations, 1932-1941 (London; New York: Routledge, 2006); Orit Bashkin, The Other Iraq: Pluralism and Culture in Hashemite Iraq (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2009); Nordbruch, Nazism in Syria and Lebanon; Götz Nordbruch, “Defending the French Revolution during World War II: Raif Khoury and the Intellectual Challenge of Nazism in the Levant,” Mediterranean Historical Review 21, no. 2 (2006): 219–38; Ami Ayalon, “Egyptian Intellectuals versus Fascism and Nazism in the 1930s”, in Uriel Dann, ed., The Great Powers in the Middle East: 1919-1939 (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1988); Christoph Schumann, “The Experience of Organized Nationalism: Radical Discourse and Political Socialization in Syria and Lebanon, 1930–1958,” in From the Syrian Land to the State of Syria, edited by Thomas Philipp and Christoph Schumann (Würzburg, 2004), 343–358.

134 Gershoni argues that “these new studies reconstruct robust local public discourses and demonstrate that the global importance of Nazi Germany triggered lively public debates on crucial issues such as democracy versus dictatorship, liberalism versus authoritarianism, and pluralism versus totalitarianism.”360 Görtz Nordbruch, who has written on fascism and Nazism in

Syria and Lebanon, argues that “in many respects, developments in Germany and Nazi

Germany’s ideological claims served as a basis for sharp criticism of authoritarian rule and radical nationalist and expansionist visions.”361

In this chapter, I add the voices of leftists who opposed Nazism and fascism during the

1930s and 1940s to these revisionist histories. While historians such as Nordbruch and others have acknowledged leftist opposition to Nazism and fascism, this is the first attempt to examine more closely the ways in which intellectuals outside the parameters of a party strongly acted against the rise of these ideas. I show how they organized against, debated, and rejected fascism and Nazism. It is understandable and important to view anti-fascist organization as a response to the rise of these ideologies and their appeal. The first issue they were responding to was the rise and appeal of fascism and Nazism to some Lebanese factions. In Lebanon, the rise of right-wing nationalist parties increased by the 1930s. In 1932, the Syrian Social Nationalist Party was founded by Antun Sa‘ada, advocating unity between Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Transjordan,

360 Gershoni, Arab Responses to Fascism and Nazism, 30. In that volume, Meir Zamir and Eyal Zisser present the stories of political figures in Lebanon and Syria that stood, covertly and overtly, against fascism and Nazism, often collaborating with the British and the French against Axis propaganda and military action in the Levant. Meir Zamir, for instance, reveals documents that put Riad al-Sulh, Jamil Mardam, and Shukri al-Quwatli in a secret alliance with the British against Axis forces in the region. See Meir Zamir “Against the Tide: The Secret Alliance between the Syrian National Bloc Leaders and Great Britain, 1941-1942” and Eyal Zisser “Memoirs Do Not Deceive: Syrians Confront Fascism and Nazism – as Reflected in the Memoirs of Syrian Political Leaders and Intellectuals” in Gershoni, Arab Responses to Fascism and Nazism. 361 Nordbruch, “A Challenge to Local Order”, 35. 135 Cyprus, and northern parts of Iraq – what was known as the fertile crescent.362 In 1936, the

Kata’ib, or Lebanese Phalange, was founded by Pierre al-Jumayyil, influenced by the 1936

Olympic Games in Munich and the discipline of the Hitler youth.363 Though different in their approaches - one thinking of a unifying Pan-Arab and particularly Syrian nationalism, the other a

Lebanese and more specifically Maronite Christian nationalism – right-wing political parties advocated for one or another form of strict nationalism that reverberated with the demands and needs of the time.364 Leftists primarily responded to that by trying to differentiate between fascism and nationalism, specifically by arguing that fascist forms of nationalism cannot lead towards national liberation, but rather only subjugation and colonialism.

Apart from the appeal of fascism, leftists were also responding to accusations of standing

‘with the colonizers’. The need to reiterate their anti-colonial stance became a regular feat for these intellectuals since the political right was using their anti-fascist stance to accuse them of being lenient towards their colonizers, the French and the British. In the face of fascism, leftists downplayed French and British colonialism as the ‘lesser evil’, setting their priorities in a world where a choice between two options had to be made.365

362Traboulsi, A History of Modern Lebanon, 102. 363 Ibid. 364 While it is important to acknowledge diversity within Arab societies in responses to fascism and Nazism, it is also significant to note that fascist-inspired parties in Lebanon and Syria were also more complex than mere imitation or adoption of Nazi and fascist ideology. Just like those on the left of the political spectrum, individuals and organizations on the right also picked and chose certain principles from fascism and Nazism that fit their political and social agendas. 365 Both France and Britain engaged in direct attempts to counter German appeal in their mandates. In Lebanon and Syria, the French crack down on political organizations and dissolution of parties were part of the efforts to weaken any opposition from within their mandates. Furthermore, the French Service de la Presse et de la Propaganda worked against the effects of German propaganda intended towards Arabs.

136 Despite the centrality of viewing opposition as a response to the rise of fascism and

Nazism, it is important not to explain all the actions of those speaking against fascism as simply reactive. For although discussions about fascism/Nazism among leftist circles and the anti-fascist movement created a space for larger discussions about nationalism, democracy, and progress, as this chapter will show, these debates were not simply prompted by the rise of fascism, but some had roots in the leftist debates of the 1920s that we saw in chapter 1, and they were intricately linked to debates that emerged with the nahda in the late nineteenth century. The war and the ideological threat it contained stressed the urgency of discussing these issues, and placed pressure on intellectuals to take a political stance. Of the ‘stances’ they had to take was their position vis-à-vis nationalism and the anti-colonial struggle, as well as the ‘side’ they were going to choose in what started to appear as an extremely polarized post-war world.

Leftist debates about fascism and the nature of opposition to it intensified by the beginning of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, reaching a climax by the end of the war in 1939 with the establishment of the League Against Nazism and Fascism in Syria and Lebanon. The

Spanish Civil War particularly spurred discussions about the relationship between the national and the international. The threat of fascism both ‘at home’ and around the world pushed leftists to reexamine the meaning of the ‘national’ and to reposition themselves vis-à-vis the rest of the world. The interwar period was characterized by a blurring of boundaries between the national and the international but also between various ideologies and affiliations across the political spectrum. The war in Spain marked the end of this period of fuzziness and the beginning of stricter political demarcations.366

366 For a discussion of the national and the international see Sluga, Internationalism in the Age of Nationalism. 137 The German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact signed in August 1939, which placed the leftist anti-fascist movements around the world in confusion and disappointment, seemed to have also affected the Arab leftists since there was no significant anti-fascist activity between 1939 and

1941. However, with the German attack on the Soviet Union in 1941 and the entry of the latter into World War Two, leftists rallied around the Red Army and followed intently events on the

Eastern Front. The war intensified the attractiveness of the Soviet Union in the eyes of leftists who were not hesitant to declare their support and admiration towards it, given that these declarations were emanating from outside the parameters of communist parties. Standing first against colonialism, and then steadily against fascism and Nazism, the Soviet Union became a model of progress achieved through socialism, and this in turn worked to increase its appeal for intellectuals, activists, and the general public. An important indicator of this appeal was the increase in membership of the Communist Party of Lebanon and Syria in the 1930s, from several hundred in 1933 to around three thousand plus members in 1939.367

Redefining Nationalism: Ra’if Khuri, Anti-Fascism, and Liberationist Nationalism

Ra’if Khuri was one of the earliest voices within the Left, and outside the membership of the Communist Party, to rise against fascism. He produced a plethora of writings about this topic, and therefore this chapter concentrates heavily on his contributions to the opposition of fascism.

In most of his writings about nationalism and fascism, Khuri addressed the fact that he was responding to those who rationalized support for fascism and Nazism through the moto of ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’. He argued repeatedly that some of those youth (al-shabāb) who were showing leniency (yaḥussūn bi-mayl) towards fascism have justified it by discreetly arguing that if they support fascism, they can use their support as a threat to pressure their

367 Laqueur, Communism and Nationalism in the Middle East, 145. 138 colonizers to listen to their demands for national liberation. Khuri declared this line of thought as very dangerous because, primarily, it diverged from a unified struggle towards liberation, and secondarily, because it cemented a ‘spirit of dependency’ (rūḥ al-ittikāliyya) in the minds of the nation with the idea that its liberation relies on others and therefore struggling for it (liberation) was deemed unnecessary.368 This was particularly relevant for Arabs since their experience,

Khuri recounted, proved that working with one colonizer to get rid of the other only led to a transfer from one colonialism to another. “Each nation’s cause of freedom depends on it and no one else…(the nation) organizes itself for freedom”, he explained, adding that “freedom grows from within and cannot be imported from the outside world.”369 While it was true that fascism was defying the colonialism that they were suffering from, the important question was why.

Fascism believed it has not taken enough ‘shares’ of the world, as it should. “Fascism strongly believes in colonialism”370, argued Khuri, and was preparing for a war for the sake of colonialism.

Another response to the logic of the ‘enemy of my enemy is my friend’ involved the issue of Zionism. This reason to support fascism was specifically prevalent amongst Palestinian youth,

Khuri observed. “The Jews – rather the Zionists (al-sahyuniyīn, here marking a difference between Jew and Zionist) – are undoubtedly staunch enemies of the Arabs”, stated Khuri. The

Zionists were fascist colonists (fashist isti‘māriyyūn), he proclaimed, while continuing to refute their claims of socialism and asserting that Zionist socialism “is working towards invading a country, displacing its peasants, impoverishing its workers, and destroying its people

368 Ra’if Khuri, “Nahnu wa-l-Fashistiyya”, al-Tali‘a 2, no.10 (1936): 842-843. 369 Ibid., 844. 370 Ibid., 843. 139 completely”.371 According to Khuri, fascism and Zionism were not enemies, but rather it was in

Zionism’s interest that the Jews be persecuted in order to justify its “tyrannical immigration”

(hijra ṭāghiya) as a humanitarian vindication of their persecution. Therefore, fascism that persecuted Jews served the interest of Zionism. Thus, any lauding of fascism as seen in Arab and

Palestinian newspapers “is foolish (aḥmaq)”.372

Khuri believed that Nazis created the ‘Jewry legend’ (usṭūrat al-yahūdiyya) to distract the

German people with theories of racial superiority, indirectly relating that legend to the strengthening of the Zionist movement. 373 “With the death of Nazism, the vein that feeds this movement would be cut,”374 he argued, adding that the Nazis were using the Jewish people as a scarecrow to distract the German people with, including the idea of racial superiority (tafawwuq

‘unsurī).375 Referring to Jews as a minority that has witnessed all kinds of persecution in the world, Khuri tore through Nazism’s various excuses– Judaism, Bolshevism, capitalism, and the stipulations of the Versailles treaty – to justify their actions. He refuted Nazism’s claims against

Judaism by rhetorically asking, how can Judaism be both capitalist and communist? For the

Nazis, “Capitalist Britain is Jewish, and capitalist America is Jewish. And communist Russia is

Jewish, and all that is not Nazi is Jewish, and everything that does not serve Nazism is Jewish”.

Khuri added that anything that opposed Nazism would be considered its enemy, therefore “you, for example, are Jewish. I am Jewish. My words are Jewish”376 and that in that line, Judaism can

371 Ibid., 845. 372 Ibid., 373 Ra’if Khuri, “Al-Naziyya wa-l-Qawmiyya”, al-Tariq 2, no.21 (December 15, 1942): 10-11. 374 Ibid., 10. 375 Ibid., 11 376 Ibid. 140 be used for any excuse for Nazism, including blaming Nazism on a Jewish conspiracy in case

Hitler ever gets caught and tried.377

According to Khuri, Zionism was either strengthened or at least emboldened by Nazi persecution, and any Arab support to Nazism was not the solution to the problem in Palestine.

Only by defeating fascist forces in Europe can Jews stop seeing the urgency of creating a national home in Palestine. And only by fighting fascism and colonialism together can

Palestinian Arabs achieve independence.

Ra’if Khuri had a direct encounter with Zionism when teaching in Jerusalem in the

Bishop Gobat School during the eruption of the 1936 Arab Revolt against Jewish immigration to

Palestine, and British and Zionist support for it. From Palestine in 1936, Khuri had sent a call for

Arab unity behind the Palestine cause in his book Jihad Filsatin.378 Although he blamed Zionism for taking Arab land and replacing Arab peasants and workers in the Palestinian economy, the liberation movement in Palestine was against British colonialism first and foremost.379 He acknowledged that Zionists were acquiring weapons and forming militias with the knowledge and sometimes support of the British colonizers, arguing that a Jewish state in Palestine was

377 Ibid. 378 Ra’if Khuri, “Jihad Filastin” in Thawrat al-Fata al-Arabi: A‘mal Mukhtara min Turath Ra’if Khuri, edited by Ilyas Shakir (Beirut: Dar al-Farabi, 1984), 127-150. 379 Ibid., 130-131. According to Khuri, the revolt had started as a spontaneous movement from the people, but with the guidance of intellectuals (muthaqqafīn) such as his friend Khalil al- Budayri had developed into a conscious organized movement with specific demands. When these demands weren’t acknowledged by the government, the movement became more violent, especially to counter the violence of the colonizers against the people. Khuri did not condemn the violence but rather saw it as necessary in the face of colonialism. Furthermore, he refuted the accusations the British were spreading about the support of fascist Italy to the revolting Arabs, arguing that this could not be possible since Italy and Britain were one and the same with respect to colonial ambitions towards the Arabs – he interestingly labeled Italy as Britain’s Frankenstein that turned against its own creator. 141 strategically important and desirable for the project of British colonialism across the world.380

Making his final call for what he argued was the Arabs’ duty towards Palestine, Khuri called to unite against colonialism. He concluded Jihad Filastin with, “long live the united Arab struggle against British colonialism, the strongest impediment to our unity and our liberation”.381

Khuri’s period teaching in Jerusalem was fundamental for his Palestinian students and the future of Palestine.382 Of his many students were Emile Tuma, Tawfiq Tubi, and his brother

Georges Tubi; all three would form the Arab leadership of the Communist Party of Israel post-

1948. His impact on these students were recorded by none other than Tawfiq and Emile, who in their memoirs identified Khuri as “a role model and source of inspiration in the formation of their political thought even though he was only a few years older than they were”.383 He guided the students towards organizing, including working among disadvantaged children and teaching afternoon classes.384

Ra’if Khuri’s experience in Palestine was not only influential for his students. When in

Palestine between 1936 and 1939, he not only articulated his strongest stances on Zionism, but most importantly on nationalism, fascism, and anti-colonialism. Khuri’s anti-colonialism was at the core of his rejection of fascism, and through that prism, he reexamined the relationship between fascism and nationalism. In “Nahnu wa-l-Fashistiyya” (Us and Fascism), he refuted fascism’s claims to be a nationalist ideology.385 Khuri argued that fascism was colonial

380 Ibid., 141 381 Ibid., 150. 382Mack, “Orthodox and Communist,” 395–96. 383 Mack, 395. See Emile Tuma, The Palestinian National Movement and the Arab World (Tel Aviv: Mifras, 1990) and Tawfiq Tubi, Taufik Toubi – In His Way (1922-2011), edited by Elias Tubi (Haifa: Raya Publishing House, 2012). 384 Merav Mack, “Orthodox and Communist”, 396. 385 Ra’if Khuri, “Nahnu wa-l-Fashistiyya”, al-Tali‘a 2, no.10 (December 1936): 838-845 142 (isti‘māriyya) in nature and therefore antithetical to any national liberation struggle. Khuri made a twofold argument, first, assuming that fascism was nationalistic, he questioned whether it was similar to or useful for ‘our’ kind of nationalism, which is liberationist (taḥarruriyya).386 He had elaborated earlier on this idea of liberationist nationalism, questioning whether the nationalism of the French could be considered the same as the nationalism of the Syrians and the Moroccans for instance when the latter two were fighting to get rid of the rule of the former. Asserting that they could not be the same, Khuri identified two types of nationalisms, the French nationalism which drives it to conquer and take control over land, and the Syrian and Moroccan nationalism that seeks to free itself from the power of the former. He identified the latter form of nationalism as liberationist nationalism (qawmiyya taḥarruriyya).387 To him, aside from a homeland and history, nationalism should be built upon a harmonious social body (hay’a ijtimā‘iyya munsajima),388 that does not exploit the weak and the poor at the expense of the power of the few, landowners and wealth accumulators. The term hay’a ijtimā‘iyya was a concept used by late nineteenth century nahdawi intellectuals to explain progress towards civilization. “For the

Nahda”, explains Khuri-Makdisi, “civilization meant connecting individual interest to social interest; progress towards civilization was achieved when individuals had a strong and fruitful tie with the social body (al-hay’a al-ijtimā‘iyya).”389 This discourse was adapted to socialism in the late nineteenth century, and here used by Khuri to link nationalism to civilization through this social body.

386 Ibid., 838. 387 Ra’if Khuri, “al-Qawmiyya”, al-Tali‘a 2, no.9 (1936), 768-769. This article was initially a talk given by Khuri at the Young Men’s Christian Association in Jerusalem. 388 Ibid., 772 389 Khuri-Makdisi, “Inscribing socialism into the Nahda”, 72-73. 143 Khuri continued to define his version of nationalism, explaining that nationalism cannot live with ignorance and the absence of national education, cannot live with a skewed vision of religion that concentrates on divisions rather than unity, and cannot live with the underdevelopment of women (ta’akhur al-mar’a). Khuri saw the issue of nationalism as crucial for the future of the world; to him, nationalisms that enslave (al-qawmiyāt al-isti‘bādiyya) will only increase the strength and resistance of the liberationist nationalisms if they insist on controlling them; furthermore, the former are not at peace with each other and will continue to bring war into the world in competition over conquered nationalisms. Therefore, for the sake of world peace (silm al-‘ālam), “oppressed nationalisms should be liberated from their enslavement”, he argued. There would be no more conflict over competition, but resources would then be used towards peace and development of the nations of the world.390 Therefore, to

Khuri, nationalism was inherently anti-colonial, but more importantly, colonialism constituted the causes of war.

“We, the sons of oppressed people (al-shu‘ūb al-maqhūra), living under the burden of foreign dominion (siyāda ajnabiyya), understand nationalism as a militant movement (ḥaraka kifāḥiyya) aimed towards our liberation from foreign dominion which we call colonialism (al-isti‘mār)…therefore, our nationalism is liberationist (taḥarruriyya), breaker of chains”.391

In contrast to this liberationist nationalism, Khuri argued that fascist nationalism aimed to conquer – Germany conquering the world as the Nazi anthem says and Japan conquering China first and then the world. He explained that conquest (al-iktisāḥ) stands in contrast to liberation, the aim of ‘our’ nationalism; therefore, fascism’s nationalism stands in extreme contrast to liberationist nationalism.

390 Ra’if Khuri, “al-Qawmiyya”, al-Tali‘a 2, no.9 (1936), 774. 391 Ra’if Khuri, “Nahnu wa-l-Fashistiyya”, al-Tali‘a 2, no.10 (1936), 838-839. 144 Khuri shaped his definition of nationalism in conjunction with other colonized people. He explained that, for instance, Indian nationalism was not only compatible (mutalā’im) but also united (muttaḥid) with his nationalism, since Indian nationalism also aims at liberation. Citing the Indian covenant adopted by its leader on ‘independence day’ of January 26, 1930, Khuri commented on the Indian people’s right to be free and enjoy the fruits of its own labor, and proclaimed: “don’t we feel an extreme closeness, in hopes and emotions, between us and those articulating these words? Let’s replace the ‘Indian’ with ‘Arab’ and question, isn’t this our own national adage?”392 He further proclaimed the complete separation between the struggle of the colonized and their colonizers adding that “there is no path to reconciliation between the master and the slave as long as the slave insists on its freedom and the master persists upon his dominion”.393

Khuri not only proved that the colonized people’s nationalism was different than any other nationalism, he also refuted that fascism was nationalist to start with, questioning, “is fascism truly national?” Again, arguing that conquest (al-iktisāḥ) was the sole purpose of fascism, he continued that that goal required offensive war, and war required militarization and arms acquisition. This was to happen at the expense of the growth of the people and their prosperity. “What kind of nationalism is that which impoverishes its nation (ummatahā) and reduces its living and cultural standards in preparation for an offensive war? ... It is truly a

‘nationalism’ (his quotations) that sins against its own nation.”394 He added that it was not worthy of the honor of the name national (’ism al-waṭaniyya), stating a difference between an

392 Ibid., 840. 393 Ibid., 841. 394 Ibid., 842. 145 offensive war and a war of liberation (ḥarb fī sabīl al-taḥarrur) or a defensive war, the latter two being a duty (wājib). 395

Isolation Has Become an illusion: Anti-Colonialism and Internationalist Nationalism

Ra’if Khuri saw the destiny of Lebanon, Syria, and the Arab countries connected to those of other colonized people and to the future of the war. He argued that fascism was the ‘last breath’ of colonialism and its attempts to stay in power around the world. With the defeat of

Nazism and fascism, colonialism could not ‘revive its youth’ and a new global environment would rise that would be appropriate for the establishment of a free homeland (waṭan ḥurr) that they have been demanding for years.396 A free homeland required a free world, free from a

“colonial spirit” (ruḥ isti‘māriyya).397 Together with ‘Umar Fakhuri, they led a discussion about the significance of viewing the anti-colonial struggle in Lebanon as part of a wider global fight against colonial powers.

‘Umar Fakhuri argued in his book Adib fi-l-Suq that, “We never thought of ourselves as a secluded people in an isolated homeland (waṭan); furthermore, it did not require immense intuition, knowledge, and vision to realize that nations’ isolation has become at this time and age, an illusion.”398 Leftist intellectuals who opposed Nazism and fascism argued for the link between those ideologies and colonialism. More importantly, and as the war progressed, they began to associate the defeat of the Axis powers with the end of colonialism, not only in Lebanon, but around the world. Intellectuals who spoke against fascism and Nazism acknowledged first, that

Germany and its allies represented a direct colonial and military threat to the Arabs in North

395 Ibid. 396 Rai’f Khuri, “Lubnan fi Nafsihi wa-fi al-‘Alam”, al-Tariq 2, no.20 (December 29, 1943), 8-9. 397 Ibid., 7. 398 Fakhuri, Adīb fi-l-sūq, 76. 146 Africa as well as in the Eastern Mediterranean; and second, that the end of the war was going to usher a new future for the colonized people of the world if they fought for independence and freedom during the war.399

For several contributors of al-Tariq, Jawaharlal Nehru and his struggle for independence in India was the example of opposition to Nazism and fascism despite being colonized by those leading the Allied camp. 400 From its first issue, al-Tariq carried a special interest towards Indian national figures, particularly Nehru and Tagore. The first issue in 1941 published excerpts of quotes from Tagore that reflected his awareness of and openness to the world one lives in. It also published news in that same issue on the release of Nehru and the rest of the arrested Indian

National Congress members by the British. In an issue that carried an illustrated portrait of

Nehru on the cover and his famous quotes on the back, al-Tariq’s editorial praised Nehru for understanding that the ongoing war was a war of liberation (ḥarb taḥarruriyya).401

Khuri explained that Nehru understood that this war was not only a war of principles, nations, classes, countries, and colonizers, “it was the war of the world and its entire peoples”.402

In a bid to share the Indian leader’s vision of the world, Khuri argued that he (Nehru) had

“realized that the destiny of the Indian movement was connected to that of the people’s struggle for freedom around the world”.403

399 Antun Tabet, “Al-Nidal Didd al-Naziyya A‘zam Nidal Watani”, al-Tariq 1, no.9 (May 25, 1942): 1-2. 400 Ibid.; “Min Ara’ Tagore” and “Al-Ifraj ‘an al-Za‘im al-Hindi Jawaharlal Nehru”, al-Tariq 1, no.1 (December 20, 1941), 18. 401 Cover of al-Tariq 1, no.9 (May 25, 1941), 1 and “Min Ara’ Za‘im al-Hind Jawaharlal Nehru”, 24. 402 Ra’if Khuri, “‘Arabi Yanzur ila al-Amam”, al-Tariq 1, no.8 (April 30, 1942), 3. 403 “Al-Ifraj ‘an al-Za‘im al-Hindi Jawaharlal Nehru”, al-Tariq 1, no.1 (December 20, 1941), 18. 147 Khuri argued for the entanglement of the process of colonization and liberation of various nations in the ‘east’. He explained that since the Arab East was the bridge between East and

West, then whoever wishes to end up in the ‘far east’ (al-sharq al-ba‘īd), such as India for instance, cannot but pass through the Arab East (al-sharq al-‘arabī).

Therefore, we can conclude that the enslavement (isti‘bād) of the Arab East leads to the enslavement of the Far East, and the enslavement of the Far East leads to the enslavement of the Arab East. Just like their enslavement is intensely intertwined, so is their liberation (taḥarrurihimā)”.404

According to Khuri, the solution to the colonial problem for the Arabs was unity. Colonialism uses the divide and rule (farriq tasud) strategy, it “realizes the strength of a united Arab people”405 and feeds small ‘asabiyāt that divide the Arab people, primarily divisions along the lines of sect, region, race, and family.406 It was only by uniting and becoming aware of these divisions and their damaging effect can Arabs defeat colonialism. In the same vein, if colonized people realized the interconnectedness of their colonialism, they would unite too for their liberation.

However, Khuri also argued that colonialism was weak, and its weakness was due to four major causes. First, because it depended on these divisions to survive, and therefore would be threatened once colonized people start awakening to this fact and refusing these divisions.

Second, it was weak because it was self-conflicting, and its different proponents in constant competition with each other over shares. This point of weakness, Khuri warned, was dangerous because it might be understood then that standing with one colonial power against the other could be useful. “There can only be convergence (talāqi) between a people working to get rid of

404 Ra’if Khuri, “Al-Qawmiya al-Arabiya al-Jami‘a Tariq al-Khalas”, al-Tali‘a 3, no.2/3 (1937), 99. 405 Ibid., 102. 406 Ibid., 104. 148 colonialism and an entity or another people also working towards freedom”, argued Khuri, making his case for a link that unites all the oppressed. Third, colonialism was weak because its front that had been unbroken since World War One had been breached by the fall of Tsarist

Russia and the rise in its place of “a state that contradicts colonialism (dawla tunāqid al- isti‘mār)”407. And the fourth and final cause of weakness for colonialism was the fact that there was opposition to it in its own midst.

Ra’if Khuri’s definition of the national was not only the reverse of fascism, but he developed during the war a conceptualization of the national that was closely tied to the international. In Ma‘alim al-Wa‘i al-Qawmi (Signposts of National Consciousness), Khuri presented a critique of al-Wa‘i al-Qawmi, a book published in 1939 by Qustantine Zurayq.408

Khuri refuted Zurayq’s argument of a ‘shared national consensus’ and his notions of authenticity; rather, he argued that the ‘nation’ was the product of historical circumstances and the development of social and economic factors, and nationalism being primarily the result of the modern industrial revolution.409 He rejected nationally specific ideas and advocated for the existence of more resemblance than difference between nations.410 According to Khuri, there was a shared human experience that crossed ethnic and racial distinctions upon which a nation rests, and that made him redefine the nation in international terms while at the same time emphasizing

407 Ibid., 108. 408 Zurayq Qustantine, Al-Wa‘i al-Qawmi (Beirut: Dar al-Makshuf, 1940). Zurayq was a prominent Arab intellectual and a theoretician of Arab nationalism. A Professor of Medieval History at the American University of Beirut, he published extensively on nationalism and the Arab-Islamic heritage. Khuri respected Zurayq, his former professor at AUB, but saw it necessary to critique his ‘nationalist philosophy’. Zurayq was initially responding to Antun Sa‘adeh’s Nushu’ al-Umam (The Evolution of Nations) published in 1938. 409 Ra’if Khuri, Ma‘alim al-Wa‘i al-Qawmi, 61,77. Khuri also argued against Zurayq’s idea of the spiritual east vs. the materialist west. 410 This also allowed him to reject the idea of a superior West that should be emulated by the East. 149 specific experiences rather than essentialist characteristics that allow the nation to strive towards ideals such as democracy and civil liberties. Nationalisms were divided into two camps, Khuri explained, advanced nationalisms in industrialized countries that sought to economically expand and conquer and led to competition and constant wars over power around the world on the one hand, and oppressed nationalisms that fell victim to the former’s projects and wars, on the other hand.411 Since Arabs belonged to the second type, “their interests are connected to the world’s exit from this historical cycle.”412

Defending Arab Freedom on the Fronts in Spain

The internationalism that Khuri, Fakhuri, and the leftist milieu they constituted projected, was the basis upon which thousands of activists flocked from all over the world to fight against the fascist armies of General Franco in Spain in 1936. Leftists in Lebanon, Syria and the rest of the Levant were involved, directly and indirectly, in the ongoing war in Spain. The Spanish Civil

War, which erupted in July of 1936, marked the beginning of the end of the interwar years, and the unofficial beginning of the Second World War.

There are no complete records or exact numbers of Arabs who fought in the International

Brigades; and we do not have any record of any Lebanese fighting in the war. However, the

Spanish Civil War permeated the publications and discussions of the Left and constituted a major turning point in their outlook towards the future of the world. Leftists who commented and reported about the ongoing conflict saw the war and the people’s struggle for democracy in

Spain, as closely related to the democratic struggle of Arab people and to their national liberation. They developed a definition of fascism as intrinsically colonial and oppressive.

411 Ibid., 77. 412 Ibid., 78. 150 Al-Tali‘a was the first journal to publish the accounts of the Palestinian communist Najati

Sidqi who fought with the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War.413 Excerpts from his memoirs, were published under the title, “Khamsat Ashhur fi Isbaniya al-Jumhuriyya:

Mudhakkarat ‘Arabi Nadala fi al-Jaysh al-Umami (Five Months in Republican Spain: Memoirs of an Arab who Fought in the International Brigades)”.414 The preface to this excerpt read “al-

Tali‘a presents this artifact of the memoirs of an Arab who fought with the International

Brigades for the sake of defending the freedom and democracy of the Spanish people, rather the freedom of the Arabs, that is being threatened by fascist tyranny (ṭughyān)”.415

This link between the freedom of Spain and that of the Arabs was highlighted by the author of the account as well. The author, whom we now know was the Palestinian Najati Sidqi, sent by the Comintern to fight in the ranks of the International Brigades, explicitly made this

413 “Khamsat Ashhur fi Isbaniya al-Jumhuriyya: Mudhakkarat ‘Arabi Nadala fi al-Jaysh al- Umami”, al-Tali‘a 3, no.9 (1937): 791- 801. In his memoirs, Sidqi explained that he was in Moscow when approached by the Comintern to join the war effort in Spain particularly to mobilize the Arabs of Morocco, in the hopes that a revolt in Spanish Morocco would weaken Franco’s forces and change the course of history for northern Africa. In Barcelona, Sidqi was assigned to work in disseminating information and leaflets in Arabic to North African recruits and mercenaries fighting with Franco’s army. In 1937, he came up with the idea of moving to French Algeria to set up a radio station there that can broadcast anti-Franco propaganda to Arab- speaking fighters. The mission proved to be a failure and the station could not be setup. After spending some time in Paris, waiting for instructions for future plans, Sidqi eventually moved to Lebanon. 414 Najati Sidqi wrote his memoirs in two stages: 1958 and 1974 (as his daughter indicated to Abu Hanna in the introduction to the published memoirs). Yet, this excerpt, of which parts appear in his memoirs later, was published in Nov. 1937 in al-Tali‘a – so he must have used this article to write this section of his memoirs, which is indicative also of it being written closer to the event than the other sections of his memoir, also that he chose to include it after he had had a bad experience with the Communist Party is indicative of the authenticity of the memories of this stage of his life. See for his complete published memoirs, Salim Tamari, “Najati Sadqi (1905- 79): The Enigmatic Jerusalem Bolshevik,” Journal of Palestine Studies 32, no. 2 (2003): 79–94, https://doi.org/10.1525/jps.2003.32.2.79. 415 “Khamsat Ashhur fi Isbaniya al-Jumhuriyya: Mudhakkarat ‘Arabi Nadala fi al-Jaysh al- Umami”, al-Tali‘a 3, no.9 (1937), 793. 151 claim when describing his arrival to Barcelona in August of 1936. On the streets, the leader of a group of Republican militiamen approached Sidqi and in Spanish asked whether he would like to join the militia. Sidqi then responded in French: “I am an Arab volunteer, I have come to defend

Arab freedom on the front of Madrid…I have come to defend Damascus in the Valley of Rocks

(Valdepeñas), and Jerusalem in the fields of Cordoba, and Baghdad in Talitala (Toledo), and

Cairo in Andalusia, and Tétouan in Burgos”.416

Khaled Bakdash, the secretary general of the Communist Party of Lebanon and Syria,417 addressed the ongoing war in Spain in his 1937 book, Al-Arab wa-l-Harb al-Ahliyya fi Isbaniya

(Arabs and the Spanish Civil War). He argued that “fascism is the dictatorship of the most brutal colonists,”418 “the terrorist dictatorship (al-diktaturiyya al-irhābiyya)”419 led by capitalists, bank owners, and weapon factory owners who impose absolute power and dissolve all democratic institutions, limiting freedom of expression and any basic human rights. Bakdash argued that in an age where the masses were rising to claim more rights, the capitalists resorted to dictatorship as manifested through fascism to maintain their power. His discussion of fascism correlated it not only with dictatorship rule, but also added to the discussion the dimension of capitalism, while at the same time adhering to the conceptualization of fascism as imperialist in nature.

Bakdash argued that much like Syria and the rest of the Arab lands, Spain had not experienced the revolution of the bourgeoisie, but had maintained certain feudal social elements. However, unlike the Arab regions, Spain was not under colonial rule, and therefore its struggle for liberation was social and not both national and social (the latter having to precede the former).420

416 Ibid., 796 417 From 1936 until his death in 1995. 418 Khalid Bakdash, Al-Arab wa-l-Harb al-Ahliyya fi Isbaniya. (Damascus, 1937), 18. 419 Ibid., 11. 420 Ibid., 34-35 152 What Franco and the fascists were doing in Spain was prevent it from achieving its social revolution, and through fascism, they were also ridding it of its national independence, thereby subjugating the Spanish people to the colonialism of fascism. Therefore, according to Bakdash,

“Franco is fighting his own nation, his own country, his own people, he is fighting Spain! Franco is fighting tortured humanity, he is fighting oppressed people, he is fighting us Arabs!”421

Responses to the rise of fascism and the impending war echoed the anti-colonial discourse that had developed since the 1920s. The rise of nationalist politics in Lebanon and

Syria during the 1930s and the change of communist policy towards the Popular Front line – both from Moscow as well as locally – to collaboration with the nationalist elite by the mid-

1930s, led the communists and the nationalists to converge behind the cause of anti-colonialism and national liberation.

By January 1939, al-Tali‘a and other newspapers reported the increased spread of fascist propaganda between Arab youth, particularly students.422 There was a constant reiteration that the destiny of the Arab lands will be determined in the trenches of Spain as much as in the streets of Beirut, Damascus, and Jerusalem.423 Despite the losses that the Republicans were weathering in Spain, leftist publications continued to publish headlines that “Republican Spain will remain steadfast (taṣmud) till the end.”424 In a March/April 1939 issue of al-Tali’a, the editors declared, in response to the victories ‘gained by fascism’ and the eminent defeat in Spain, “our doctrine will not be shaken”. The editorial reiterated that fascism did not provide a solution to the

421 Ibid., 39. 422 “Hawadith wa-Ahadith”, al-Tali‘a 5, no.1 (January 1939), 76-77. 423 Ibid., 80. 424 “Isbaniya al-Jumhuriyya sa-Tasmud ila al-Nihaya”, al-Tali‘a 5, no.1 (January 1939), 84. 153 problems facing the world; on the contrary, it only intensified them since in its colonial drive to conquer the world it would only create more civil and international strife. 425

The group of leftist intellectuals and activists who were behind the publication of al-

Tali‘a and who had spearheaded the debates in opposition to fascism and Nazism had established

‘Usbat Mukafahat al-Naziyya wa-l-Fashistiyya (the League Against Nazism and Fascism) in

1935.426 The purpose of the League was to counter fascist propaganda and explain the dangers of fascism and Nazism, by holding public gatherings and publishing pamphlets towards these ends.427 However, the League would not be effectively active until 1939, coinciding with the end of the Spanish Civil War and the victory of fascism. With the end of the war in Spain, discussions about fascism and Nazism intensified in the leftist milieus, and intellectuals started realizing the need to take a more direct approach towards countering fascism, to take a stand.

The League Against Nazism and Fascism showed solidarity with International Conference for the Defence of Peace, Democracy, and Humanity organized by the World Committee Against

War and Fascism to take place in Paris on May 13 and 14, 1939.428

425 “‘Aqidatuna la Tataza‘za‘”, al-Tali‘a 5, no.3 (March/April 1939):195-197. 426 Antun Tabet, the head of the League indicated in a May 1942 issue of al-Tariq that the League was established in 1935 in response to the Italian attack on Ethiopia. The opening editorial of al-Tariq in 1941 also declared 1935 as the year for the establishment of the League. However, Sawt al-Sha‘b had reported the establishment of the League on May 22, 1937. See al- Tariq 1, no.12 (May 25, 1942); al-Tariq 1, Special Issue (Dec 1942); al-Tali‘a 5, no.5 (May 1939); Sawt al-Sha‘b, May 22, 1937. 427 Abdullah Hanna, al-Haraka al-Munahida li-l-Fashiyya fi Suriya wa-Lubnan 1933-1945 : Dirasa Wathaʼiqiyya (Beirut: Dar al-Farabi, 1975), 73–84. Primarily, the League in its publications and speeches emphasized fascism (al-fashistiyya) and indicated that the term was inclusive of Nazism (al-naziyya); however we see a more frequent use of the term Nazism than fascism as we move more into the 1940s and the obvious leadership of Germany of the Axis throughout the war. 428 Although there is no evidence of any direct linkages between the League in Lebanon and Syria and the International Conference, the latter was part of the networks of the League Against Imperialism and had links to the Comintern as well as anti-war activists such as Henri Barbusse, 154 No Place for Neutrality: The League Against Nazism and Fascism in Syria and Lebanon and the

Democratic Front

The first public event that the League organized was its first conference in Beirut held in

May 1939. The League was not a direct outlet of the Communist Party despite the cooperation between its main founders and the party.429 Instead, the League represented a network that extended beyond the parameters of the party, by bringing together communists, socialists, and liberal-progressives that had been advocating against fascism and Nazism since around 1933.430

More than 200 representatives of 32 different organizations from Syria and Lebanon, along with several parliamentarians, attended the conference.431 The proceedings of the conference and the speeches given, reported and republished by al-Tali‘a, reveal some of the major ideas and goals of the League. The report of the organizing committee of the conference was presented by Ra’if

Khuri. He reiterated the split of the world between democratic states and fascist states, even when both categories constituted a league of ‘colonial states’ (duwal isti‘māriyya).432

Romain Rolland, and Willi Münzenberg); these networks were not alien to the group behind the League in Lebanon and Syria. 429 The main individuals behind the League were Antun Tabit, Ra’if Khuri, ‘Umar Fakhuri, Yusuf Ibrahim Yazbik, and Qadri al-Qal‘aji. While Tabit and Qal‘aji were members of the Communist Party, the rest of the organizers behind the League were not. Information about those behind the League is from a letter sent to General Catroux in 1943 protesting French actions towards Lebanese elections and the suspension of the constitution in fall of that year that was signed by the central committee of the League Against Nazism and Fascism in Syria and Lebanon, in al-Tariq 2, no.19 (December 7, 1943): 32. 430 This is most evident in the range of individuals present and presenting during the first conference organized by the League in 1939. Some of those who participated were, Ra’if Khuri (who represented the organizational committee), Raja Hurani, Maqbula al-Shalaq, Khalid Bakdash, Ilyas Abu Shabaka, Tawfiq Yusuf ‘Awwad, Antun Tabet (the president of the League), Jubran al-Tuwayni, and Salim Khayyata. Of those parliament representatives who sent in letters in support of the League’s conference, Shukri al-Quwatli and Fayiz al-Khuri. See al-Tali‘a 5, no.5 (May 1939). 431 “Mukafahat al-Fhashistiyya”, al-Tali‘a 5, no.5 (May 1939), 247. 432 Ra’if Khuri, “Taqrir al-Lajna al-Tahdiriyya fi Mu’tamar Mukafahat al-Fashistiyya”, al- Tali‘a 5, no.5 (May 1939), 349-350 155 Those gathered acknowledged the suffering of those colonized by democratic colonial states; however, there was a consensus that supporting fascism was not the solution to the colonial problem. They conferred that fascism was the enemy of independence and national liberation and the enemy of free thought.433 The rationale given by several speakers at the conference was that while rules and policies in a democratic colonial state could by nature change, that was not the case for a fascist state and therefore independence under a colonial fascist state was almost impossible. The speakers at the conference unanimously argued that in a world that was continuously framed along an even stricter binary, people had to take sides. Khuri stated that “neutrality is a joke in the struggle between democracy and fascism,”434 and that it was then more imminent than ever to take a stance. For the League and its supporters, the stance to be taken was clear: “we stand with the democratic front.”435

Antun Tabet, the president of the League, framed the fight against fascism as a patriotic struggle (jihād waṭanī and niḍāl waṭanī).436 He clarified that the congress that brought Syrians and Lebanese together did not carry any party label but was rather a declaration for independence and of support for democratic republican values.437 Emphasizing the need to ratify the French-Lebanese and French-Syrian agreements, Tabit announced that “the fight to ally with democratic France, and the fight against the danger of fascism, is at the moment the greatest national liberation struggle.”438

433 Tawfiq Yusuf ‘Awwad, “Haqiqat al-Fashistiyya”, al-Tali‘a 5, no.5 (May 1939): 384-389. 434 Khuri, “Taqrir al-Lajna al-Tahdiriyya fi Mu’tamar Mukafahat al-Fashistiyya”, 358. 435 Ibid. 436 Ibid., 357; Antun Tabit, “Kalimat Ra’is ‘Usbat Mukafahat al-Fashistiyya”, al-Tali‘a 5, no.5 (May 1939), 395. 437 Ibid., 393. 438 Ibid., 395. 156 In his address to the League, Khaled Bakdash announced that the victory of fascism would bring an end to the national liberation movements in various Arab countries such as Syria and Palestine. He declared that fascism was seeking to take over the colonies of the rest of

Europe and further subjugate the people of these colonies to oppression.439 Therefore, fascism constituted a direct threat to Arab countries and no longer simply an ideological issue.440 To those calling for neutrality, Bakdash warned, a fascist win will never differentiate between those who stood against it and those who remained neutral.

Other letters and speeches reiterated this threat and emphasized the need to take effective action against fascism both in the Arab world as well as the world at large. The League’s conference highlighted fascism as the enemy of culture and ideas, specifically Arabic culture, making it the Arab men of letters’ job to fight it.441 Calling for Arab unity against fascism, the

League declared the need for Arabs to take a stand with the democratic front.

The decisions of the conference concentrated on the relationship between France and

Britain on the one hand and their mandates in Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine on the other hand.

Participants at the conference underlined the need to rectify the French-Syrian and French-

Lebanese treaties and a solution to the problem in Palestine. The decisions also tackled French policies in Lebanon and Syria towards fascist propaganda, demanding the French government’s respect of democratic freedoms of the people and upholding of democratic principles. Moreover, the conference emphasized the necessity of the resolution of the Palestine issue. Those convened

439 Khalid Bakdash, “al-Fashistiyya wa-l-Shu‘ub al-‘Arabiyya”, al-Tali‘a 5, no. 5 (May 1939), 369-370. 440 Khuri, “Taqrir al-Lajna al-Tahdiriyya fi Mu’tamar Mukafahat al-Fashistiyya”, 380 441 Ilyas Abu Shabaka, “al-Fashistiyya Qatilat al-Fikr”, al-Tali‘a 5, no. 5 (May 1939), 382-383; and Raja Hurani, “al-Fashistiyya wa-l-Thiqafa al-‘Arabiyya”, al-Tali‘a 5, no.5 (May 1939), 359- 363. 157 decided on sending a letter of support to the anti-fascist conference taking place in Paris on May

13-14, asking solidarity with the Syrian-Lebanese League.442

Although it would not hold another public conference until December 1942, the League grew throughout the early years of the Second World War, with several branches opening in various cities around Syria and Lebanon. The lag between the first congress in 1939 and 1941 when al-Tariq appeared might be explained by the takeover of Lebanon by pro-German Vichy

French forces from June 1940 until July 1941 in which anti-fascist activities were curbed. It also had to do with the confusion that the Left experienced with the signing of the non-aggression pact between Germany and the Soviet Union in August of 1939, just before the war erupted, which lasted until Germany invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. Between the ‘liberation’ of Syria and Lebanon from Vichy in 1941 and the defeat of the Axis powers in North Africa in

1942, anti-fascists activities increased in Lebanon. By 1942 the League had established branches in Tripoli, Zahle, Homs, Aleppo, Damascus, and Jerusalem. These branches organized lectures, parties, and opened offices and meeting halls to increase interaction between the leadership of the League and the people.443 The Beirut branch had remained as the central branch, and the leadership in Beirut continued to make periodic trips to the various branches to hold gatherings and celebrations.

In April of 1942, ‘Umar Fakhuri, Ra’if Khuri, Qadri al-Qal‘aji, and Antun Tabit made a trip as leaders of the League from Beirut to Syria, with stops in Tripoli, Homs, and Aleppo. They met League representatives in these areas444, as well as some local political leaders and French

442 “Muqarrarat Mu’tamar Mukafahat al-Fashistiyya”, al-Tali‘a 5, no.5 (May 1939): 390-391 443 Antun Tabet, “Taqrir al-Sukritar al-‘Am Antun Tabit”, al-Tariq 1, Special Issue (December 1942), 24 444 Samih Alamuddine and Salim Khayyata in Tripoli, Wasfi al-Banna in Homs, and Edward Tutunji in Aleppo. 158 officials,445 asserting their stance in the war with the democratic nations of the world and against fascism and its elements.446 In July of that same year, a committee of the Beirut central branch of the League made a trip to Damascus at the invitation of the city’s branch of the League. The trip included several organized gatherings by the League, its women’s branch in Damascus,447 the

Democratic Student League, as well as a visit to the Communist Party office in the city,448 and a gathering at Café al-Kamal.449 Other meetings by League branches across Lebanon consisted of similar events, and between 100 to often 500 people attended some of these public meetings where it seems gatherings attracted more people than just the members of the League.450 The purpose of these public rallies was to link existing branches of the League and found new ones, examine the economic and political situations of these regions, and spread the principles of the

League among the elite and the public through debates and lectures.451

The second conference of the League, which was held on December 18 -20, 1942, proved the extent of the work its members had done in spreading the anti-fascist message. There were 38

445 They met with Abd el-Hamid Karami and Syrian President Hisham al-Atasi. 446 See al-Tariq 1, no. 8 (April 30 1942). 447 It was attended by around 250-300 women and speeches were given by Maqbula al-Shalaq (secretary of the women’s branch of the League), ‘Umar Fakhuri, and Ra’if Khuri, see al-Tariq 1, no. 13 (July 1942) 448 They met with leaders of the Communist Party: Khalid Bakdash, Rashad Issa, and Fawzi al- Za’im. 449 “Fi Dimashq al-‘Arabiyya”, al-Tariq 1, no. 13 (July 1942): 21-24. 450 For instance, a meeting of the League branch in Zahle on August 23, 1942 with participants from the Beirut Branch (Ra’if Khuri, Antun Tabit, Qadri al-Qal‘aji, and Michel Baddura). It was attended by 500 men and women, although numbers cannot be taken very accurately since they were mostly reported by the League, with speeches about the dangers of fascism and Nazism on the freedom and independence of the Arab people, on the future of the world, and therefore the need to fight. See “‘Usbat Mukafahat al-Naziyya wa-l-Fashistiyya fi Zahle” and “Bayan ‘Usbat Mukafahat al-Naziyya wa-l-Fashistiyya bi-Dimashq”, al-Tariq 1, no. 15 (August 31 1942), 16- 17. 451 ‘Umar Fakhuri, “Tahiyya min ‘Umar Fakhuri ila al-Shabab al-Muthaqqaf”, al-Tariq 1, no.8 (April 30, 1942),10-11. 159 representatives from 9 different participating branches in Lebanon and Syria: Beirut, Damascus,

Homs, Tripoli, the Shuf region, Aleppo, the Alawite region, Biqa‘, and Marji‘yun. Speakers emphasized the dangers of fascism and Nazism on cultural, intellectual, social, and political life.452 The conference attendees argued for the connectivity of national struggles around the world and their relation to the fight against fascism.453

The head of the League, Antun Tabit presented the organization’s progress report and its achievements in which he described the main activities League members in various branches were undertaking to work against fascist propaganda in Syria and Lebanon. He announced that the war has reached a turning point against fascism and Nazism, and that was made possible through one factor alone, the strength and victories of the Red Army.454 Tabit acknowledged the successes and appeal of the League and the journal al-Tariq to greater numbers of people. He emphasized the need for intellectuals and those involved in the fight against fascism to reach out to the public, particularly trying to engage with people across the political spectrum rather than continuing to “speak to each other.”455 This cross-political collaboration which he saw manifested in the League and through al-Tariq was important, according to Tabit, for the gathering of all democratic factions in the struggle for instating a true democratic rule.

Taking a Stand While Looking at the Past: Democracy, the Nahda, and Progress

Fascism and Nazism had provided a model for totalitarian and authoritarian rule, and those who opposed this model increased the calls for democratic rule. ‘Umar Fakhuri argued that

452 ‘Umar Fakhuri, “al-Watan, Watan al-Jamahir”, al-Tariq 1, Special Issue (December 1942): 2- 4. 453 Wasfi al-Banna, “A‘da’ li-l-Fashistiyya li-Annana ‘Arab”, al-Tariq 1, Special Issue (December 1942), 7; Qadri al-Qal‘aji, “Sira‘ al-Qawmiyyat fi al-Harb al-Hadira”, al-Tariq 1, Special Issue (December 1942): 18- 21. 454Antun Tabit, “Taqrir al-Sukritar al-‘Am Antun Tabit”, 22-23. 455 Ibid., 24. 160 their country was an inseparable part of the rest of the world and therefore the future of this world would determine the future of their country. Only democracy, he asserted, would guarantee that a future world would bring peace and independence to all people of the world, and that was why “the Syrian Lebanese youth stand on the side of democracy”.456

Prior to the parliamentary elections that brought the nationalists to power and precluded independence in fall of 1943, al-Tariq featured articles and editorials in support of the ‘people’s democratic candidates’, referring to ‘Umar Fakhuri and Niqula Shawi for Beirut, Farjallah el-

Hilu for Jbeil, and Khaled Bakdash for Damascus.457 The events of November 1943 in Lebanon, primarily the imprisonment of the main figures of government and the president of the republic by the French authorities in an attempt to curtail demands for national independence, were also framed by several leftist intellectuals as a result of the connection between the national struggle and the anti-fascist struggle. Al-Tariq published a direct declaration in the name of the League addressed to the French High Commissioner, denouncing French actions – suspension of the constitution and dissolution of parliament, and the imprisonment of political figures – as demonstrating a fascist-like spirit.458 Furthermore, the League members argued in al-Tariq that while they were the only ones writing, gathering, and speaking in Lebanon during the war, the political scene was rather lacking any other actions towards the national struggle.459

‘Umar Fakhuri questioned whether it was a coincidence that the Lebanese calls for independence had intensified and reached a turning point around the same time fascism was

456 ‘Umar Fakhuri, “Tahiyya min ‘Umar Fakhuri ila al-Shabab al-Muthaqqaf”, 10. 457 “Khitab Ra’is ‘Usbat Mukafahat al-Naziyya wa-l-Fashistiyya”, al-Tariq 1, no.9 (June 1, 1943) 458 “Fi Sabil al-Istiqlal”, al-Tariq 2, no.19 (December 7, 1943), 32. 459 Antun Tabet, “Nidaluna al-Watani wa-Nidaluna Didd al-Naziyya”, al-Tariq 2, no.20 (December 29, 1943), 3. 161 incurring heavy defeats. There was a reason for this timing of the November events, Fakhuri argued. The war had revealed,

“[…] that Lebanon is part of the world so it cannot exit it, and that the destiny of Lebanon is highly contingent upon the outcome of the war. So there is no point separating its destiny from its outcomes. This world war is our war, just like world peace will be our peace too…so there is nothing in this world that does not concern us, whether we agree or not, or know it or not”.460

This was a ‘Lebanese truth’ (ḥaqīqa lubnāniyya) that could not be separated from a general truth, that “freedom in the world is, like peace, an indivisible unit.”461 This point reiterated the arguments put forth by members of the League regarding the connection of the national liberation struggle of colonized people around the world, while emphasizing the war-time rhetoric that upheld the end of the age of colonialism with the defeat of Nazism.

Leftists who debated democracy and called for it in the Arab context utilized nahdawi approaches of building a lineage between their arguments and Arabo-Islamic heritage. In a lecture he gave in Damascus at a cultural meeting held by the League Against Nazism and

Fascism in 1942, Khuri embarked on an overview of the conditions in which Arabs were living before the advent of Islam and concluded that they were a people in need of a nahda from a life that was backward (ḥayāt muta’akhkhira) economically, socially, intellectually, and ethically

(akhlāqiyyan), and that they embraced Islam as a way towards nahda (fī sabīl al-nahda) from this backward life.462 Khuri, himself a Christian, reasoned that Islam worked as a unifier between the various warring tribes, as a breaker of idols and intellectual backwardness, as a supporter for women, for the poor against the wealthy merchants, and as a defender of human’s humanity

460 ‘Umar Fakhuri, “al-Haqiqa al-Lubnaniyya”, al-Tariq 2, no.20 (December 29, 1943), 6. 461 Ibid. 462 “al-Turath al-Qawmi al-Arabi: Nahnu Humatuhu wa-Muk-mi-luh” (Arab National Heritage: We are its protectors and its continuance) in Ra’if Khuri, Ma‘alim al-Wa‘i al-Qawmi wa- Maqalat Ukhra (Beirut: al-Markaz al-‘Arabi li-l-Abhath wa-Dirasat al-Siyasa, 2015):159. 162 (insāniyyat al-insān) against ignorance (jahil), oppression (ẓulm), and humiliation (dhull).463 He brought in examples from early Arab history of how Islam managed to achieve these, upholding the struggle against “ignorance, oppression, and humiliation, and all that deforms human’s humanity…this flame…it is our tradition (taqlīdana) that we will not forsake, it is our great Arab heritage.”464

What the Arabs had developed in common with other cultures – and here, he cited the

French revolution’s ‘contrat social’ and Jean-Jacques Rousseau – was the responsibility of power as a covenant given to the ruler by his subjects (ra‘iyya), a trusteeship (amāna) in the hands of the ruler handed to him by his people. “If they (the rulers) mistreat it (the trusteeship),”

Khuri argued, “they were considered unfit for the amāna and justly ridden of it.”465 Khuri gave examples from the rule of Mu‘awiya and the poetry of al-Farazdaq, and how Mu‘awiya’s moves towards absolute rule found resistance amongst the Arabs. However, he contended that these characteristics that make up the Arab heritage were not solely Arab per se. He added that for those who allege that the Arabs love individual dictatorship rule (ḥukum al-diktatūr al-fardī), for those who want the Arabs to abandon their position regarding the ongoing world struggle: “it is enough to know that we are Arabs, meaning nothing will deter us from the main goal we, and the people of the world, are calling for, the goal of freedom and true democracy to the world.”466

Drawing from the example of Abu Bakr al-Siddiq, the companion of the Prophet Muhammad and the first Muslim Caliph, who entrusted his army not to commit treason, murders against women and children, and killing of animals and cutting of trees, “How could you want us to find

463 Ibid., 160. 464 Ibid., 164-165. 465 Ibid., 166. 466 Ibid., 167. 163 an inch of common ground to stand on alongside the Nazi tyrants…slayers of the freedoms of weak people […] burners of books”467, he asked, comparing the Nazis to the Mongol siege of

Baghdad in the 13th century and its destruction of the libraries of Baghdad. He concluded by making the link between Arab heritage and anti-fascism, “Are we not then, brothers, … in fighting Nazism and Fascism, trustees upon the spirit of the great Arab national heritage…?

...Indeed!”468 Khuri then ended on a high note, arguing that whatever victories Hitler may be scoring were but his final breaths for his end was near, and adding that “ […] Then, (when

Hitler is defeated) Arabism (al-‘urūba) will occupy its organic place in a free, democratic, and prosperous world. And the old Arab nahda current will fuse with its new current.”469

When Ra’if Khuri argued for a long Arab national heritage of just and democratic rule by referencing reactions to Mu‘awiya’s ruling tactics, the mercy of Abu Bakr al-Siddiq, and al-

Ma’mun’s love of knowledge, what mattered was not the validity of the arguments he made. One can hardly make anachronistic democratic claims for those Arab leaders, regardless of their character and rule. What mattered however, was the conviction, the tenacity, and the purpose with which Khuri made his argument. He created a lineage for a just, liberal, and democratic

‘spirit’ in Arab history to convince his readers and listeners of the importance of democracy as a system of rule, and its significance in the face of rising fascism. Therefore, embracing democracy became part and parcel of fighting fascism, and vice versa. The lineage was also his argument towards placing Arab history and ultimately Arab realities and future as part and parcel of the world and its destiny.

467 Ibid. 468 Ibid., 169. 469 Ibid. 175. 164 Khuri’s ideas were echoed by other leftists who argued for a longer Arab history of opposition to forces of oppression. Contributors to al-Tariq referenced anecdotes from Arab history to argue for fighting fascism. “Our national heritage is the heritage of freedom, equality, and fraternity”, argued al-Qal‘aji in a speech he gave at a League gathering in Tripoli, in a clear nod to the principles of the French revolution.470 Since Nazism and fascism represented the opposite of these ideals, then they were antithetical to Arab heritage and a threat to it. Therefore, fighting fascism meant fighting for Arab heritage, it was a national duty.

Moreover, contributors identified Nazism as directly threatening Arab cultural heritage, and therefore preserving and reviving it was part of the League’s mission so that free Arab thought (al-fikr al-‘arabī al-ḥurr) could play its rightful role in preserving humanity.471 The members of the League saw themselves as the “inheritors (warathat) of Arab national heritage and its continuation”, since the League made it its mission to create interest in studying Arab history.472

This nahdawi approach of searching for the roots of ideas and movements within Arabo-

Islamic heritage echoed across the political spectrum as well. As Nordbruch has shown, the

Beiruti newspaper Lisan al-Hal, the Aleppine al-Hadith, and the Saida based al-‘Irfan also published editorials and articles discussing democracy and linking its roots to an Arabo-Islamic heritage. Lisan al-Hal and al-‘Irfan argued that the Arab-Muslim world had stood with democracy throughout the war because the Prophet, and Islam as a religion, had always upheld democratic principles and supported the French maxim of freedom, equality, and fraternity –

470 Qadri al-Qal‘aji, “al-Muthaqqafun wa-l-Siyasa”, al-Tariq 2, no.12 (July 18, 1943), 15. 471 “Risalat al-‘Usba”, al-Tariq 1, no.1 (Dec 20 1941), 22; Abd al-Qadir Isma‘il, “Harb al-Nur wa-l-Zulma”, al-Tariq 1, no.3 (February 1 1942): 3-4. 472 Qadri al-Qal’aji, “al-Muthaqqafun wa-l-Siyasa”, al-Tariq 2, no.12 (July 18, 1943), 13 in reference to Khuri’s “al-Turath al-Qawmi al-Arabi: Nahnu Humatuhu wa-Mukmiluh”. 165 establishing links between Islam and democracy.473 Salah al-Asir on French Radio Orient and through al-Hadith made a link between the ‘East’ and democracy, arguing that based on this link, it was the East’s duty to counter fascism and Nazism.474 Jubran al-Tuwayni argued in the

Beiruti journal al-Adib for the inherent existence of democratic principles in Arab civilization.475

Al-Adib, which published contributions that spanned the political spectrum,476 pushed a recurring theme of humanism and human rights throughout the range of these contributions. Writers also linked racial theories to discussions on imperialism. On its pages, Nazism, racism, individual rights, and totalitarianism were discussed, while writers such as Tuwayni continued to emphasize democracy as essential to Arab heritage. As Nordbruch argues, while this image “had in the past often been applied in confrontations with the mandate power, now the defense of democracy as an authentic tradition had increasingly gained importance as an argument in inner-Arab controversies as well.”477

The Arabo-Islamic heritage was one side of the discussion of a democracy, the other concentrated on the continuous debate on progress and the need to achieve it. Leftists discussed the debate on progress extensively within the pages of the journal al-Tariq. Predominantly, the journal’s articles and discussions adhered to a positivist understanding of the world, arguing for the significance of science and for the linearity of history. Al-Tariq very early on declared the importance of uncovering truths, and that it would provide its readers with evidence (al-barahīn)

473Nordbruch, “A Challenge”, 48. 474 Ibid. 475 Ibid., 51. 476 Contributors included prominent Arab nationalists such as Qustantin Zurayq and Edmond Rabbat, as well as leftists such Ilyas Abu Shabaka, ‘Umar Fakhuri, Qadri al-Qal‘aji, and Ra’if Khuri. 477 Ibid. 166 and true knowledge (ma‘rifa saḥīḥa), to reveal reality (al-wāqi‘). 478 This reality was that two forces were fighting in the world, democratic forces and regressive forces, respectively representing progress and backwardness. “Fascism or Nazism, this regressive dark movement

(al-ḥaraka al-raj‘iyya al-sawdā’), wants to stand against historical progress […] that is why we are the staunch enemies of Nazism and fascism; historical progress (al-taṭawwur al-tārīkhī) placed in front of humanity a higher goal of moving forward”, towards a democracy that guarantees fast evolution (ruqiyyan sarī‘an).479 Since the victory of fascism and Nazism meant the victory of these regressive forces and the beginning of a period of oppression for all peoples of the world, opposing it was a duty for all those who saw progress as the way for humanity to move forward. 480 The war itself represented an impediment to the evolution of humanity and its progress, and only when it was over could the world continue to move towards a just system of equality.481

Furthermore, intellectuals who discussed the issue of progress and modernity emphasized the advancement of the ‘West’ and the lag of the ‘East’, and more specifically the Arabs. Some authors, such a Fakhuri, questioned the categories of ‘east’ and ‘west’, arguing that in the longue durée of human history, cultural exchanges have shown that civilizational progress shifts from one center to the other, between east and west and within these categories. Moreover, Fakhuri argued, after the First World War, the West had questioned its civilization (madaniyya) and progress. However, much of the consensus was that the East had stayed behind – the term used was almost always ‘slept’ – while the West advanced. This lag was sometimes historicized, and

478 “Risalat al-‘Usba”, al-Tariq 1, no.1 (December 20, 1941): 1,22; Wasfi al-Banna, “Raj‘iyya Qadima wa-Raj‘iyya Jadida”, al-Tariq 1, no.1 (December 20, 1941): 6-7. 479 Bahith ‘Arabi, “Ma Hiya al-Dimuqratiyya”, al-Tariq 1, no.4 (February 20, 1942), 19. 480 Ibid. 481 “Risalat al-‘Usba”, 22. 167 it was explained in various fields, including intellectually, militarily, economically, artistically, and politically.482

The backwardness of the ‘east’, and specifically the Arab east, however, had begun to end with the awakening of the nineteenth century. Al-Tariq not only mentioned and discussed the nahda of the nineteenth century, but its contributors constantly positioned themselves as a continuation of that renaissance. First, they highlighted the ideas of the late nineteenth and early twentieh century nahda by republishing and quoting the works of main nahda figures and by referencing them as the predecessors (al-sābiqūn).483 Of those main figures featured were

Muhammad Abduh, Abd el-Rahman al-Kawakibi, Adib Ishaq, and Shubli al-Shumayyil.

Furthermore, beginning with the third volume of al-Tariq in 1944 and into 1945, the journal started featuring illustrations on the covers of each issue of portraits of a wide range of literary and political figures such as Ibn al-Muqaffa‘, Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, Muhammad Abduh,

Jubran Khalil Jubran, and Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. First, this range of figures widened the scope of the concept of al-sābiqūn while showing the immense range in ideas that those responsible for the journal’s publication adhered to.484 Second, and most significantly regarding this point, the writers who argued for fighting fascism and Nazism on the pages of al-Tariq harkened to an

Arab golden age to which they created connections to the present, in a very nahdawi manner.485

482 ‘Umar Fakhuri, “Kalimat al-Shabab”, al-Tariq 1, no.13 (July 1942), 2 and 24. 483 For more on the concept of al-sābiqūn, see Leyla Dakhli, Une Génération d’Intellectuels Arabes: Syrie et Liban, 1908-1940 (Paris: IISMM, 2009). 484 While adherence to the figures of the nahda is understandable given that these intellectuals behind the publication of al-Tariq wanted to argue for themselves as the continuation of the nahda, the juxtaposition of figures such as Jubran and Lenin shows the different direction this network wished to take the current of the nahda. 485 al-Tariq continuously featured republications and highlights of late 19th century/early 20th century nahda reformists and major figures. See Ra’if Khuri, “Dawr al-Fikr fi al-Tarikh”, al- Tariq 1, no.3 (February 1, 1942), 2 and 22; see also Qadri al-Qal‘aji, “Muhammad Abdu, Hayatuhu wa-‘Amaluhu”, al-Tariq 3, no.3 (February 1944):3-4, “Jamal al-Din al-Afghani”, al- 168 For leftist intellectuals, the backwardness of the ‘east’ had been challenged by one particular ‘eastern’ power that had proven its worth among the advanced nations of the world, the Soviet Union. They argued consistently and persistently that the Soviet Union represented a

‘miraculous’ case, a success story of a country that managed to rapidly modernize and even exceed the levels of progress and sophistication of western nations.

The Soviet Union: the Cornerstone of Civilization and a Model for Progress

In an almost overwhelming majority of articles that filled the pages of al-Tariq and

League speeches, contributors agreed that the Soviet Union constituted the one example in the world of a group of people who had been suffering from that backwardness but have managed to progress and even surpass the ‘west’ in a very short matter of time. Articles in al-Tariq carried descriptions of the levels of development the Soviet Union had achieved socially and economically.486 However, the highest point of fascination with the Soviet Union was its military might, manifested clearly in its successes in the face of the German war machine.

A majority of the covers of the journal were dedicated to showcasing the might of the

Soviet Red Army against Nazi soldiers, often with a Red Army soldier representing the Soviet

Union crushing a Swastika, or in another instance, stabbing a dragon that had the face of

Hitler.487 A special double issue of al-Tariq was dedicated to the anniversary of the Red Army in

Tariq 3, no.4 (March 1, 1944): 18-19, “Jamal al-Din al-Afghani”, al-Tariq 3, no.5 (March 20, 1944): 9, 21; “Adib Ishaq”, al-Tariq 3, no.6 (April 3, 1944): 3-4. 486 Some of the article on the Soviet Union in volume 1 alone: “al-Hayat al-‘Amma fi al-Ittihad al-Sufyati”, no. 2; “al-dimuqratiya al-sufyatiya”, no. 11; “Yusuf Stalin”, no.12; “Masadir Quwat al-Ittihad al-Suvyati”, no. 13; “Khitab Stalin”, no. 20; “Fi Stalingrad”, no.20; “Mukafahat al- Bagha’ fi al-Ittihad al-Sufyati”, no. 21; “al-Atfal fi al-Ittihad al-Sufyati”, no. 16. 487 See covers of al-Tariq 1, no.3 and no.4. 169 1943.488 Articles highlighted the army’s exceptionalism in fighting Axis forces, describing almost miraculous and legend-like stories of the Soviets’ prowess and might.489 The victories of the Red Army were the reason the Arab lands were spared Nazi invasion, argued Fakhuri in his speech during a celebration of the Red Army, and therefore the ‘friendship’ with the Soviet

Union was largely based on admiration of the achievements of the Red Army during the war.490

While Fakhuri argued that the Soviet Union was “the cornerstone (ḥajar al-zāwiya) for building a new world…for building a new humanity,”491 Yusuf Yazbik acknowledged the Soviet constitution as a declaration of freedom (wathīqat ḥuriyya).492

‘Umar Fakhuri established Jam‘iyyat Asdiqa’ al-Ittihad al-Sufyati (Friends of the Soviet

Union) in 1942 to bring together intellectuals who saw the Soviet Union as the defender of freedom, justice and democracy around the world.493 The organization was made up of a handful of intellectuals and activists who constituted the same leftists circles of the League, al-Tariq, and previously al-Tali‘a.494 It sought to educate people about the Soviet Union and its significance to the world, stating in its manifesto that was published in al-Tariq in 1942 that, “there is no one today than can doubt that the stability of world peace (al-silm al-‘ālami), the flourishing of

488 al-Tariq 2, no.3/4 (March 20, 1943). The issue included articles on the Soviet Union generally – education, economy, intellectual life…etc., including ‘Umar Fakhuri’s seminal article “al-Ittihad al-Sufyati Hajar al-Zawiya”– as well as on the Red Army. 489 Khaled Bakdash gave his speech “al-‘Arab wa-l-Jaysh al-Ahmar” at a gathering celebrating the anniversary of the Red Army, al-Tariq 2, no. 3/4 (March 20, 1943), 2 and 46. 490 On the Friends of the Soviet Union see “Nida’ Min Jam‘iyyat Asdiqa’ al-Ittihad al-Sufyati”, al-Tariq 1, no.2 (November 1942), 24. ‘Umar Fakhuri, “al-Ittihad al-Sufyati Hajar al-Zawiya”, 20. 491 Ibid., 23. 492 Yusuf Yazbik, “al-Dustur al-Sufyati Wathiqat al-Huriyya”, al-Tariq 2, no.3/4 (March 20, 1943): 24-27. 493 “Nida’ Min Jam‘iyyat Asdiqa’ al-Ittihad al-Sufyati”, al-Tariq 1, no.2 (November 1942), 24. 494 Some of those who signed the manifesto on the pages of al-Tariq, signifying their belonging to this organization were: ‘Umar Fakhuri, Kamil ‘Ayyad, Yusuf Ibrahim Yazbik, Imili Faris Ibrahim,R Raja Hurani, Wasfi al-Banna, and Niqula Shawi 170 civilization (al-ḥadāra) and culture, and the independence of small nations depends on the victory of the Soviet Union and its democratic allies.”495 The Friends of the Soviet Union called for all those who believed that the Soviet Union was the upholder of democracy and civilization in the world, to join their ranks and support their cause.

Fakhuri believed that “we, in the League Against Nazism and Fascism, and we, in the

Friends of the Soviet Union organization…are closer to Lebanon, Arabism (al-‘urūba), and to the East.”496 According to Fakhuri, the Soviet Union “is today paying the highest price to defend the freedom of the world and its civilizational heritage (turāthihi al-madani)” from the Nazi hoards, adding that “we did not intrude and impose our friendship on this great friend (al-ṣadīq al-‘aẓīm)”. Rather this friend had reached out since its inception towards the smaller nations (al- shu‘ūb al-ṣaghīra) and built its policies in line with the right of nations to self-determination

(ḥaqq al-umam fī taqrīr masīr dhātiha bi-dhātiha)…“we, at least, know how to choose our friends”.497

Two gatherings organized by the Friends of the Soviet Union held in Beirut and in

Damascus in November 1943, around the time of the events leading to independence, were convened in celebration of the anniversary of the October Revolution. 498 The speakers during those meetings praised the Soviet Union as the place where the destiny of humanity was being decided. Qadri al-Qal‘aji and ‘Umar Fakhuri saw the Soviet Union as standing free and strong in the face of forces that have managed to oppress even the most evolved (arqa) and independent people of the world (in reference to western Europe). It had also managed to do so without

495 Ibid. 496 Fakhuri, Adib fi-l-Suq, 76. 497 Fakhuri, 79–80. 498 al-Tariq 2, no.19 (December 7, 1943). 171 resorting to colonialism and oppression, and by supporting other people’s freedoms and rights.499

The Soviet Union had therefore become “the firmest pillar of civilization (al-madaniyya)”500, advancing centuries of historical progress in a matter of years.501

While the Friends of the Soviet Union showcased the Soviet Union’s achievements and qualities, articles in al-Tariq also analyzed the reason behind this success, this rapid journey towards modernity. The various contributors pre-dominantly attributed the successes of the

Soviet Union to its socialist system. Several articles on the Soviet socialist system argued that as the main engine behind social, economic, and military progress in the Soviet Union, socialism had allowed it to overcome many obstacles in the road to modernity. Of the main obstacles al-

Tariq’s articles kept mentioning was the ability to reconcile various nationalisms within the

Soviet Union. While some praised the Soviet Union as an example of people from different nations, tongues, and histories coming together under the Soviet banner, others argued that equality within Soviet state and society as guaranteed by the constitution made that possible.502

This equality was the result of the socialist principle of cooperation and free union that the first

Soviet Congress had established.503 Examples from across the Soviet Union, such as Uzbekistan, were brought up by various contributors to showcase the compatibility of nationalism and socialism within the Soveit Union.504

499 Qadri al-Qal‘aji, “Rasul al-Salam wa-Nasir al-Shu‘ub al-Da‘ifa”, al-Tariq 2, no. 18/19 (December 7, 1943): 2-3, 31 and ‘Umar Fakhuri, “al-Dunya al-Fadila”, al-Tariq 2, no. 18/19 (December 7, 1943): 7-8. 500 Qadri al-Qal‘aji, Rasul al-Salam wa-Nasir al-Shu‘ub al-Da‘ifa”, 31. 501 ‘Umar Fakhuri, “al-Dunya al-Fadila”, 8. See also al-Tariq 3, no.8 (April 1944), reports on the exhibit in Damascus and later Beirut “The Soviet Union During the War”. 502 Qadri al-Qal‘aji, “Tahiyya ila al-Shu‘ub al-Sufyatiyya”, al-Tariq 1, no.20 (November 1942): 1, 21- 24; “al-Qawmiyyat fi al-Ittihad al-Sufyati” al-Tariq 2, no.3/4 (March 20, 1943): 37-40. 503 “al-Qawmiyyat fi al-Ittihad al-Sufyati”, 37. 504 ‘Umar Fakhuri, “al-Dunya al-Fadila”, 7-8; Abd al-Qadir Isma‘il, “al-Hayat al-Qawmiyya fi al-Ittihad al-Sufyati”, 9-11, 29. 172 The articles also emphasized the important global role the Soviet Union would be assuming with the end of the war. ‘Umar Fakhuri argued that the Soviet Union’s principle of

‘national freedom’ (al-ḥuriyya al-qawmiyya) would guarantee a stable world in which nations’ freedoms, rights, and wishes would be respected.505 He further justified that standing with democracy against fascism and standing with the Soviet Union had produced some positive results, including independence and promises of re-launching constitutional life, adding that therefore, “the activities of our organizations that appeared foreign to national and patriotic life were at the heart of this life.”506

Conclusion

For the intellectuals and activists within this leftist milieu who drew closer to the Soviet

Union during World War Two, the end of colonialism came with the end of the war, because colonialism and capitalism were the leading forces of that war. They believed that once fascism was defeated, the war would end, and that would also bring the end of imperialism across the world. They saw the Soviet Union as the sole power that stood against both colonialism and capitalism; it was the hero of that war and the world that was to emerge after it.

In the years preceding and during the Second World War, the Left spearheaded the anti- fascist struggle. This position, which required intellectuals to take a political stance and publicly declare their allegiances during the war, led to wider discussions about democratic rule, nationalism, progress, and the role of socialism and the Soviet Union in the post-war world.

Opposing fascism confronted intellectuals with the need to define it. In turn, they realized the need to define their own nationalism, especially since fascism was appealing to nationalistic

505 ‘Umar Fakhuri, “al-Haqiqa al-Lubaniyya”, 6; Antun Tabet, “Nidaluna al-Watani wa- Nidaluna Dud al-Naziyya”, 3. 506 Fakhuri, Adib fi-l-Suq, 80. 173 tendencies. ‘Umar Fakhuri and Ra’if Khuri, the two leftists who spearheaded the opposition to fascism from the eruption of the Spanish Civil War until the end of World War Two, defined nationalism first as anti-colonial and anti-imperial, in the sense that the national liberation of one colonized people would mean the liberation of all. Khuri particularly saw nationalism as internationalist, meaning not by the existence of specific characteristics that exclude and include, but a cooperative and inclusive nationalism that looked at other shared characteristics with the rest of the world, mostly colonized people.

Leftists such as Khuri, Fakhuri, Yazbik, Tabit, and al-Qal‘aji, who framed anti-fascism as an active form of the national liberation struggle, saw the opposition to fascism as a natural product of a long Arab tradition of freedom and as a protector to that Arab tradition from all kinds of oppression. The fight against fascism along with the friendship with the Soviet Union were also perceived in the light of a struggle for democracy, that fighting fascism meant standing with democracy and the democratic nations of the world. It also meant being globally connected, and as Fakhuri repeatedly argued, being ‘part of whole’.

For the intellectuals who propagated this worldview, it pushed them further into the public sphere and allowed them to reach a wider group of people, and to speak more openly in the name of the democratic political front and the Soviet Union that to them represented that front. By standing against fascism and Nazism, leftists stood in support of democratic rule. What remained missing from this conversation were clearer definitions and deeper discussions about the kind of democracy that the Left was calling for. For while anti-fascism created an impetus against non-democratic rule, it did not prove sufficient as a movement to prescribe the creation of democratic institutions and practices.

174 The weaknesses of this vaguely defined democratic framework would be challenged by the political and social demands of ‘subaltern’ groups. Particularly, the persistent calls of women for suffrage and equality within the Left remained largely unsupported save through rhetoric, and were left unmet throughout this period. The following chapter examines how leftist feminists maneuvered within this promised democratic framework, borrowing from the legacies of the women’s movement and the class-based equality that the communist party represented to demand political and social rights.

175 CHAPTER 4 Leftist Feminists: Demanding Political Rights, Challenging Democratic Promises, and Feminizing the Public Sphere

Introduction

In 1953, Imili Faris Ibrahim, a Lebanese intellectual, writer, and feminist, became the first woman to run in parliamentary elections in Lebanon and the Arab region, after Lebanese women won suffrage in 1952 following a long battle for political rights.507 Campaigning in front of a crowd in the town of Zahle, she was splashed with ink by a bystander as a protest for her participation in elections. She persisted, continuing her speech and facing the crowd with ink on her face.508

Faris Ibrahim had been one of the most prominent activists in the previous decade demanding women’s political rights, most significantly the right to vote and to run for office.509

In 1944, she had asked her fellow countrymen in reference to accepting women’s suffrage, “You should therefore decide…do we in Lebanon live in the twentieth century or not?”510 Equating suffrage with progress was one of the main arguments she invoked to argue for political rights of women, particularly in this case on the pages of the journal al-Tariq. Accompanied by other

507 Imili Faris Ibrahim, Al-Haraka al-Nisa’iyya al-Lubnaniyya (Beirut: Dar al-Thaqafa, 1966), 197. Faris Ibrahim ran for a parliamentary seat in Zahle. See also Lamia Rustum Shehadeh, Women and War in Lebanon (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1999), 32–33, for list of women who ran for parliament from 1953 till 1996 and number of votes each received. Until 1990, only one woman had been in parliament in Lebanon, Myrna Bustani, who ran uncontested in 1963 to continue her father’s time after his tragic death. 508 ‘Ulabi, Ra’if Khuri Da‘iyat al-Dimuqratiyya wa-l-‘Uruba, 288–89; Nadya al-Jurdi Nuwayhid, Nisa’ min Biladi (Beirut: Dar al-Hadatha, 2000). 509 For details on the process, meetings, and decisions by the women’s organizations leading up to gaining suffrage in 1953, Ibrahim, Al-Haraka al-Nisa’iyya al-Lubnaniyya, 147–96. Faris Ibrahim was a strong advocate for the participation of women in politics through political parties. She believed that through parties, women have a higher chance of having popular support to win elections and occupy public posts. See her discussion of this matter in Ibrahim, 198. 510 Imili Faris Ibrahim, “al-Mar’a wa-l-Shari‘” al-Tariq 3, no.23/24 (December 31, 1944), 11. 176 women, such as Maqbula al-Shalaq and Falak Tarazi, Faris Ibrahim had initiated the debate about women’s political and social status within the circles of the Left during the 1940s.

The Communist Party of Lebanon and Syria generally failed to attract women among its ranks, and the labor unions it supported also suffered from the lack of accommodation for working women and their needs.511 Within the communist party, there was an almost complete absence of women, as well as an inability to move beyond Soviet and nationalist frameworks of women’s emancipation, despite an opening of a party wing for women in the mid-1930s.512

Some of the major arguments made by historians to explain women’s scarce presence among communist circles have identified the male-dominant discourse within the communist party of

Lebanon as the culprit.513 Ultimately, historians have blamed the communists’ inability to see women’s rights as a primary, rather than a secondary, cause within the larger class struggle for liberation as the main culprit behind the failure to appeal to women.514

511 For instance, working women often indicated their disinterest in union activities since the latter did not make any efforts to accommodate working women’s family and domestic commitments that they had to deal with apart from their work outside their homes. For a discussion of this see Malik Abisaab, Militant Women of a Fragile Nation (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2010), 68. 512 Thompson, Colonial Citizens, 157. 513 For instance, Abisaab points out to the way the Communist Party addressed its audience and members in the plural masculine and with direct identification of ‘male comrades’ and ‘working men’. He also argues that male activists had often suppressed female labor activism for the sake of a ‘genderless class solidarity’ which was ultimately masculine solidarity, adding that a feminists lens is necessary to “detect the male-centered language of labor unions and leftist parties…”, Malek Abisaab, “Gendered Expressions of Labor in the Middle East,” Int. J. Middle East Stud. International Journal of Middle East Studies 48, no. 03 (2016): 570. 514 See Thompson, Colonial Citizens; Abisaab, Militant Women of a Fragile Nation; Abdullah Hanna, al-Ittijahat al-Fikriya fi Suriya wa-Lubnan, 1920-1945 (Damascus: Dar al-Taqadum al- Arabi, 1973); Abdullah Hanna, al-Haraka al-Munahida li-l-Fashiyya fi Suriyya wa-Lubnan 1933-1945 : Dirasa Wathaʼiqiyya (Beirut: Dar al-Farabi, 1975); Tareq Y Ismael and Jacqueline S Ismael, The Communist Movement in Syria and Lebanon (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1998). 177 This chapter shows that within the intellectual milieu operating in parallel and sometimes overlapping with the communist party, and the milieu’s publications and related organizations – specifically al-Tariq, al-Tali‘a, the Friends of Soviet Union, and the League Against Nazism and

Fascism – women had a greater voice than within the official organs of the party, and demanded not only social but political change. This chapter focuses on women’s activism within leftist circles, thus incorporating women’s voices within the history of communism and the Left in

Lebanon and Syria. It does not deny the communist failure to appeal to women; rather, it supports this claim. However, it goes beyond the outcome of failure to try and understand the ways in which women within the Left demanded social and political rights. It therefore places these women within the leftist intellectual milieu during World War Two, while acknowledging their role in the women’s movement pre and post-independence in French Mandate Lebanon and

Syria.515 This chapter attempts to answer if and how these women were different from their male counterparts, as well as locate them within the history and activities of the women’s movement in Lebanon and Syria.

Leftist women who advocated for women’s rights have remained on the margins of both histories, the elitist and nationalist women’s movement, and the women’s labor movement. This chapter intervenes into this historiography by highlighting the work and ideas of these marginalized women and how they fit between the nationalist/elitist and working-class movements for women’s rights in the mandate period.

Leftist women – journalists, intellectuals, and activists – pushed back against considering women’s issues secondary by linking their political activism to the cause of women’s rights.

515 Since both Syrian and Lebanese women were active in the same outlets and organizations, it is hard to separate the activism of feminists during that period, especially within communism. 178 They were engaged in the main debates that dominated the intellectual circles of communists in the interwar and World War Two eras; however, they infused these debates with the feminist cause, making women’s issues and particularly participation in public and political life an integral part of these debates. They argued that progress of humanity and the nation, independence, and democracy could not be fulfilled without the achievement of women’s rights, more specifically women’s political rights and their full engagement in the public sphere.

Before delving into a discussion of these leftist feminists, this chapter will commence by historicizing the woman question in the Arab and more specifically the Lebanese context across various political spectrums, and not just within the Left. By presenting an overview of the development of feminist activism in Lebanon, I hope to show that leftist women who started their engagement with the public sphere in the late 1930s and were particularly present in the

1940s within the leftist milieu, belonged to a longer genealogy of feminist activism in Lebanon.

They also drew heavily upon this genealogy’s debates, arguments, and methods of political engagement.

Historicizing the Woman Question: From the Nahda to Independence

Ellen Fleischmann argues that women’s movements in the Middle East were not an isolated occurrence but rather part of a global phenomenon towards women’s emancipation across the world.516 However, “the particular direction they (women’s movements) took…was conditioned by the experience of colonialism,” adds Charlotte Weber.517 How feminists

516 Ellen Fleischmann, “The Other “Awakening”: The Emergence of Women’s Movements in the Modern Middle East, 1900-1940”, in Margaret Lee Meriwether and Judith E Tucker, Social History of Women and Gender in the Modern Middle East (Boulder, Colo: Westview Press, 1999), 97. 517 Charlotte Weber, “Between Nationalism and Feminism: The Eastern Women’s Congresses of 1930 and 1932,” Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 4, no. 1 (2008): 84.84 179 demanded and gained their rights changed with the changing political realities of Lebanon and

Syria. The ‘woman question’, or the debate about women’s place and role in society, was one of the key issues raised by the pioneers of the Arab nahda in the late Ottoman period. The nahdawi reformists framed these debates on women within the parameters of progress and the evolution of state and society.518 They identified the inferior status of women in Arab societies as a major cause behind the ‘lag’/backwardness of the East and of the Arabs. In his famous books Tahrir al-

Mar’a (The Liberation of Woman) published in 1899 and al-Mar’a al-Jadida (The New

Woman) published in 1901, Qasim Amin (1865-1908) addressed the issue of decay of the

Islamic community by blaming ignorance.519 He identified the lack of education of women and their unequal status with men as the cause of this ignorance that prevailed in society, since women were supposed to fulfill the role of education within the family. He therefore called for the education of women to end the tyranny of man over woman.520 Amin argued that the rights of women had developed with the progress of human society, and that the final stage of progress of human society, the period of civilization, entailed full rights for women and equal status with men.521

518 See Nikki R Keddie and Beth Baron, Women in Middle Eastern History: Shifting Boundaries in Sex and Gender (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991); Nikki R Keddie, Women in the Middle East: Past and Present (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007); Akram Fouad Khater, Inventing Home: Emigration, Gender, and the Middle Class in Lebanon, 1870-1920 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001); Meriwether and Tucker, Social History of Women and Gender in the Modern Middle East; Judith E Tucker, Arab Women: Old Boundaries, New Frontiers (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1995). 519 Qasim Amin, Tahrir al-Mar’a (Cairo: 1899), and al-Mar’a al-Jadida (Cairo: 1901). 520 Education, Amin claimed, would end the tyranny of men over women by allowing women to not only manage their households properly, but also to support themselves financially. In this call for educating women he was not the first, for Butrus al-Bustani (1819-1883) had made that call in 1849 in his lecture Khitab fi Ta‘lim al-Nisa’ (A Speech on Women’s Education), Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 1798-1939, 99–102. 521 He identified four stages of the path of human society towards progress, with the first, the state of nature, the one where women were free. See Amin, Tahrir al-Mar’a, 29, 152. 180 Amin’s arguments on the emancipation of women became the basis for both advocates of emancipation as well as its opponents. For the latter, not only was women’s emancipation a threat to prevalent patriarchy and what conservatives saw as an attack on tradition and moral values, but it was also associated with ‘Western’ progress and therefore deemed unauthentic/inorganic to Arab and Islamic societies. Reformists of the nahda, starting with Amin himself, countered this opposition by claiming roots for women’s equality with men in Islam and

Shari‘a, and by blaming corruption to Islam from ‘outside’.522 This tension regarding cultural authenticity, tradition, progress, and the debate on ‘westernization’ which characterized much of the issues raised during the nahda, framed the ‘woman question’ and continued to be the main prism through which women’s emancipation was debated in Arab societies, such as Syria and

Lebanon, beyond the fall of the Ottoman Empire.

The women’s nahda (al-nahda al-nisā’iyya) had begun in the nineteenth century with the emergence of women’s societies and organizations throughout the Arab provinces of the

Ottoman Empire and the publications of texts by women. However, it was after World War One that a women’s movement emerged in Lebanon and Syria distinctly different from women’s organizations that had sprung in the Ottoman period. While most of these latter organizations were bourgeois charities, a women’s movement in the subaltern self-conscious sense emerged after the war and under French mandate in Lebanon and Syria.523 As Elizabeth Thompson

522 Amin, Tahrir al-Mar’a, 12-14. The corruption to Islam, rather than the fault in Islam, was an integral argument to the Islamist reformers of the nahda, not only with regards to women but also to other aspects of political, social, and economic change and modernization. See Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 1798-1939. 523 The history that has been written about the women’s movement overwhelmingly links Lebanese and Syrian women’s activism across both countries under the French mandate. Thompson does show however that Lebanon was the center of most activity with regards to women’s activism with 36 women’s groups registered in Lebanon between 1920 and 1939. See Thompson, Colonial Citizens, 96. 181 argues, World War One was a major turning point in gender relations in the Middle East and the

Levant more specifically. The ‘crisis of paternity’ created by the socio-economic conditions and results of the war in Syria and Lebanon, combined with the imposition of French rule, prompted on the one hand the rise of an active women’s movement, and on the other hand a backlash by the paternal ruling groups – elites and state – on women’s emancipation.

The charitable services that women offered during the war,524 as well as their direct participation in the war, whether through offering medical services to the army or also by participating in fighting during the Arab revolt,525 gave women hope of being rewarded equal rights in the post-war order. This was a hope that we see throughout the world in the post-war era, and it was also coupled with increased male anxieties about shifting gender roles that prompted opposition to women’s movements.526

While the Syrian Congress debated the issue of suffrage in 1920, Mary ‘Ajamy, Julia

Dimashqiyya, and Nazik ‘Abid discussed women’s political rights in their magazines.527 The

524 Some of the charities established during the war were the Women’s Charitable Thrift Society (jam‘iyyat al-iqtisad al-nisa’i al-khayri) in Aleppo, the Awakening of Arab Women (yaqazat al- fatat al-‘arabiyya) and Charitable Affairs for Muslim Women (al-umur al-khayriyya li-l-fatayat al-muslimat) in Beirut. See Gelvin, Divided Loyalties, 214. For charities established during World War I see Melanie S Tanielian, The Charity of War: Famine, Humanitarian Aid, and World War I in the Middle East, 2017. 525 Gelvin asserts that, if the anecdotal evidence is accurate, women joined and were even conscripted into militias during the revolt and in the brief period of Faysal’s rule in Syria, not only as auxiliaries but even as combatants, Gelvin, Divided Loyalties, 213–14. 526 For more on this discussion and the failure to win women’s suffrage in France in the 1920s, see Mary Louise Roberts, Civilization without Sexes: Reconstructing Gender in Postwar France, 1917-1927 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994). French women did not gain voting rights until 1944. 527 Mary ‘Ajami started publishing al-‘Arus (the Bride) in Damascus in 1910 , Julia Dimashqiyya founded al-Mar’a al-Jadida (the New Woman) in Beirut in 1921, and Nazik ‘Abid published Nur al-Fayha’ (The Light of Damascus) in 1920. While these were the most prominent magazines published, other women’s magazines during the interwar period included Afifa Sa‘b’s al-Khidr (the Boudoir), Mary Yanni’s Minirva (Minerva), and Jurji Nuqula Baz’s al-Hasna’ (The Belle). 182 arguments feminists made in these magazines for women’s participation in political life echoed the reasoning of Islamic reformists of the nahda, by citing the true spirit of Islam in contradiction with the exclusion of women from public affairs. The staunch opposition to women’s suffrage by conservatives and populists in both Syria and Lebanon was driven by the fear that women’s political rights would undermine male dominance at home.528 As Gelvin argues, “the battle over women’s suffrage and education was thus but one front in a war that the popular committees and their supporters waged in the name of the nation against “false traitors” – fifth-columnists and other dupes of Western imperialism.”529 The male anxieties - over west/east divisions, private/public sphere – manifested themselves in the debate over gender equality and women’s presence in political life. Nikki Keddie explains that women’s issues in the Middle East have been intrinsically tied to the debate about progress and modernity of the ‘East’ and its rivalry with an encroaching ‘West’. In this rivalry, the ‘home’ became “a last line of defense against a

West that has won out in political and economic spheres.”530 Put differently, and illustrating the tension between public and private spheres that colonialism brought about, “Colonial rule…brought a loss of autonomy and power for men in public life, enhancing the value of the private sphere and buttressing male determination to protect family life from foreign intervention”.531 This could not have been truer than with the imposition of French rule over

Syria and Lebanon and the creation of the two states.532

528 Weber, “Between Nationalism and Feminism,” 86. 529 Gelvin, Divided Loyalties, 215. 530 Nikki Keddie, “Introduction” in Keddie and Baron, Women in Middle Eastern History, 2. 531 Adrienne Edgar, “Bolshevism, Patriarchy, and the Nation: The Soviet ‘Emancipation’ of Muslim Women in Pan-Islamic Perspective.,” Slavic Review, 2006, 261. 532 Thompson, Colonial Citizens, chap. 2 and 3. 183 The pioneers of the post-war women’s movements had begun their charitable work, which was predominantly linked to religious establishments, during the war years. As the war ended, women activists – such as Julia Dimashqiyya (1888-1954), Nazik ‘Abid (1887-1960),

Mary ‘Ajami (1888-1969), Salma Sayigh (1889-1953), ‘Anbara Salam (1906-1986), ‘Adila

Bayhum (1902-1975), and Ibtihaj Qaddura (1892-1967) – embraced Arab nationalism and opened their literary salons, cultural clubs, and charitable organizations for the propagation of patriotism and national unity.533

Women’s organizations that had upheld the banner of Faysal’s Arab nationalism during the transition from Ottoman to French rule were marginalized under the Mandate.534 Their politicization that had begun during the war was complete by the time of the French occupation of Syria and the imposition of the Mandate.535 The charitable organizations that had emerged during the First World War became more politicized, and new literary and cultural salons as well as journals published by women, emerged that centered around political and social discussions.

In Lebanon and Syria, two major salons emerged in the early 1920s, Julia Dimashqiyya’s and Habbuba Haddad’s salons, accompanied by the publication of the journals al-Mar’a al-

533 The linkages between these women and the Arab national movement had begun in 1913 when Anbara Salam (Khalidi), Wadad Mahmasani, and Shafiqa Ghurayyib sent a letter to the Arab conference in Paris supporting Arab nationalism and the idea of Syria as a nation. See ʻAnbarah Salām Khālidī, Memoirs of an Early Arab Feminist: The Life and Activism of Anbara Salam Khalidi (Pluto Press, 2013), 50. 534 The French mandatory authorities shut down Nazik ‘Abid’s school and Red Star society, a local Red Cross organization founded by ‘Abid, organizations in which she advocated for Arabism through women’s education. The French alternatively established the French Red Cross and the Drop of Milk society to counter those organizations. See Thompson, Colonial Citizens, 94–95. 535 Thompson, 94–95. 184 Jadida536 and al-Hayat al-Jadida537 respectively.538 These salons provided spaces for the mixing of the sexes and the exchange of ideas between intellectuals such as Jamil Bayhum, Najla

Abillama‘ Ma‘luf, Jirji Niqula Baz, Felix Faris, Salma Sa’igh, Jubran al-Tuwayni, and Mary

Yanni, among others.

The various organizations came together in Lebanon in an informal union in 1921 that was solidified in 1924 under the name of the Women’s Union in Syria and Lebanon (al-Ittihad al-Nisa’i fi Suriya wa-Lubnan). Its founders, Labiba Thabit and Salma Sa’igh, had personal friendships and political connections with the union’s prominent members – Ibtihaj Qaddura,

‘Adila Bayhum al-Jaza’iri, Rose Shahfa and Eveline Bustrus – that they had fostered within the salons of Beirut and Damascus and on the pages of the journals they published in.539 Cross- sectarian and staunchly Arab nationalist, the women’s union “would become the vanguard of a self-conscious women’s politics.”540

536 A monthly literary-scientific journal published in Beirut in 1921. 537 A monthly socio-political journal published in 1920, first in Paris where Haddad resided for a while and then in Beirut until 1926. The journal did not cater to an exclusive female readership and addressed political issues such as attacking the French mandate over Lebanon and Syria. See Imili Faris Ibrahim, Adibat Lubnaniyat (Beirut: Dar al-Rayhani, 1964), 181–200. 538 For more on periodicals published by women see Shereen Khairallah, The Sisters of Men: Lebanese Women in History (Beirut: Institute for Women Studies in the Arab World, Lebanese American University, 1996), 193–94. 539 There were two prominent literary salons established in tandem with magazines: Habbuba Haddad’s salon in Beirut and her magazine al-Hayat al-Jadida (1920, Paris), and Julia Dimashqiyya’s salon that was predated by the Lebanese Women’s Association she founded in Beirut in 1917, and her magazine al-Mar’a al-Jadida. See Nova Robinson, “‘Sisters of Men’: Syrian and Lebanese Women’s Transnational Campaigns for Arab Independence and Women’s Rights, 1910-1949”. PhD, Rutgers University, 2015, 74–78. 540 However, this same union that started gradually addressing women’s needs and demanding them from the state, remained confined within the class parameters of the earlier pre-war movement and was unwelcoming and unreceptive to non-bourgeois women; therefore, as Thompson argues, “the transition from charity club to mass movement was as yet incomplete by the early 1930s”, Thompson, Colonial Citizens, 98. 185 Through their salons, journals, organizations, and union, women activists underwent an important transition by the late 1920s, as they began to identify along gender lines, recognizing their shared status as women, and to think collectively towards women’s political goals. Within the frameworks of newly created states in Lebanon and Syria, women started demanding full participation in the state apparatus and full citizenship rights. They used their journals, public lectures, and salons to demand participation with the logic used by the reformists of the nahda, arguing that uncorrupted Islam had once allowed participation of women in public affairs.541

While women’s suffrage was first debated in the Syrian Congress in 1920, the issue was revived in 1923 and 1924 by the Lebanese Representative Council, and during the final vote on removing the word ‘male’ from article eight of the electoral law, only three of the thirty deputies voted yes to that proposal.542 The second major disappointment for the women’s movement came with the drafting of the 1926 Lebanese constitution and the 1930 Syrian constitution, both of which did not include stipulations for women’s suffrage.

Women’s war service, during both the First World War and the Syrian Revolt in 1925-

1927, and women activists’ demands and mobilization, had failed to give them a place in the political sphere towards the end of the first decade of French rule.543 When the first major conference of the Syrian and Lebanese Women’s Union convened in 1928, demands for women’s political rights that had spearheaded the agenda of women activists in the early 1920s

541 Thompson, 124. 542 Shaykh Yusus al-Khazin, Amir Fu’ad Arslan, and Ibrahim Mundhir. The latter was the Arabic teacher of leading women such as Mary Yanni and Salma Sa’igh. Thompson, 123. 543 This was not only a position suffered by Arab women, but women throughout the world post- WWI. See Roberts, Civilization without Sexes for a discussion on women in France and in Europe more generally. 186 were absent. Instead, the 1928 conference and the subsequent years saw a turn towards the ethos of patriotic motherhood.544

The controversy of Nazira Zayn al-Din’s book al-Sufur wa-l-Hijab (Unveiling and

Veiling), which was published earlier in 1928, increased conservatives’ hostility towards the women’s movements and opposition to any political gains. While this hostility might explain the feminists’ retreat from their earlier agenda, historians have also cited external ideological influences such as the adoption of women’s movements in India, Egypt, and Europe, of this maternalist policy, and the defeat of women’s suffrage in France. 545 Moreover, Thompson argues that it might have been a calculated attempt by women leaders to increase their ranks in their movements given the rise and appeal of nationalist politics in Syrian and Lebanon in the

1930s.546 By aiding the nationalists and upholding the cause of anti-colonialism, women leaders in the movement hoped that with the victory and arrival of nationalist governments at the head of their states these governments might in turn redraw “the gendered legal boundaries of the civic order”.547

The strategy of shifting focus from political rights to the framework of ‘patriotic motherhood’ (‘republican motherhood’)548 coincided with the need to accommodate the

544 Thompson, Colonial Citizens, 143–48. 545 This is one cause cited by some historians behind the ‘shift to patriotic motherhood’ that happened in the late 1920s and into the 1930s. Weber, “Between Nationalism and Feminism,” 86. 546 Nationalist political parties emerged in Lebanon with the Constitutional Bloc, and in Syria, with the National Bloc. 547 Thompson, Colonial Citizens, 152. 548 The idea of republican motherhood was first developed by Linda K Kerber, Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America (Chapel Hill: Published for the Institute of Early American History and Culture by the University of North Carolina Press, 1980). See also,Jenny B. White, “State Feminism, Modernization, and the Turkish Republican Woman,” NWSA Journal 15, no. 3 (March 12, 2004): 145–59. 187 internationalism of feminism and anticolonial discourses that “polarized East and West and positioned women as custodians of Eastern culture”549. This ‘turn’ towards this new direction was marked by the First Eastern Women’s Congress that convened at the Syrian University in

Damascus in July 1930. Nour Hamada, a prominent figure in the women’s movement in

Lebanon, had sent invitations to feminist leaders from Afghanistan, Chine, Egypt, the Hijaz,

Iran, Iraq, India, Lebanon, Syria, Tunis, Turkey, Java and Australia.550 Absent from the discussion and proceedings of the conference were political demands; instead the women discussed equality between men and women in purely social domains: marriage, education, and labor. The report by the representative of the International Alliance of Women for Suffrage and

Equal Citizneship (IAW) revealed the impediments placed in the face of the convening women, both from conservatives as well as nationalists, who refused to support the conference unless nationalist sentiments were to be discussed in its proceedings.551

What this conference reveals aside from evidence of a turn towards patriotic motherhood, is the significant role Lebanese and Syrian feminists assumed in the women’s movement on the level of the Arab region as well as more widely within the Asian and ‘eastern’ activist contexts.

Arab representatives from the Eastern Women’s Conference were invited to the All Asian

Women’s Conference held in January 1931. The latter conference which united delegates from very different countries in Asia was convened upon a sense “that Asian women faced similar

549 Weber, “Between Nationalism and Feminism,” 99. 550 While the audience in the opening session were primarily men, smaller sessions convened over four consecutive dates saw the attendance of around 100 women. Weber, 87. 551 The IAW had sent Avra Theodoropoulos of Greece to observe and record the events taking place at the Congress. Weber, 88. For more on the IAW see Leila J Rupp, Worlds of Women: The Making of an International Women’s Movement (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1998). 188 problems in their effort to challenge patriarchal constraints at home without being overly

“Westernized””. 552

In their activism beyond their national boundaries and their affiliation with the IAW,

Lebanese and Syrian feminists sought to counter the ‘Westernization’ of Arab values and traditions, by adhering to an ‘Eastern’ vision of women’s rights; they “tried to create an autonomous women’s movement that was allied with but independent from both Eastern men and Western women”, as Weber argues.553 Their ‘Easterness’ was often expressed by Lebanese and Syrian feminists through a harkening back to the early days of Islam and by creating roots for women’s emancipation that predated and were separate from western civilization and colonialism. Similar to the nahdawi reformists, feminists such as Nazik al-‘Abid, her husband

Jamil Bayhum , and Nour Hamada, referenced Arabo-Islamic legal and customary practices that gave women equality.554

The efforts to reach out transnationally did not however compensate for the limits of the local women’s movement to extend beyond middle-class women. The rapid development and success in recruitment and mobilization of the labor unions during the 1930s enticed the women’s movement to reach out to working women, demanding better working conditions on their behalf, including maternity leave, sick days, and equal pay.555 However, despite the attempt

552 Nazik ‘Abid was asked to stand for election as president of the conference. Weber, “Between Nationalism and Feminism,” 90. 553 Weber, 101. 554 For instance, in the Tehran conference in 1932, Nour Hamada explained how Islam had given women rights and how Islamic law preserved equality for women, though men have not abided by these laws accurately. She singled out the issue of polygamy, arguing that is although the Qur’an had made the conditions for polygamy almost impossible to attain, yet it was still practiced by men. Weber, 96–97. 555 Among the societies and organizations established was Nazik ‘Abid’s society for working women in 1933, Thompson, Colonial Citizens, 157. 189 to mobilize along gender lines, the women’s movement remained allied with the nationalist elite and thus by distancing itself from the labor movement missed the chance for cross-class gender solidarity. This schism also characterized the way the historiography on the women’s movement has developed. As Malek Abisaab argues, working women have been almost excluded from this historiography. He asserts that “Working women also promoted a model of female radicalism at variance with upper- and middle-class women”, conforming less to the nationalist ideal but rather aimed “to elevate their status outside the domestic nexus as workers and women simultaneously. As such, their nationalism had a character distinct from that of the bourgeois woman”.556

What Abisaab coins as ‘gender-class bias’ went hand in hand with the state’s emphasis on motherhood and its relation to nationalism and nation-building, particularly with regards to the state’s position towards working women.557 In 1935-6, the French colonial government issued a law to regulate work of women and children in industrial factories, which became the basis for the 1946 Lebanese labor law. Some professions and workplaces were prohibited for women such as in factories manufacturing explosives; the law also limited women’s work to eight hours per day, offered maternity leave, and prohibited women from operating machines with big engines and working at night.558

While the pre-World War Two years witnessed inflation, unemployment, and increase in prices of food and basic needs, working women mobilized to contribute more to family income

556 Malek Hassan Abisaab, “‘Unruly’ Factory Women in Lebanon: Contesting French Colonialism and the National State, 1940-1946,” Journal of Women’s History Journal of Women’s History 16, no. 3 (2004): 59–60. 557 Abisaab, 63. On the issue of state-encouraged discourse of patriotic motherhood see also Thompson, Colonial Citizens, 238–43. 558 Thompson, Colonial Citizens, 157–58. Women were primarily employed in the textile and tobacco industries. 190 and elite women worked through charities to aid women and their families. The Second World

War, however, contributed to more work for women since the decrease of imported goods prompted a return of local manufacturing which women rushed to perform.559 French colonial policy towards working women wavered between supporting women’s work and reinforcing men as the primary breadwinners of the family.560 However, it was during the war years and particularly in 1942 – after the ‘liberation’ of Lebanon from Vichy by Free French forces – that colonial, governmental, various social forces in society – primarily religious – launched a campaign to exclude women from work. This campaign had a strong anti-work ideology, and was largely based on the ideal of domestic patriotic motherhood and reinforced the place of a

559 During World War Two, Lebanese and Syrian women worked in numbers of several thousands in industries such as tobacco, textile, and food-processing plants, Thompson, 238–39. 560 When it came to the ‘woman question’, the French had a non-intervention approach that allowed them to avoid alienating or angering local religious conservatives. The stipulation by the League of Nations that the mandatory power should not interfere or change religious control of personal status laws in the mandated countries played a role in maintaining the unequal status of women within these laws. Therefore, while French-inspired commercial and criminal laws were introduced in Syria and Lebanon, customary personal status laws were rather maintained and codified. Customary personal status laws were often used by the French and the British as an indication for the ‘backwardness’ of a certain community and country and therefore a justification for the continuation of colonial rule. See Edgar, “Bolshevism, Patriarchy, and the Nation,” 259; Thompson, Colonial Citizens, 113–15. Moreover, while little effort was made by the mandatory authorities to educate boys, almost no efforts or policies were introduced to increase education among girls. In 1928, there were around 54,000 girls in school in Syria, which at the time had a population of around 2,000,000 according to French government statistics. See Robinson, “Sisters of Men,” 79, based on Bulletin Annuaire for Syria, Premier Trimestriel. For more on women’s education under the mandates see Ellen L Fleischmann, The Nation and Its “New” Women: The Palestinian Women’s Movement, 1920-1948 (Berkeley; Los Angeles; London: University of California Press, 2003), 42–45. 1929. In comparison, the Soviet Union during the same post-war period ‘vigorously’ promoted education among girls, especially among Muslim women in central Asia. They set quotas for women in universities and even prosecuted men who stood against their daughters’ and wives’ education, Edgar, “Bolshevism, Patriarchy, and the Nation,” 260. Generally, public education was not supported or developed under the French in Lebanon and Syria, with strong reliance on missionary education, while Egypt and Palestine experienced the ‘policy of making ignorant’ under the British. 191 woman within the private sphere.561 It was launched by conservatives who felt threatened by the gender and class-based challenges to the paternalist order made possible during the war.562 While this issue contributed to the creation of divisions within the women’s movement, it highlighted the work of the Communist Party of Lebanon and Syria which had positioned itself as the defender of the working class, including working women.

Liberating Women and Defending Them: The Woman Question Within the Communist Party

The initial founders of the Lebanese People’s Party and the Communist Party of Lebanon and Syria were male, although most of the initial members were workers in the tobacco factories in Lebanon, one of the main industries during the mandate that included a very large number of female workers. Both the unionists, who were closely connected to the Communist Party, and the

Party made little effort to recruit women. 563 We do not have any figures for the number of women within the party; however, we do know that members of the Party were predominantly men. Malek Abisaab asserts that, “it is questionable whether the party played more than a marginal role in recruiting women workers and peasants into its ranks.”564 Furthermore, the leadership of the Party from its inception to the present day has been dominated by men.

561 This coincided with actions that fell in this line of thought, including, appointing Mme Catroux as the head of a committee to coordinate charitable organizations in Lebanon and Syria, banning Asmahan’s film highlighting her as a career singer, and the adoption of Mother’s Day in Lebanon as an official holiday in 1942. 562 See on the opposition to women’s movements by Jam‘iyyat al-Gharra’, one of Damascus’s most active religious organizations, Khoury, Syria and the French Mandate, 610–12; Thompson, Colonial Citizens, 238–44. 563 Abisaab, “‘Unruly’ Factory Women in Lebanon,” 68. 564 Although it is hard to ascertain the extent of the influence the communist party had on shaping the views and militancy of working women, we do know that “diffuse socialist views reached workingwomen through communist unionists who came in close contact with them and their male colleagues…”, Abisaab, 68–69. 192 In its circulated pamphlets, programs, and calls for action throughout the 1920s and into the 1940s,565 the Communist Party of Lebanon and Syria addressed its readers and audience using the masculine plural. Although the masculine plural grammatically covers both male and female plural, there was no consciousness and will to single out and target women workers and peasants by adding the feminine plural. It also predominantly framed its discourse in the language of a strictly masculine brotherhood to address workers, peasants, and intellectuals. In its first publicly circulated document, the call to participate in the May 1 celebrations in 1925566, the Lebanese People’s Party addressed only male workers and peasants to participate (al-‘ummāl wa-l-fallāḥīn) and framed the call within a fraternal language. For instance, the call’s content opened with “O brothers” (ayyuhā al-ikhwān), and continued to reference participation in Labor

Day celebrations as part of solidarity with the workers’ brothers (ikhwānukum) around the world.567 It stated that standing up for the right to strike on May 1st was the workers’ duty toward their brothers and a sign of respect to their historical struggles. Therefore, the Party emphasized class identity along masculine lines, promoting the identification of the workers with each other and with their brethren workers around the world. “You are all brothers in misery, and you are all victims of the selfishness, greed, and oppression of the capitalists”, read the call.568

The speeches that the participants gave during that May celebration in 1925 also identified the working class more generally as masculine. They also reproduced the male/female

565 This does not mean that things change after the 1940s; however, since I do not have information about the later period, I do not want to assume that the language stays the same. 566 Lebanese People’s Party, “A Call From the Lebanese People’s Party to All the Workers and Peasants”, in Zahleh al-Fatāt, April 30, 1925. 567 Ibid. 568 Ibid. 193 division between the public and private spheres, asserting men as the heads of the family and its breadwinners.

Look, brothers, at the rich man spending his money on lewdness, alcohol, and profligacy, while you cannot feed your own families. Look at the castles that the capitalists have built from the sweat of your brows, and you do not even have a nest to shelter yourself and your children in the cold of winter. […] Look at the capitalists’ women, how they are draped in silk and accessorize with precious gems, while your wives are naked and hungry. Look at the sons of the rich, how they are driven around in cars to their prestigious schools accompanied by servants while your sons are starving and freezing to death.569

The Party explained that by striking and acting to change their conditions, the workers prove that “we respect ourselves”, but more importantly, that “we respect our wives and children”.570 This argument utilized the dichotomy between the rich man versus the poor man, the latter being the one addressed, to ‘feminize’ the worker and mobilize him into action; as if, in a way, his actions against the capitalists would allow him to regain his lost manhood and his place within his own home. It was also to shield him against the dishonor of having naked and hungry wives.

The Lebanese People’s Party did address explicitly women’s emancipation. In its first published principles in 1925, the Party proclaimed the ‘liberation of woman’ (taḥrīr al-mar’a) and aiding her towards gaining her suppressed rights as one of its main goals.571 These rights were identified in those principles as “ending polygamy, prohibiting early marriage,…etc.” 572

Women were therefore confined to the household and their liberation was perceived within the parameters of matrimony and not within the political and public social arena. However, the Party also had to contend with the issue of working women. This in turn allowed the Party to deviate

569 Ibid. 570 Ibid. 571 Out of 8 enumerated principles, women’s liberation occupied the 7th principle. 572 Al-Insaniyya, May 24, 1925: 3 194 from purely situating women within the household and to include rights for working class women within their discussions.

In his 1928 booklet Naqabat al-‘Ummal, Fu’ad al-Shamali singled out working women as more exploited than their male counterparts and urged these women to join the union and the communist party to demand more rights.573 A program of the Communist Party published in

1930 also addressed the conditions of working women, calling for equal pay between men and women working in the same profession, however, demanding that women not be asked to perform dangerous and straining tasks.574 Under the umbrella of “liberating woman and defending her” (taḥrīr al-mar’a wa-l-difā‘ ‘anhā), the Party also demanded that women have the right to enter all professions, to have maternity leaves, and to unveil.575 Only in discussions related to working women was the plural feminine used to address female workers (‘āmilāt).

This paradoxical image of women, as mothers and wives associated with the private sphere or as workers standing side by side with men in various professions, had precedent in the

Soviet model of women’s emancipation. This became particularly salient by the 1930s with the transfer of leadership of the Communist Party of Lebanon and Syria to the hands of Khaled

Bakdash and the generation of Soviet-educated cadres who sought to follow more closely the

Stalinist line.

The Bolsheviks’ attempts to create the ‘new Soviet person’ which was of course both male and female, prompted the Soviet efforts to emancipate women and to create the image of

573 Fu’ad al-Shamali, Naqabat al-‘Ummal. (Beirut: 1928) 574 The latter was a provision acknowledged by the state and the colonial power as part of a protective paternal approach towards working women. Central Committee of the Communist Party of Syria, Limadha Yunadil al-Hizb al-Shuyu‘i al-Suri (1931). Reprinted in Dakrub, Judhur al-Sindiyana al-Hamraʼ, 501–24. 575 Dakrub, 516. 195 the ‘new woman’ along with the ‘new man’.576 This meant, in Leninist terms, freeing women from servitude to men, both for emancipatory purposes but also for the sake of making women more productive. This recognition also came with the realization of women as not only possible workers but as producers of future generations of workers too. The image or model of the Soviet

‘new woman’ was therefore constantly changing according to the circumstances that shifted the balance between women’s production and reproduction one way or the other. 577 In the division of approaches to the ‘woman question’ between ‘rationalists’ and ‘romanticists’578, the Soviet

Union initially leaned towards the ‘rationalist’ approach which was most compatible with

Marxist ideology. However, Lynn Attwood argues that by the 1930s, the Soviet Union responded to changing economic and demographic realities by trying to combine the ‘rationalist’ and the

‘romanticist’ approaches to women; that is, “the Soviet woman was expected to be an exemplar worker, and to develop qualities and traits which were appropriate to the work place; yet, she was also supposed to have certain ‘natural’ traits and behavioral patterns which made her innately suited to domesticity and child-care.”579

In theorizing the role of the ‘new woman’, Soviet intellectuals differed in opinion around monogamy and sexual relations, however, they seemed to generally gear towards an agreement over the traditional family – even though identified as bourgeois and repressive to women – being the most acceptable social unit that needed to be preserved. Moreover, although they saw

576 Lynne Attwood, Creating the New Soviet Woman: Women’s Magazines as Engineers of Female Identity, 1922-53 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), chap. introduction. 577 Attwood, 1–2. Lynne Attwood argues that women’s magazines in Soviet Russia played a major role in presenting to the readers the image of the Soviet ‘new woman’ and shows how these magazines changed their readers’ opinions and behaviors regarding this issue. 578 Fir for a detailed explanation of the difference between the two approaches, their origins in the industrial age, see Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English, For Her Own Good: Two Centuries of the Experts’ Advice to Women (New York: Anchor Books, 2005), 1–29. 579 Attwood, Creating the New Soviet Woman, 3–4. 196 domestic household tasks as well as child-rearing tasks as burdensome and distracting for working women, their solutions to these problems – nurseries, care-giving centers, public kitchens, and central cleaning establishments among others – relied on the engagement of women as a collective to continue to perform these duties.580 With regards to labor itself, both

Lenin and Aleksandra Kollontai, the principle Soviet theoretician on gender, argued that women’s production should not interfere with their task of reproduction; moreover, Lenin asserted that although women were to be treated equally as men, “we are not, of course, speaking of making women the equal of women as far as productivity of labor, the quantity of labor, the length of the working day, labor conditions, etc. are concerned.”581 This prompted restrictions in women’s work, including legislation banning women from working at night and working overtime.

In 1920s Soviet magazines, the ‘new woman’ was portrayed as “a full, valuable citizen of the new society.”582 However, by the 1930s, and the obvious failure of social and economic changes to make the family ‘wither’ away as it should under communism, combined with the drop in the birthrate and the economic need for women during rapid industrialization plans by the state, prompted a paradoxical approach to this image of the ‘new woman’. As Attwood explains,

580 Attwood, 8–9. 581 Vladimir Ilʹich Lenin, On the Emancipation of Women (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1974), 69. 582 Attwood, Creating the New Soviet Woman, 13. For more on women in the Soviet Union, see Richard Stites, The Women’s Liberation Movement in Russia: Feminism, Nihilism and Bolshevism 1860-1930 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991); Katerina Clark, The Soviet Novel: History as Ritual. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000); Gail Warshofsky Lapidus, Women in Soviet Society: Equality, Development, and Social Change (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1979); Wendy Z Goldman, Women, the State, and Revolution: Soviet Family Policy and Social Life, 1917-1936 (Cambridge; New York, New York, USA: Cambridge University Press, 1993). 197 “The Soviet woman’s new role as worker was grafted unto her old role as homemaker, and female identity was meant to encompass traditional male and female qualities and traits. She was glorified for her capacity to work like a man, and at the same time celebrated for her nurturance and her willingness to sacrifice herself for others.”583

The Communist Party discourse in Lebanon and Syria resembled the dichotomy of women’s role within the Soviet model. At the same time, the Party responded to local demands and circumstances that pushed it towards greater emphasis on nationalism and to consider women’s role within the nation. What was absent from the Soviet model yet relevant to the

Communist Party in Lebanon and Syria was the anticolonial component and women’s role in national liberation.

A booklet published by the Communist Party in 1931 identified the liberation of women

(taḥrīr al-mar’a) as one of its main subheadings of goals – along with the goals of liberating

Syria from colonizers, improving the lives of workers and peasants, and defending children in the workforce. 584 The Party blamed the injustice experienced by Syrian and Arab women to traditions and customs (taqālīd wa-‘ādat) which did not agree with “the requisites of advancement and progress (al-taqaddum wa-l-irtiqā’).”585 The Party argued that colonizers (al- musta‘mirūn), feudalists (al-iqṭā‘iyyūn) and religious men (rijāl al-dīn) conspired against liberating women because they feared the latter will cause women to rise (al-nuhūd) and join the national liberation movement of the country.586 Concurring that the Party firmly believed in

583 Attwood, Creating the New Soviet Woman, 13. 584 Central Committee of the Communist Party of Syria, Limadha Yunadil al-Hizb al-Shuyu‘i al- Suri (1931). Reprinted in Dakrub, Judhur al-Sindiyana al-Hamraʼ, 501–24. 585 Dakrub, 516. 586 “They (the French colonizers) have constrained the people with the chains of colonialism and bled the resources of the country while exploiting its workers for the sake of the selfish French capitalists, to increase their wealth while our families and we suffer the pains of unemployment, hunger and misery”, The Communist Party of Syria, Fa-li-Yahya al-Istiqlal al-Tamm wa-l- Wihda al-Suriyya, (1925) in Dakrub, 490–91. 198 equal rights between men and women, and that “we the communists are convinced that there is no life and no freedom for a people whose women are enslaved”, the document presented a list of demands towards the liberation of women.587 Although the demands were identified as related to working women (al-‘āmilat), they addressed the need for equality between man and woman, improving working women conditions – such as equal pay, maternity leaves, and laws protecting women in the workforce – and social issues – ending forced marriage and unveiling.588

On the one hand, these demands put forth in 1931 were progressive for a political party in

Lebanon and Syria. For instance, the issue of veiling/unveiling was still a heated topic in 1931 especially following the 1928 controversy of Nazira Zayn al-Din’s book. Moreover, although the rising nationalist parties seemed to take caution against angering conservative groups and religious authorities, the Communist Party was the only political party equating religious men with capitalists and French colonizers, arguing that these three constituted a force against the progress (taqaddum) and evolution (irtiqā’) of the nation.589

On the other hand, the discourse with which the Party framed these demands as well as its limited action towards recruitment of women, impeded the Communist Party from breaking the gendered civic order. In its demands for women’s emancipation, the Party continuously assumed the task of ‘liberating’ (taḥrīr) women rather than the ‘liberation’ (taḥarrur) of women, the latter verb whose actors are women. This limited the subjects carrying out the act of liberation to the Party and its men. It was also constantly emphasized that it was man’s role to

‘defend’ (difā‘) women and ‘protect’ (ḥimāyat) them. In a similar vein to the arguments made during the nahda by Amin and others, within the party discourse women were not defined as

587 Ibid. 588 Ibid., 516. 589 Ibid. 199 active political beings, they were to be liberated, presumably by male communists, rather than liberate themselves. Moreover, women’s issues were placed as part of a long list of secondary goals to be achieved once the primary struggle for class equality was achieved. The Party also did not put a lot of effort into coordinating with the women’s movement. “As a result, the women of the urban masses remained an untapped, unorganized resource for both the women’s and the labor movement in the 1930s.”590

In the first National Congress of the Communist Party of Syria and Lebanon held in

1943-1944, the cause of women’s emancipation was completely marginalized. The conference first and foremost reproduced the male-dominant language in which the CP had so far addressed its audience, speaking to its masculine plural comrades (rifāq) with no mention of any female comrades (rafīqāt).591 Of the speeches we have of that congress, only Ra’if Khuri’s speech opened with ‘brothers and sisters’ (ayyuhā al-ikhwān wa-l-akhawāt), from which we can imply the possibility of female presence during the congress.592 All speeches were given by men, and no mention of the women’s cause was made.

At the conference that split the Syrian and Lebanese factions into separate parties in

1944, the only stipulation in the national programs proposed for both parties that mentioned women was an article related to family issues. Article 12 of the 19 stipulations593 stated,

“protecting the Syrian family from the potential dangers of poverty illiteracy and poverty;

590 Thompson, Colonial Citizens, 161. 591 See Sawt al-Sha’b, January 7, 1944 for coverage on the proceedings of the National Congress. 592 Ra’if Khuri was invited as a ‘guest’ (ḍayf) to represent the udabā’, primarily a speech in the name of Khuri, ‘Umar Fakhuri, and Yusuf Yazbik. 593 According to the Syrian National Program, which was one article more than the 19-article program of the Lebanese Communist Party but otherwise the same program, only because articles 3 and 4 were combined in the latter. See Sawt al-Sha‘b, January 7, 1944: 1 200 improving the status of women; and providing for the health of mothers and children”.594

Although article 3 stipulated “equality between all Lebanese regardless of their religious or racial differences”, there was no mention of gender equality.595 Nor were women workers specifically mentioned in the article related to the protection of workers (‘ummāl).

By the early 1940s, and with the elevation of the anticolonial struggle to the forefront of the communist agenda – even at the expense of socialism, which the program deemed as secondary to the national liberation struggle – women’s emancipation was further demoted within the goals of the Communist Party. Women’s political and social rights within the

Communist Party, much like within the nationalist parties, became contingent upon the realization of other more pressing political goals.596 Both the communists and the nationalists alike fed into the “progressive mystique” with regards to the emancipation of women, using women’s status to argue for their advancement towards greater social equity and their nation’s progress in comparison to other ‘advanced nations’.597

If we look for feminism only within the Communist Party discourse and its actions, we might mistakenly assume its absence.598 However, a closer look reveals that by the late-1930s

594 Ibid. 595 Ibid. 596 Even as late as its Second National Conference that was not convened until 1968, the Communist Party of Lebanon reiterated the placement of the women’s cause as secondary to the class struggle: “Women’s cause is part of the cause of liberation for all working class elements, which cannot be fulfilled except by destroying capitalism and building a socialist society. In this manner, women’s struggle for liberation becomes part of an overall struggle to liberate society as a whole”, Al-Watha’iq al-Kamila li-l-Mu’tamar al-Watani al-Thani li-l-Hizb al-Shuyu‘I al- Lubnani. (Beirut: Dar al-Farabi, 1988), 193. 597 Robinson, “Sisters of Men,” 21. 598 Russian Marxists saw feminism as a bourgeois movement which could not liberate working women. Working class women’s liberation, Aleksandra Kollontai argued, was connected to their class and related to the struggle of working class men rather than middle class women; Attwood, Creating the New Soviet Woman, 175. 201 and especially during the 1940s, women within leftist circles started publishing, organizing, and demanding social and political rights. It is to these women and the issues they raised that we now turn.

Feminism within the Leftist Milieu

By the mid-1930s, women had increased their contributions to leftist journals, some of which were closely connected to the Communist Party.599 Leftist periodicals – such as al-Tali‘a and al-Tariq – and the organizations closely coordinating with the CP – such as the League

Against Nazism and Fascism and the Friends of the Soviet Union – were a space through which women from various political affiliations, and particularly those who were active within the women’s movement in Lebanon and Syria, could project their views.

The journal al-Tali‘a was one of the first of these outlets which attracted women contributors such as Rose Ghurayyib and Mary ‘Ajamy, both of whom were active in the

Lebanese and the Syrian women’s movements respectively. Although neither women had expressed any political affinity towards the Left, their writing in a journal such as al-Tali‘a speaks to the journal’s collaborative nature between various groups on the political spectrum.

Moreover, while some contributors to al-Tali‘a discussed the woman question with relation to work, the majority of the articles by women dealt with the literary and cultural field.

For instance, Mary ‘Ajamy published articles on Arabic poetry and poets such as al-

Buhtari and Ibn Zaydun, as well as her own poetry dedicated to al-Mutanabbi.600 May Ziadeh’s speech at al-‘Urwa al-Wuthqa at the American University of Beirut in 1938, “Risalat al-Adib ila

599 Whereas for instance no woman published in al-Insaniyya in 1925, a few articles by Lebanese and mostly Syrian women started appearing in al-Tali‘a in 1935. 600 See Mary ‘Ajami, “Bayna al-Buhtari wa-Ibn Zaydun”, al-Tali’a 3: no.6/7 (1937); “Inna li-l- Mawti ma Za‘am” (Poetry for al-Mutanabbi), al-Tali’a 2, no.6/7 (1936). In that 1936 commemorative issue for al-Mutanabbi and Maxim Gorky, she was the only female contributor. 202 al-Hayat al-Arabiyya” was published with editorial emphasis on the significance of the adība

May to Arab literature.601 Some articles by women also emphasized the significance of the

‘home’,602 while others borrowed from foreign journals exalting the Soviet treatment of women as mothers.603

Of the few articles that dealt with women’s emancipation and Arab women specifically was Rose Ghurayyib’s speech given at the American University of Beirut and published in al-

Taliʿa in 1936. Ghurayyib, a prominent figure in the Lebanese and Arab feminist movement, claimed that women could liberate themselves through work/labor.604 She argued that women should be taught a trade/profession (mihna) and should work, because this will in turn grant them

601 May Ziadeh, “Risalat al-Adib ila al-Hayat al-Arabiyya”, al-Tali‘a 4, no.3 (1938): 226-227. The journal congratulated the world of literature for the return of May into its fold. 602 Eva Badr, “al-Bayt al-‘Arabi”, al-Tali’a 4, no. 8 (1938): 657-672. A graduate of AUB and teacher at the American Junior College for Women, the journal indicated its joy in Badr’s attention to the Arab Home and urged other Arab women to follow her lead to build “a new Arab world” (‘ālaman ‘arabiyyan jadīdan) that will have significance in the world. She argued for the importance of the home (al-bayt) in national life, and the persistence of the family and the home as a institution (mu’assasa) through history despite recent sociologists calling for its eventual withering away. She emphasized the connection of the Arab home to the Arab nation, highlighting the components of a good and happy home as health, economic stability, good morals, responsibilities. 603 An article in al-Tali‘a in 1937 (translated from French, no indication from whom or where) by Farida Hasna praised the most significant progress the Soviet Union had achieved in terms of women rights, that is, developing the process by which a woman becomes a mother, specifically through child bearing and birth. The article went into details about the kinds of laboratories, hospitals and clinics that the Soviet Union had built for the sake of making pregnancy an easy and desirable task for women. Moreover, it was in the process of childbirth that the government spent its greatest efforts to develop drugs and anesthetics that would decrease the levels of labor and pain during childbirth. The author provided a detailed description of the process by which these ‘young’ and ‘relaxed’ women give birth with the help of the educated and knowledgeable staff. She then transported the reader to the spacious recovery rooms to observe the ‘happy’ and ‘content’ women who just gave birth. In these rooms, “life is sweet, calm and good”, and nurses come in with books for the new mothers explaining the rights of women in the Soviet Union. Doctors offer exercises for women to regain their good figures, and husbands are content. All this, the article explained, because the Soviet government had set the issue of motherhood as a governmental issue. 604 Rose Ghurayyib, “al-‘Amal Muharrir al-Mar’a”, al-Ṭalīʿa 2, no.4 (1936): 380-382 203 economic liberty, safeguard them from servitude in their parents’ and their husbands’ homes, and enable them to choose to leave their husbands’ homes as well if need be. Ghurayyib further explained that “They (the women) should also be made to understand that work is desirable

(mustaḥabb) and that earning an income is required from her as it is required from the man.”605

This, of course, was a response to the opposition women were facing in the mid-1930s to working outside their homes, as explained earlier.

It was not until World War Two and on the pages of al-Tariq that women spoke of purely political issues, primarily of women’s suffrage. Despite some contributions by women in the mid to late 1930s, it was during the Second World War that women’s presence in leftist journals intensified. World War Two was a time when paternalism was being challenged on a wider scale than just Lebanon and Syria. Moreover, it was also, as stated earlier in this chapter, a time when the conservative and religious forces in Lebanese and Syrian societies reacted to these challenges by reinforcing the image of the patriotic mother and emphasizing the confinement of women in the private sphere. The women’s movement, which had placed its hopes in the cause of nationalism and downplayed its political demands for the sake of that cause, was dealt a heavy blow with the victory of the nationalist parties in both Lebanon and Syria in 1943. The nationalist governments that came into power following elections in that year betrayed the progressive forces – including the women’s movement – that helped elect them, and opted for cooperating with the very religious and conservative forces suppressing women’s emancipation.606 It was during this same period in the early 1940s that leftist women, some of

605 Ibid., p. 381. 606 In Syria, al-Gharra’ was the most prominent organization opposing the emancipation of women, and Shukri al-Quwwalti showed support for al-Gharra’ at the expense of the women’s movement in Damascus; see Khoury, Syria and the French Mandate, 610–12; Thompson, Colonial Citizens, 148–54, 252–61. 204 whom were part of the broader women’s movement and others who later became active in the ranks of the Communist Party, stood up for Lebanese and Syrian women’s political demands, and called for the fulfillment of promises of full citizenship to women. They drew heavily upon the tropes and ideas that feminists had been utilizing since the late nineteenth century nahda to legitimize their claims, continuously citing those ideas.

The Legacy of the Nahda

In an article in al-Tariq in 1944, “al-Mar’a wa-l-Shar‘”, Imili Faris Ibrahim addressed the issue of women’s rights and religion, particularly Islamic law (al-Shar‘).607 Faris Ibrahim argued, by referencing the teachings of Islamic reformers such as al-Shaykh Abd al-Qadir al-

Maghribi, that the Prophet Muhammad had equated women with men in both the private and public spheres (mīdān al-‘amal al-‘ām).608 This, Faris Ibrahim pointed out, stood in contrast to the position of the current most advanced nations of the world, who were at the time of the

Prophet still debating whether or not women were human.609 However, while the Prophet had preceded in his equality for women these advanced nations, she questioned, “How does Arab law

(shari‘) allow the West to bypass it with its progress, when our mighty Arab lawmaker (the

Prophet) was the ultimate pioneer to call for equality between women and men?”610

607 Emily Faris Ibrahim, “al-Mar’a wa-l-Shar‘” al-Tariq 3, no.23/24 (December 31, 1944):10-11 608 Abd al-Qadir al-Maghribi, a Syrian scholar and member of the Majma‘ al-‘Ilmi al-‘Arabi in Damascus, strongly advocated for seeking women’s rights and the equality between man and woman in the early teachings of Islam and the Prophet Muhammad. His lecture, Muhammad wa- l-Mar’a, which Faris Ibrahim cited in her article, examined the life of the Prophet based on the Qur’an and the Hadith to argue for his elevation of women’s status to equality with man. See Abd al-Qadir al-Maghribi, Muḥammad wa-al-marʼah: muḥākamat wazīrayn fī amrayn khaṭīrayn : Ibn Khakldūn fī al-Madrasah al-ʻAdilīyah (Damascus: Matabi‘ Quzma, 1928); Aḥmad Ḥamdī Ṣābūnī, Naqḍ risālat Muḥammad wa-al-marʼah (Dimashq: Maṭbaʻat al-Tawfīq, 1929); Muhammad Talas, Muhadarat ‘an al-Shaykh Abd al-Qadir al-Maghribi (Cairo, 1958). 609 She was referring to the Synod of Mâcon of 586. 610 Faris Ibrahim, “al-Mar’a wa-l-Shari‘”, 11. 205 Imili Faris Ibrahim, a Lebanese poet, novelist, and journalist, who referenced the prophet

Muhammad and Islam as being favorable to women, was born into a Christian family in 1914 in

New York. She soon moved back with her family to the town of Mashghara in Lebanon. Her uncle Felix Faris, a prominent intellectual and literary figure, who happened to live with them as she grew up, influenced her choice to become a writer.611 Faris held literary salons in Imili’s home, and took her along to lectures and other literary events around Beirut, including a debate with Nazira Zayn al-Din on the controversy of her book.612 Among her uncle’s friends and frequent visitors were Amin al-Rihani, Salma Sa’igh,613 Ilyas Abu-Shabaka and Yusuf Yazbik,614 and she recalled sneaking into the living room to listen to their conversations as a young girl.615

We do not know where Imili got her education, nor the degrees she earned, however, we do know that she was educated, given her career in literature.616 She worked as an employee at the

Tobacco Régie.617 She became involved in the women’s movement in the 1930s, and had a close friendship with the leading feminists Ibtihaj Qaddura and Salma Sa’igh.618

611 ‘Ulabi, Ra’if Khuri Da‘iyat al-Dimuqratiyya wa-l-‘Uruba, 288–90. 612 Randa Abu al-Husun, “Emily Fares Ibrahim Receives the National Cedar Award”, in al- Ra’ida Winter 1993, no.60: 19-20. 613 She recalled in her handwritten memoirs that I came across in her personal papers that there was one night when Salma Sa’igh came to visit her uncle, and Imili was so impressed by how men listened to her intently. Imili explained that respect as a result of Salam Sa’igh being a writer (adība), and she recalled deciding to be one some day so she can gain the same respect. 614 She recalled in her memoirs that Yazbik used to encourage her writing, so she used to jump with excitement every time he visited, making sure she had something written down for him to read and comment on. 615 Noted in her memoirs among her personal papers. 616 The lack of biographical information on Faris Ibrahim, as well as her female contemporaries, is appalling, especially in comparison to their male contemporaries who have book after book written about their lives and work. 617 ‘Ulabi, Ra’if Khuri Da‘iyat al-Dimuqratiyya wa-l-‘Uruba, 290. 618 Nisa’ Fi Al-Zaman, n.d. ; Thompson, Colonial Citizens, 157. 206 Within the leftists circles that Faris Ibrahim became involved in by the 1940s, she was primarily accompanied by two other prominent women, Maqbula al-Shalaq and Falak Tarazi.

Maqbula al-Shalaq (1921-1987) was a Damascene writer and poet. She attended the Syrian

University in Damascus, unveiled, and was the first woman to graduate with a law degree from that institution and in Damascus. She published novels, poetry, and articles in various newspapers.619 Falak Tarazi (1910/12-1987) was a Damascene-born writer and journalist. She became active in women’s cultural clubs in the 1930s. She became involved with the Communist

Party of Syria in the late 1940s, including founding Soviet-backed organizations such as the

League of Syrian Women for the Protection of Maternity and Childhood.620 She published in various newspapers and journals, including the Beirut-based al-Adib, and the Egyptian al-Risala, as well as al-Tariq.621

Similar to Imili Faris Ibrahim, Falak Tarazi echoed the arguments of nineteenth century reformists as well as the debates in al-Mar’a al-Jadida and other feminist magazines of the early twentieth century, arguing that there was a time in the history of the Arabs when women had a better status than the current period. During the life of the prophet Muhammad, she explained, equality (al-musāwāt) existed between man and woman, women were found active in various

619 Nizar Abaza, Mu‘jam Shahirat al-Nisa’ fi Suriya’ (Damascus: Dar al-Fikir, 2002), 124–25; Thompson, Colonial Citizens, 241. 620 Sami Moubayed, Syria and the USA: Washington’s Relations with Damascus from Wilson to Eisenhower (I.B.Tauris, 2013), 90. 621 Abaza, Mu‘jam Shahirat al-Nisa’ fi Suriya,’ 108.Abdallah Yusef, Tatimmat al-A‘lam Lil- Zarkali, vol. 2, 93; see also for her activities in the Communist Party in the 1950s, Bonnie F. Saunders, The United States and Arab Nationalism: The Syrian Case, 1953-1960 (Greenwood Publishing Group, 1996), 14–15. Salah al-Din Tarazi, the Acting Secretary General of the Syrian Foreign Affairs Ministry in the 1950s, was her brother. 207 fields including literature and even the battlefield (al-maydān al-ḥarbī), and “the Arab woman used to walk side by side (janban ila janb) with man”.622

In the same vein, Maqbula al-Shalaq argued for a lineage that linked herself and Arab women to that historical ‘moment’ and its women. She declared herself and other “Arab women” as “the descendants of Zaynab, Aisha, Umm al-Zubayr, and al-Khansa’,”623 as descendants of the women of the Umayyads and Abbasids who attended political council meetings, discussed, and opposed political issues, when the Arabs were at the height of their glory.624

In a fashion that echoed the prevalent Arab nationalist discourse of their time, feminists marked the Great War as the beginning of the liberation of the Arab woman and the Ottoman era as a period of complete darkness and ignorance for women who remained during that time in a state of extreme backwardness.625 However, despite their portrayal of the Ottoman era as a dark and backward time, they still drew upon a genealogy that had its roots in the late Ottoman period. Maqbula al-Shalaq, for instance, educated her audience and readers about the reformers

(al-muṣlihūn) of the nineteenth century, primarily praising “the great reformer and great social writer, the advocate of women (naṣīr al-mar’a), Qasim al-Amin.”626 She gave an overview of his book Tahrir al-Mar’a and the topics he covered from the veil and divorce, to women’s place in

622 Falak Tarazi, “al-Mar’a wa-l-Mujtama‘”, al-Tariq 1, no.5 (March 6, 1942):11-12. Interestingly, this lecture on the equality granted to women through Islam during the time of the Prophet was given at the Catholic Youth Club (Nadi al-Shabiba al-Urthuduksiyya) in Damascus. 623 Maqbula al-Shalaq, “Wajib al-Mar’a al-‘Arabiyya fi al-Harb al-Hadira”, al-Tariq 1, no. 14 (August 15, 1942), 18. 624 Maqbula al-Shalaq, “Maqam al-Mar’a fi al-Mujtama‘” al-Tariq 3, no.14/15 (August 31, 1944), 21. 625 Maqbula al-Shalaq, “al-Mar’a al-Arabiyya Qabla al-Harb al-‘Amma wa-Ba‘daha”, al-Tariq 1, no.4 (February 20, 1942), 10-11; “al-Fashiyya ‘Aduwwat al-Mar’a”, al-Tali’a 5, no. 5 (May 1939), 364 - Speech given during the first meeting of the League Against Nazism and Fascism in Syria and Lebanon 626 Maqbula al-Shalaq, “Al-Mar’a al-‘Arabiyya wa-Yaqazat al-Wa‘i al-Qawmi”, al-Tariq 1, no. 5 (March 6, 1942), 16. 208 the workforce. Al-Shalaq also continued her historical genealogy by underlining Amin’s influence on other activists that emerged during the nahda, such as Bahithat al-Badiya and Huda al-Shaarawi and other nineteenth and early twentieth century feminists.627

In their writings, leftist feminists placed themselves along a continuous line of the achievement of their predecessors, while identifying the opposition that rose against these early feminists as not only the enemies of women, but the enemies of reform and progress (al-iṣlāḥ wa-l-taqaddum).628 They also problematized the past by challenging their own assumption of the historical linearity of progress and proposing variations within the past and within women’s status in relation to men and society in that past. They renegotiated their approach to the past in line with their attempts to fit into a nationalist conception of the trope of a ‘golden age’ of Arab society that nationalists adhered to and preached. They presented a dual view of the past. On the one hand, when discussing genealogy, and in a nahdawi manner, they portrayed a certain period of the past as having been ‘better’ in terms of women’s condition, and that is the period of early

Islamic rule. As Thompson argues, they evoked history to argue for full citizenship within the established civic order. 629 On the other hand, they emphasized the need to shed tradition and customs for women to achieve equality.

Falak Tarazi and Imili Faris Ibrahim both wrote about the need to reject tradition. Faris

Ibrahim argued that although heritage (al-turāth) was important, it was only useful as part of the historical knowledge of a nation about its past, and that “there is no value for heritage in progressive movements (ḥarakāt taqaddumiyya) except this glorified historical value (qīma

627 Ibid., 16-17, this was also part of the speech al-Shalaq gave in Damascus on January 24, 1942 at the Majma‘ al-‘Ilmi al-‘Arabi. 628 Maqbula al-Shalaq, “Maqam al-Mar’a fi al-Mujtama‘”, al-Tariq 3, no. 14/15 (August 31, 1944): 20-22. 629 See Thompson, Colonial Citizens, 124. 209 tārikhiyya mumajjada)”.630 Tarazi explicitly situated women and Arab society at a crossroads between old and new, between conservatism and progress, and ultimately between the binary of

East and West and what each represented at that moment. Women were at a crossroads, explained Tarazi, with the past stopping the Arab woman from “liberation from her easterness

(taḥarrurihā min sharqiyyatihā) and breaking the chains of tradition and customs”.631 That

‘easterness’ had a duality, argued Tarazi. While it grounded women in their own heritage, it also could work to pull them back towards tradition. This, in a way, echoed the ethos of Lebanese and

Syrian feminists whose interactions with internationalist feminism in the 1930s forced them to examine this category of ‘easterness’ and their position with regards to other ‘eastern’ women,

‘eastern’ men, as well as western women.632

Echoing the staunch positivism that prevailed among intellectual circles of the time, these women argued for their rights within the state based on this idea of historical linearity and the inevitability of progress.633 Since history moved along a linear trajectory towards progress, women’s rights lay within this path that led people, nations, and the world towards evolution and advancement. This inevitability permeated the arguments that women activists made regarding civilization and principles of democracy, they also dominated the genealogies these women drew

630 Imili Faris Ibrahim, “Majal li-l-‘amal”, al-Tariq 3, no.9 (May 20, 1944), 7. 631 Falak Tarazi, “Al-Mar’a wa-l-Bayt wa-l-Tifil”, al-Tariq 1, no.6 (March 26, 1942), 11. 632 See section earlier in this chapter discussing this concept. 633 Writing about approaches to French feminism, Joan Scott argues that feminist history has been portrayed throughout the 19th and 20th century as a “teleological story of cumulative progress toward an ever-elusive goal; a story in which women inevitably found the means within themselves to struggle against their exclusion from democratic politics”, Joan Wallach Scott, Only Paradoxes to Offer: French Feminists and the Rights of Man (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996), 1. This particular approach to feminism however was not only about how this history has been written, but it also represented the way women in the nineteenth and twentieth century perceived their struggle. The struggle of women, particularly demanding political rights from their states, had been founded upon the concept of the “inevitability of progress”. 210 of feminist history and its path forward. By playing on the chord of the East/West divide and the threat of ‘backwardness’ (al-takhalluf) looming upon their societies, leftist feminists in Lebanon and Syria argued for progress (al-taṭawwur) and tied it to the advancement of women across society.

According to feminists writing in the journals in the early 1940s, reactionary ideology

(al-raj‘iyya) was impeding the Arabs from keeping up with developed/civilized nations (umam rāqiya).634 Falak Tarazi argued in a speech in commemoration of the French revolution that reactionary thinking was,

“the enemy of civilization and progress, and the friend of colonialism (al-isti‘mār). We should therefore fight reactionary ideology in all its forms and kinds for the sake of elevating (tarqiyat) women […]the advancement of women (ruqiy al-mar’a) is a step towards independence (al-istiqlāl), and reactionary ideology (al-raj‘iyya) is a dangerous seed in our national and cultural life (ḥayātana al-qawmiyya wa-l-thaqāfiyya), and it (reactionary ideology) is rooted in most of our umma’s classes”.635

This advancement of women and the nation that was linked to democracy was also portrayed by these women as antithetical to fascism.

Fascism the Enemy of Women

By using the logic of linking women’s advancement to human progress, leftist feminists also identified fascism as a reactionary force that stood against progress, which made it ultimately the enemy of women. They became involved in the League Against Nazism and

Fascism.636 Maqbula al-Shalaq was one of the main speakers during the first League conference held in May 1939 in Beirut, and the only female speaker as far as we know. We do not have an

634 Imili Faris Ibrahim, “Lamha ‘an Adab Victor Margueritte wa-Iftiqarina ila Adab Mudhhabi”, al-Tariq 1, no.19 (November 5, 1942), 11. 635 Falak Tarazi, “al-Mar’a wa-l-Tatawur”, al-Tariq 1, no. 15 (August 31, 1942),14. 636 Maqbula al-Shalaq gave a speech during that conference, speaking in the name of women who opposed fascism, “al-Fashiyya ‘Aduwwat al-Mar’a”, al-Tali’a 5, no. 5 (May 1939). 211 exact date and details, however, we do know that a women’s section of the League was established at some point during the Second World War with branches in Lebanon, Syria, and

Iraq.637 These various branches of the Women’s League Against Nazism and Fascism held regular meetings and gatherings, and were a direct affiliate of the main League which continued to host women in its meetings, public lectures, and its publications.638

The women involved in the League, both its main section and the women’s section, used that venue and the outlet of the journal al-Tariq to raise their voices against fascism while making a strong argument for the advancement of women in the public sphere. Much like their male counterparts, they saw the world divided between a fascist and a democratic struggle, and called for taking a direct stand against forces of fascism. They viewed the League, its activities, and its efforts to unite men and women in the struggle against fascism, as part of the process of the liberation of women.639

Maqbula al-Shalaq’s speech at the first conference of the League in 1939 echoed the general sentiments of that meeting regarding the dangers of fascism and the necessary struggle for freedom. Speaking in the name of women in Syria and Lebanon, she wondered “what kind of woman who has a heart does not resent fascism?”640 This resentment to fascism should come because of two main reasons, she argued, since fascism stood against democracy, and since fascism was the enemy of women. Al-Shalaq declared, “We are democratic Arab women (nisā’

637 We know that the Iraq branch of the Women’s League was established in May of 1943 since al-Tariq published the speeches held during that founding meeting in its May 15 1943 issue and specified the established of the League on May 6 1943. 638 It seems to have been the case that the women’s branch was established to cater for the need to have female-only assemblies and associations, which was not uncommon since a male- dominant organization might discourage some women from participation. 639 Maqbula al-Shalaq, “Wajib al-Mar’a al-‘Arabiya fi al-Harb al-Hadira”, al-Tariq 1, no. 14 (August 15, 1942),19. 640 Maqbula al-Shalaq, “al-Fashistiyya ‘aduwwat al-Mar’a”, al-Tali‘a 5, no. 5 (May 1939), 365. 212 al-‘arab al-dimuqrāṭiyyāt), and we say proudly that we resent fascism…and nothing will stop us from resisting it fiercely…Isn’t it (fascism) the enemy of Arab women?”641 She went on to describe fascism’s treatment of women more generally, underlining the unequal treatment of women in Germany and their confinement to the kitchen and the “prison of house walls”, and the fascist impediments for women’s education.642 Furthermore, fascism “looks at women as a tool

(adāt) to be sold and bought cheaply, and forgets that nature has granted her the same it granted man from senses and intellect”.643 Most significantly, fascism took back women to the age of servitude (al-‘ubūdiyya) and imprisonment (al-asir) that they have fought so long to get out of; it therefore reversed progress for women. Al-Shalaq elaborated on this point by explaining how

Nazism was discouraging women from going to schools and forbidding them from working outside their homes.644

Drawing on a historical overview of women’s suffrage movements and successes to attain the vote from late nineteenth century Bohemia to the Soviet example of gender equality,

Imili Faris Ibrahim noted in an article that the countries that have given women the right to vote were fighting along the democratic front against Nazism and fascism. 645 Not only did fascism deny women their rights, but Hitler and Mussolini were responsible for reversing some of the political rights achieved by women in their countries, primarily the right to vote and run for office.646

641 Ibid. 642 Ibid., 366. 643 Ibid. 644 Ibid. 645 Imili Faris Ibrahim, “Sawt al-Mar’a, Huquq Jadida”, al-Tariq 2, no. 20 (December 29, 1943): 15-17 646 While German women gained suffrage in 1918 under the Weimar Republic, the Nazi Party discouraged women from entering the Party as well as getting involved in politics more generally. The Party further propagated the domesticity of women, and the image of child- 213 Fighting fascism together as men and women provided a space in which both genders were equal, argued Maqbula al-Shalaq and Falak Tarazi. The idea of a struggle common to both men and women, despite acknowledging separate and traditional gender roles, allowed these women to insert themselves into the plural possessive pronoun in which ‘we’ was used and ‘our’ to designate a common possession of the homeland and of its freedom. Since the speakers were women themselves, the ‘we’ that they used, although not broken down into male and female, emphasized this inclusion. Al-Shalaq stated in her League speech in 1939,

“Let fascism know that in our country there are men who are awake and not happy with its actions! …Let fascism know that we have women whose hearts repulse at the mention of its name (fascism)…! […] And let the supporters and servants of fascism now, that we (my emphasis) resist it (nuqāwimuha) and will not allow it to fulfill its dreams in our homeland (waṭananā), whose freedom and independence we will redeem with our hands, our blood, and our souls.”647

Within the anti-fascist movement, women, “whether mothers, comrades, or sisters, should enlist (tatajannad) to fight this disease (dā’) with all the means they have”.648 Moreover, fighting fascism placed women within the public realm. When women became men’s partners in fighting this enemy, they achieved a greater status in public affairs. Women could then “walk

bearing women who did not seek work outside thier house. For more on women within Nazi Germany see Jill Stephenson, Women in Nazi Germany (Harlow; New York: Longman, 2001); Katherine Thomas, Women in Nazi Germany. (New York: AMS Press, 1981); Claudia Koonz, Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family, and Nazi Politics (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1987); Renate Bridenthal, Atina Grossmann, and Marion A Kaplan, When Biology Became Destiny: Women in Weimar and Nazi Germany (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1984); Anna Maria Sigmund, Women of the Third Reich (Richmond Hill, Ont.: NDE Pub., 2000). 647 Maqbula al-Shalaq, “al-Fashistiyya ‘aduwwat al-mar’a”, 367. 648 Imili Faris Ibrahim, “Muhimmat al-Mar’a fi al-Karitha al-‘Alamiyya al-Hadira”, al-Tariq 1, no. 4 (February 20, 1942), 5. 214 side by side (ilā jānib) the enlightened men of our country”; they could be the “vanguard of the people fighting this oppressive system”.649

Fighting fascism was therefore a fight for the homeland and for the nation, and it placed women within that nationalist struggle. Maqbula al-Shalaq declared in a speech at a gathering of the Women’s League in Damascus that “we fight with honor against Nazism and fascism because we fight for our independence”. She urged women “to fight Nazism and its traitor agents for the preservation of our homeland (waṭanunā), culture, honor (sharafunā), and nationalist aspiration (amānīna al-qawmiyya)”.650

Imili Faris Ibrahim went even further to argue that some of her countrymen had been attracted to fascism’s appeal to their masculinities (rujūla). This appeal came from its appearance of disciplined organization, its promises of a national renaissance (nahda qawmiyya) for the disempowered umma, as well as its propagation of a za‘īm that would be given the sole authority to lead.651 At a gathering of the Iraqi Women’s League in Baghdad on May 6, 1943, Afifi Ra’uf, the president of the League, gave a speech “al-Naziya ‘Aduwwat al-Mar’a” reemphasizing

Nazism as the enemy of women. She argued that Nazism would only bring backwardness

(ta’akhkhur) to the East. For women, Nazism would colonize their country as well as enslave them and turn them into production machines (alāt intāj). Therefore, women cannot be neutral

(‘alā al-ḥiyād), especially since women have proven over time to be at the forefront of the convoy (al-qāfila) moving towards progress and liberation (al-taṭawur wa-l-taḥarrur). Ra’uf declared,

649 Maqbula al-Shalaq, “Wajib al-Mar’a al-‘Arabiya fi al-Harb al-Hadira”, al-Tariq 1, no. 14 (August 15, 1942),19. 650 Ibid., 18. 651 Imili Faris Ibrahim, “Nahwa ‘alam Jadid”, al-Tariq 3, no. 15/16 (August 31, 1944): 11-12 215 “To my sister, fascism is your personal enemy, robbing you of the right to fight for liberation, and stopping historical progress […] in this war, our destiny is linked with the destiny of oppressed people, believe that victory is ours”.652

Saluting women of the world fighting fascism, including women of Britain, US, China, and

Soviet Union, Ra’uf urged Iraqi women to stand at the forefront of the global struggle, and that

“by joining the League Against Fascism, you have joined the ranks of these fighters

(mukāfiḥāt)”.653

Fighting fascism became a cause of women’s progress and fight for equality with men.654

Al-Shalaq argued continuously that,

“We should fight this monster (fascism) with all of the strength we have, to elevate the status of women (narfa‘ mustawa al-mar’a) in our country, and provide prosperity to our people, so that our bilād can march to the zenith/pinnacle (awajj) of civilization (al- madaniyya) and culture (al-ḥaḍāra)”. 655

Feminists paralleled, on the one hand, the correlation between fighting fascism and gaining rights for women, and on the other hand, the correlation between the women’s cause and the advancement of the nation. Since the antithesis of fascism was democracy, these feminists framed their opposition to fascism within the language of democratic rule and argued for the incompleteness of democratic rights without political rights for women.

No Suffrage, No Democracy

Demands for women’s suffrage moved to the forefront within the context of fall 1943 and

Lebanese independence. Feminists framed their demands within the contours of what it meant to be an independent nation and to uphold citizenship rights and democratic principles. Preceding the summer 1943 parliamentary elections, the Lebanese Women’s Association had petitioned

652 Afifi Ra’uf, “al-Naziyya ‘aduwwat al-Mar’a”, al-Tariq 2, no.9 (June 1 1943), 22. 653 Ibid., 654 al-Shalaq, “al-Fashistiyya ‘Aduwwat al-Mar’a”, 366. 655 Ibid. 216 President Tabit to include a referendum on establishing suffrage for women, but to no avail.

Although the communist party made a bold appearance during these elections, they failed to win any seats, and the nationalist elite voted into power with low voter turnout took over parliaments in both Lebanon and Syria, reaffirming its conservative agenda of the 1930s.656

With all the talk about a new Lebanon and a new state that was going to reflect free and independent citizens, Faris Ibrahim utilized that rhetoric to argue for new rights (huqūq jadīda) for the new woman (al-mar’a al-jadīda).657 In that same vein and using the same ‘language’ of patriotism and the advancement of the nation, women linked their participation in this homeland,

‘our homeland’ (waṭananā), to political rights. “Women want to share in directing our homeland to the level of advanced nations (al-umam al-rāqiya), and the first thing they (women) request to fulfill this duty is the right to vote and the right to run for office (ḥaqq al-intikhāb wa-ḥaqq al- tarshīh)”, argued Faris Ibrahim, making it clear that a women’s fulfillment of any of her patriotic duties would not come for free. 658

Imili Faris Ibrahim questioned the democracy of Lebanon in the absence of basic rights for women: “who told them (men who refuse to give women their rights) they are fit for a complete democratic rule (ḥukum dimuqrāṭī kāmil) when there are (women) in their country who have been denied their basic political rights (al-ḥuqūq al-siyāsiyya al-badīhiyya)?”659 She went on to identify two forms of democracy, a complete and humane democracy (kāmila, insāniyya), and a deficient/incomplete democracy (nāqiṣa).660 She further intensified her attacks, and in a typical manner reserved for the era of the Second World War, went after her male

656 Thompson, Colonial Citizens, 248–52. 657 Imili Faris Ibrahim, “Sawt al-Mar’a: Huquq Jadida”, 15 -17. 658 Ibid., 16. 659 Ibid., 15. 660 Imili Faris Ibrahim, “Nahwa ‘Alam Jadid”, 11-12 217 contemporaries stating her surprise that “the men excited about the principles of democracy” were not aware that they were “more nazi (akthar tanāziyan) than the Nazis themselves by denying us (women) the right to run for office (ḥaqq al-tarashshuḥ)”.661 She even mocked her male contemporaries for not being able to reach a consensus on national issues while the women of al-Ittihad al-Nisa’i al-Lubnani al-Suri al-Arabi, which brought under its umbrella the majority of Arab women’s organizations, had come together to present their demands to the state concerning women’s political rights.662 Upon the victory of the nationalist governments in

Lebanon and Syria in 1943, feminists organizing within the Lebanese Women’s Association – led by Najla Sa‘b as well as known leaders of the women’s movements such as Ibtihaj Qaddura,

Nazik ‘Abid Bayhum, Eveline Bustros, and Imili Faris Ibrahim – relaunched demands for women’s suffrage in 1944.663

By linking the status of women to the level of advancement of a nation, leftist feminists, much like their counterparts in the women’s movement, made the latter contingent upon greater rights for women, particularly political rights within the public sphere. When presenting the readers with genealogies of women’s struggle for political rights, they correlated the successes of these women in certain countries to the level of advancement of these same countries, asking whether all advanced nations could be in the wrong while they, denying women political rights, were in the right. Faris Ibrahim linked progress to women’s rights and therefore argued for

661 Imili Faris Ibrahim, “Sawt al-Mar’a: Huquq Jadida”, 16. 662 Ibid. 663 The Lebanese Women’s Association raised a petition to parliament demanding women’s suffrage. When the proposal for suffrage finally made it to the parliament’s floor in 1944, it was quickly shut down by the parliamentary committee members, who cited suffrage as contrary to Lebanese tradition and religion. See Thompson, Colonial Citizens, 259–60. 218 judging a nations’ advancement based on the rights women have achieved in those nations.664

She made direct connections in her arguments between giving women a share in society (ishrāk al-mar’a) and moving the nation forward towards progress.665 She emphasized that the placement of a nation among advanced nations depended on its willingness to embrace progressive movements (ḥarakāt al-taṭawur), primarily rights for women.666 Faris Ibrahim had a particular phrase that she always used to conclude her arguments for more rights for women within the Lebanese state, that ‘history will record and the world will judge’. At a time when

Lebanon (and Syria) were making a case for their ‘worthiness’ of independence and for their consideration among the advanced nations of the world, Faris Ibrahim’s statement warned of the measures the world will use to determine Lebanon’s preparedness for independence.

The role that women played during the Second World War, including being part of not only the war effort, but replacing men in factories and in breadwinning (just like World War

One) gave them added justification for demanding a greater say in the political process.667

Women involved in leftist and anti-fascist circles used opportunities of public speaking in

League meetings to demand suffrage for women.668 They spoke about engagement in the political sphere as a duty (wājib) and responsibility (mas’ūliyya) that they wanted to take on.669

664 Imili Faris Ibrahim, “al-Mar’a fi al-Majlis al-Niyabi”, al-Tariq 3, no 17 (September 19, 1944), 7 665 Imili Faris Ibrahim, “Sawt al-Mar’a: Huqu Jadida”, 15-17 666 Ibid. 667 This was also a claim being used at the time by contemporary European feminists who demanded citizenship in return for service they fulfilled during the war. This was also not unlike the arguments put forth by anti-colonial nationalists who fought in the ranks of their imperial powers and demanded full independence and citizenship rights when the war was over. Imili Faris Ibrahim, “Muhimmat al-Mar’a”, 5-6. 668 Imili Faris Ibrahim, excerpts from speech at League meeting on May 16, 1943 celebrating the victory of the allies in North Africa, see “Khitab al-Sayyida Imili Faris Ibrahim”, al-Tariq 2, no.9 (June 1 1943): 8-9. 669 Imili Faris Ibrahim, “al-Mar’a fi al-Majlis al-Niyabi”, 6-7. 219 Bringing examples from the Syrian revolt, Turkey, and Egypt, they argued that when allowed to develop a national consciousness, women could be very beneficial to their countries. The only way this consciousness could develop was through allowing women to be part of the public domain, to be involved in politics, and sit in councils and meetings with men to share their opinion.

Maqbula al-Shalaq emphasized that women’s engagement in the war effort had made them more patriotic and nationalist. 670 Arab women that took to the streets in Egypt, Iraq, and

Syria, and those that participated in the Syrian Revolt in 1925, became partners (sharīkāt) of men and comrades (rafīqāt) in the national struggle.671 This particular factor was part of feminists’ responses to suffrage opponents who claimed that citizen rights were linked to military service.

Therefore, to “prove their worthiness as citizens”, women had joined one battle after another from 1918 to the latest being in 1945 for the withdrawal of French troops from Lebanon and

Syria.672 However, the persistent policies of the elite continued to deny women their political rights, sighting women’s rightful place in the home as their patriotic and national duty.

The Battle Over Space: Women as Mothers, Women as Workers

The battle for political rights for women unfolded within the debate on public and private space. In Mandate Lebanon and Syria, the streets and urban public spaces were deemed masculine. “Women were the absent prize, the damsels in the castle, in the politics of public space”, argues Thompson for the early Mandate period, while private space was marked as

670 Maqbula al-Shalaq, “al-Mar’a al-Arabiya fi al-Nidal Dud al-Naziyya”, al-Tariq 1, no.6 (March 26, 1942): 20-21. 671 Maqbula al-Shalaq, “al-Mar’a al-Arabiya wa-Yaqathat al-Wa‘i al-Qawmi”, al-Tariq 1, no.5 (March 6, 1942): 16-17; “al-Mar’a al-Arabiya fi al-Nidal Dud al-Naziya”, 20-21. 672 Thompson, Colonial Citizens, 275. 220 female, particularly in the cities.673 However, by the 1920s and more so in the 1930s, urban women had left their homes and gone unattended into the market, to conduct social visits and activities, and even to march into the streets to demonstrate.674 Women had succeeded by the end of the 1930s “to assert a greater collective and political presence in the streets.”675 However, while public spaces became more accessible to women by the 1930s, the anti-work campaign launched by the state, the mandate powers, and religious factions by the early 1940s reemphasized domesticity for women and reopened the debate on women’s place in the work place. The work sphere/space was both a public space in which women stood alongside men as well as a means for greater financial and social independence for women.

While leftist feminists accommodated patriotic motherhood, they also argued for a woman’s right to work, and her ability to straddle both spaces equally. Echoing the turn to patriotic motherhood in the women’s movements, they adopted the ethos of motherhood and women’s role within the domestic sphere to argue for the permeability between the private and the public spheres. Falak Tarazi argued that the home was “the source of all good and evil that befall the life of the individual and society (al-fard wa-l-jamā‘a)”, and it was the “pillar of the nation (al-umma) and women are part of it (the home) as the soul is part of the body.” 676 By being the soul of the home, mothers were therefore partners in building the nation. “Women are

673 Thompson, 185–86. 674 Women were present in major demonstrations, particularly in Beirut and Damascus. In 1931 and 1933, hundreds of Damascene women demonstrated alongside men to protest the rigged parliamentary elections and suspension of parliament respectively. In both cases, elite women rode in cars while women from popular quarters marched on foot. In 1936, mass protests erupted in Syria and Lebanon demanding independence and unity of Syria, and amidst French tanks in the streets and at least four protestors dead, Syrian and Lebanese women marched in the streets. Women’s protests and marches were both in conjunction with male demonstrations in the streets as well as marches organized by women on their own. Thompson, 184–91. 675 Thompson, 191. 676 Falak Tarazi, “al-Mar’a wa-l-Mujtama‘”, 11. 221 engineers (muhandisa)”, added Tarazi; “(a woman) engineers the character of her child, then shares with men in building the nation and organizing it”.677 However, the private was not isolated, but directly influenced the public.678 A woman’s involvement in public life, her awareness of duties and participation in national life, directly influenced the home and what a child acquires from that home he inhabits.

The duty of motherhood was used to show the strength rather than the weakness of a woman. Using the difference in ‘nature’ argument, leftist feminists argued that if nature (al-

ṭabī‘a) had chosen women to perform such a hard task as motherhood that was in itself a prerequisite for the formation of society and nations, how was it logical for her not to be considered on equal ground with the being she brings into this world?679 The difference in

‘nature’ had rather made women the stronger and more effective (al-aqwā fi‘liyyan) half of human society. The debates emphasized difference through the patriotic motherhood trope, however difference came with equality in the intellectual domain; women were equal to men in intellect.680

Unlike their male counterparts, women asking for political rights “found themselves faced with a painful tradeoff.”681 They were accused of betraying not only their religion, but also their domestic duties. These writers realized the challenges that women faced and the accusations they had to deal with when they decided to engage in what was public, that they had abandoned their homes, their families, their motherhoods (umūmatahā), and their femininity (unūthatahā),

677 Ibid., 12. 678 Ibid. 679 Imili Faris Ibrahim, “al-Mar’a fi al-Majlis al-Niyabi”, 6-7. 680 Maqbula al-Shalaq, “Maqam al-Mar’a fi al-Mujtama‘”,4-5. 681 Thompson, Colonial Citizens, 126. 222 “as if backwardness (al-ta’akhur) is the hallmark of femininity and the mark of motherhood”.682

Arguing against the mutual exclusivity of motherhood and women’s involvement in society and politics, Faris Ibrahim stated that “nations that have realized the potential of women to take on social burdens have used their laws and constitutions to give women the possibility (imkāniyyat) to perform both duties, duty of motherhood and social duty”.683 She emphasized the balance that a mother should strike between her home and society, the private and the public. Falak Tarazi stated, in a statement reminiscent of Fakhuri’s idea of living outside the margins of life,

“A woman in the twentieth century cannot live on the margins of life (hāmish al-ḥayāt), the way her eastern sister had lived in the past ages […] her exodus into the world is a necessity (khurūj al-mar’a ilā al-‘ālam ḍarūra) in order that she expands her knowledge and learns from life […] but this does not deny the home’s need for her and the necessity of her presence in it, because the home is the balance of stability of the umma”.684

Women were in this equation straddling the needs of both the private and the public. This idea of a balance between two spheres echoed the Soviet model of the ‘new woman’. Yet, despite this discourse that seemed to prevail among women activists across the political spectrum, an examination of the activities of these leftist women during the war reveals their push against the boundaries of the public space they were debating. Leftist women asking for participation in the public sphere made sure to insert themselves in that sphere, through engaging in public debates and activities, and by contributing to a male-dominant press.

The post-World War One press boom in Lebanon and Syria developed within the parameters of the paternalistic structure of the state, both as an industry and in content. Women were largely excluded and rarely featured in the mainstream press. However, women magazines,

682 Maqbula al-Shalaq, “Maqam al-Mar’a fi al-Mujtama‘”, 4. 683 Imili Faris Ibrahim, “al-Mar’a fi al-Majlis al-Niyabi”, 6. 684 Falak Tarazi, “al-Mar’a wa-l-Tatawwur”, al-Tariq 1, no.15 (August 31, 1942), 14. 223 by and for women, also proliferated in that period. 685 These magazines were “constructed quite self-consciously as a forum distinct from that of the male press”, which in turn gave women a voice in politics and culture, yet it remained within a “separate sphere…unmediated by the paternalistic male press”.686 When this first generation of women’s magazines started disappearing from the public scene by the mid-1930s, this threatened the complete silencing of women’s voices in the press and the public sphere. Several women however, of which Imili Faris

Ibrahim was a major figure, began publishing in the male-dominated press, thus creating a shared rather than a separate sphere for women to make their voices heard.687

Although the majority of women’s presence in the press during that period revolved around women’s issues and within women’s publications, these women were different in that they engaged with political and economic issues being discussed by their male contemporaries and in male-dominated press such as al-Tariq. They engaged in debates around state-building, discussing economic plans, the purpose of education, the importance of healthcare, and critiquing state policies and reform plans. Faris Ibrahim engaged in literary criticism, offering reviews of books published, such as Ra’if Khuri’s al-Fikr Al-Arabi al-Hadith, and an overview of the literature of Victor Margueritte, the French author of several novels in the interwar period

685 40 newspapers in Lebanon and Syria, along with around 300 specialized magazines were being published by 1945. 13 magazines run by women and for women were published between 1918 and 1933. Thompson, Colonial Citizens, 212–14. 686 Thompson, 214. 687 Through their debates of political issues these women were already altering the public discourse by introducing a binary language of female and male in every discussion. Not only did they use the Arabic female pronouns and nouns in conjunction with their male equivalents, but they also spoke in the name of both males and females by using the Arab plural pronoun ‘we’ (naḥnu) and the plural possessive pronoun (nā) to indicate collective ownership to, for instance, our homeland (waṭananā), our blood and our souls (dimā’anā wa-arwāḥanā), our progress (taqadduminā), among other examples. 224 that depicted the cultural and gender anxieties of a post-World War One world.688 In 1944, Imili

Faris Ibrahim gave a critical analysis of the five-year-plan the Lebanese government had released earlier that year. 689 She weighed in on economic as well as social policies, including construction of public spaces, schools, and hospitals. This commentary on the government’s plan was part of a speech Faris Ibrahim gave on Martyrs’ Day on May 6, 1944, where she shared the stage with her male contemporaries. The publication of the speech in al-Tariq was also accompanied with an image of Faris Ibrahim giving her speech surrounded by a crowd of men.690

Leftist feminists were present publicly in events and demonstrations, had their images printed in newspapers and journals, and stood unveiled in front of mixed audiences to give speeches. In a meeting for the League Against Nazism and Fascism in Beirut on May 16, 1943 celebrating the victories of the Allies in North Africa, Imili Faris Ibrahim gave a speech demanding political rights for women to vote and run for office. Sharing the stage with her male contemporaries, ‘Umar Fakhuri, Ra’if Khuri, Yusuf Ibrahim Yazbik, Antun Tabit, and Farajallah al-Hilu, Faris Ibrahim addressed the upcoming elections and demanded voting rights for women.

She argued that if that right was not granted to women, men carry the responsibility of bringing democratic candidates, in support of those the communist party had nominated in the 1943 elections.691

688 Imili Faris Ibrahim critiqued Ra’if Khuri’s al-Fikr Al-Arabi al-Hadith in al-Tariq 3, no. 12 (July 3, 1944), 19; Imili Faris Ibrahim, “Lamha ‘an Adab Victor Margueritte wa-Iftiqarina ila Adab Mudhhabi”, al-Tariq 1, no.19 (November 5, 1942), 11. For more on Margueritte in this context and specifically his widely-read novel La Garçonne, see Roberts, Civilization without Sexes, chap. 2. 689 Imili Faris Ibrahim, “Majal li-l-‘amal”, 7-8. 690 al-Tariq 3, no.9 (May 20, 1944), 7. 691 Imili Faris Ibrahim, “Min Khitab Imili Faris Ibrahim”, al-Tariq 2, no.9 (June 1, 1943) p. 8-9 225 Other women also gave speeches and lectures in Damascus and Beirut to mixed audiences and were documented through re-publications in al-Tariq, including al-Shalaq’s speech at the first meeting of the League Against Nazism and Fascism in May 1939 and other

League meetings, and a lecture she gave at al-Majma‘ al-‘Ilmi al-‘Arabi in January 1942; and

Falak Tarazi’s lecture at the Catholic Youth Club in Damascus in March 1942.692

Leftist women explicitly demanded a place for women in the political sphere and urged other women to demand this right from the state.693 They argued that, since she was already present in the public sphere through her work, as a peasant in the field, as a worker in the factory, in offices, schools, and hospitals, how can laws concerning a woman’s work be drafted without her involvement in the process of legislation? More importantly, how could she be taxed by a state and not have the power to hold accountable or even observe how her taxes were being used?694 These issues called into question the definition of citizenship and women’s belonging to it.

While leftist men argued for the expansion of the public sphere by arguing for the political engagement of intellectuals and their political activism, as chapter1, 2, and 3 of this dissertation have shown, leftist women, using the same space, argued for the interconnectedness of the public sphere with the private sphere and the permeability of the boundaries between the two spaces, with each affecting the other in seminal ways. Based on this assumption, they argued

692 Maqbula Al-Shalaq, “al-Thawra al-Faransiyya wa-l-Naziyya”, a lecture on the democratic and liberal values of the French revolution in contrast to Nazism, given at a League meeting in September 1942; “al-Mar’a al-Arabiyya Qabla al-Harb al-‘Amma wa-Ba‘daha”, a lecture she gave at the Majma‘ al-‘Ilmi al-‘Arabi in Damascus in 1942; “Al-Fashistiyya ‘Aduwwat al- Mar’a”, the speech she gave the 1939 first League meeting in Beirut. Falak Tarazi, “al-Mar’a wa-l-Mujtama‘”, a lecture she gave at Nadi al-Shabiba al-Kathulikiyya in Damascus in 1942. 693 Maqbula al-Shalaq, “al-Mar’a al-Arabiya fi al-Nidal Dud al-Naziya”, 20-21. 694 Imili Faris Ibrahim, “Sawt al-Mar’a: Huquq Jadida”, 15 -17; “al-Mar’a fi al-Majlis al- Niyabi”, 6-7. 226 for the presence of women in the public sphere given the inability to strictly separate between the two spheres. Leftist feminists also expanded that sphere by calling for women’s political rights and by themselves crossing the borders into public space.

They also argued that the women’s question could not be separated from social and economic issues, and that all these issues were connected to politics and women’s political rights, primarily, the right to vote and the right to run for office. They argued for the centrality of class and its relation to women’s rights.

No Freedom for Women While Men Are Robbed from Theirs: Connecting Class to Gender

Leftist feminists realized that a woman’s class influenced how she was viewed and treated by society, and the little chances she had in improving her status and life.695 They saw liberation and increased rights as a result of socioeconomic status rather than a cause. For instance, in the debate on unveiling (al-sufūr), poor women who were forced to work chose to unveil for practical reasons, while middle-class women removed their veils after becoming educated.696 This was also the frame they used to see other social issues related to gender, such as marriage and divorce, arguing that family problems were inseparable from social and economic circumstances.697 These circumstances also changed society’s perception of a certain issue; while unveiling was used to shame women by those who opposed her progress,

695 Falak Tarazi, “Ibnat Dimashq”, al-Tariq 2, no.18/19 (December 7, 1943):15-17 696 Maqbula al-Shalaq, “al-Mar’a al-‘Arabiyya fi al-Nidal Didd al-Naziyya”, 20-21. 697 So for instance, al-Shalaq argued that legislating against divorce (laws that forbid divorce) was not a solution to divorce; instead, men would find a way to divorcing their wives even in the presence of such laws by for example traveling to other countries were divorce was permitted. Rather, such a social problem could be solved by making divorce accessible to both men and women. Maqbula al-Shalaq, “Maqam al-Mar’a fi al-Mujtama‘”, al-Tariq 3, no.14/15 (August 31 1944), 20. 227 “…economic life has necessitated women to work unveiled in factories and fields, and in schools and universities, until unveiling became a normal thing for them”.698

Their awareness of class and its integration into their cause for women’s rights allowed these feminists to frame the genealogy of women’s history and the increased awareness of women of their rights along class lines. Maqbula al-Shalaq identified aristocratic (aristuqrāṭiyya) and middle-class women separately from lower class/poor women, asserting that in comparison, the latter continued to live in darkness (ẓalām) and ignorance (jahl) at the turn of the twentieth century when the former started engaging more openly in cultural and social matters.699

In a strong statement about the link between class and equal rights, Maqbula al-Shalaq argued that a historical overview of humanity shows that like women, men also passed through historical stages of oppression, they were “slaves in the age of slavery, serfs in the age of feudalism, and production tools in the age of capitalism”.700 During that same time that some men were being oppressed, there were also noble men, aristocrats, capitalists, and feudal lords as well as noble women, princesses, and bourgeois women. Making an argument specifically about eastern societies (al-bilād al-sharqiyya) or rather non-advanced societies where class oppression still existed, al-Shalaq stated that “you will find women in servitude of men and men in servitude of the ruler (al-ḥākim). For he (man) is an oppressor at home, and oppressed outside his home”.701 This statement was a verbatim quote from Qasim Amin’s al-Mar’a al-Jadida in which he said, “Look at the eastern countries; you will find woman enslaved to man and man to the

698 Ibid. 699 Maqbula al-Shalaq, “al-Mar’a al-‘Arabiyya Qabla al-Harb al-‘Amma wa-Ba‘daha”, 10. 700 Maqbula al-Shalaq, “Maqam al-Mar’a fi al-Mujtama‘”, al-Tariq August 4, 1944 (issue 14): 5 701 Ibid. 228 ruler. Man is oppressor in his home, oppressed as soon as he leaves it.”702 This, in turn, is indicative of the persistence of Amin’s legacy, and its use as a familiar line of thought and idea within the women’s movement to argue for the interconnectivity between class, politics, and gender.

The integration of class and gender equality remained a limited approach for these feminists. However, these feminists’ adherence to a class examination of the woman question is marginal, I would argue, in comparison to the other issues they put forth which were discussed above. By demanding political rights for women from within a leftist milieu, they challenged the democratic principles upon which their male counterparts were building their arguments of class equality and social justice.

At a time when the whole world was questioning humanity, its progress in light of the atrocities coming out of the war, and the way forward, these women offered a bold statement about humanity and the need to have a holistic view on human rights. Faris Ibrahim argued that the stability of the world would only come with admitting human rights in its wholeness (ḥuqūq al-insān kāmila).703 This ‘wholeness’ was articulated in equality between man and woman, as much as it was linked to class equality. The advancement of women should be accompanied with the advancement of man, and that in turn was contingent upon the advancement of the nation.704

“The truth is that a woman cannot gain her freedom while man is robbed from his”, al-Shalaq wrote.705 Again referencing Qasim Amin’s argument that whenever man degrades woman he degrades himself, al-Shalaq argued that same goes to countries where women have personal

702 Qasim Amin, al-Mar’a al-Jadida, 17, taken from Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 1798-1939, 168. 703 Imili Faris Ibrahim, “Nahwa ‘alam Jadid”, 11-12. 704 Ibid.; Maqbula al-Shalaq, “al-Mar’a al-Arabiya wa-l-Nidal Dud al-Naziyya”, 20-21. 705 Maqbula al-Shalaq, “Maqam al-Mar’a fi al-Mujtama‘”, 5. 229 freedom (ḥuriyyatihinna al-shakhṣiyya) and men have political freedom (ḥuriyyatihi al- siyāsiyya), “the two situations are completely connected […]both interact with each other

(mutafā‘ilatan) and each one has an effect on the other.”706

Women’s cause (qadiyyat al-mar’a) cannot be separate from the socioeconomic environment, and these issues were all connected to politics, affecting the achievement of real independence. Therefore, every woman that aims to gain her rights should realize the connection between her rights and that of other citizens. Al-Shalaq argued,

“[…] there is no shorter way, and no surer way, for us to reach our social and economic rights, than the struggle for consolidating our independence and establishing national sovereignty over our financial, industrial, and commercial ports. A woman who aims to live happily and have a bright future should make her primary goal the complete independence of her country […] and she should demand absolute equality between all citizens, and the granting of public and private democratic freedoms (al-ḥuriyyāt al- dimuqrāṭiyya) and at their forefront: freedom of conscience, speech, press, organization (including syndicalism and parties), and freedom of worship and religion. For there is no freedom for you, woman, when your people are deprived from theirs”.707

The progress and advancement of the nation was therefore linked to solutions of social, economic, and political issues plaguing society. “Only when we treat these issues can we keep up with the cultural current (tayyār al-ḥaḍara) that is taking the world towards evolution and freedom”, argued Faris Ibrahim.708 She, along with her fellow feminists, argued that women had the right to have a say in those solutions, and giving women this right was also a huge part of that solution.

Conclusion

706 Ibid. 707 Ibid., 22. 708 Imili Faris Ibrahim, “Lamha ‘an Adab Victor Margueritte wa-Iftiqarina ila Adab Mudhhabi”, 11.

230 Leftist feminists during the 1940s framed the demand for political rights in positivistic notions of progress, and borrowed the language utilized by their state, colonial elite, and the international political culture to justify their claims. They questioned democracy and progress in the absence of women in public life, and they taunted those who opposed their demands with the scariest label of their time, fascism. They projected a holistic view on progress in which the rights of man, woman, child, and human society were interconnected and the boundaries between class and gender were impermeable.

Leftist feminists drew from the ideas and actions of both the women’s movement and the communist movement. The voices of women within the Left echoed those of their counterparts in the women’s movement in Lebanon and Syria, both by posing themselves as a continuation of that lineage and by the issues, demands, and themes they debated. Leftist women writing in the

1940s openly adopted the legacy of the women’s movement and its roots in debates about progress and in the arguments of nahdawi reformists. They upheld the ethos of patriotic motherhood, while at the same time arguing for the Soviet ‘new woman’, i.e., the ability of women to straddle domestic and public duties, public being both in the work sphere and the political sphere. Moreover, they re-politicized the ‘woman question’ after it had been limited within the parameters of nationalism and the ethos of patriotic motherhood, by bringing to the forefront demands for women’s political rights – particularly women’s suffrage. They were the first feminists in the local women’s movement to interrogate class with the issue of gender and to debate women’s rights as part of a wider societal struggle for equality. However, by doing so, they faced the reality of their cause being demoted in light of another more salient political cause

– or causes in this case since the communists by that point were prioritizing national liberation that was to be followed by socialism once the former was achieved. Although these women saw

231 beyond the limits put forth by that approach, their aspirations did not materialize within the parameters of the Communist Party. Much like their ‘nationalist’ feminist counterparts, they assumed that upholding the primacy of the class struggle (the nationalist struggle for their counterparts) would bring them increased support and a closer realization of their goals.

Elizabeth Thompson argues that women’s demands for political rights were a challenge to the paternalistic civic order that the French and the local elite produced and maintained throughout the mandate. I argue that these demands, as framed by leftist women, were more of a challenge to the principles of republicanism and democratic rule. They threatened to reveal the weaknesses and drawbacks of the system that both leftist men and other liberal nationalist groups were calling for by pointing out to the incompleteness of democracy with the denial of full rights for women.

Although women within communist circles managed to open a space for debate about women’s political rights separate from the nationalist discourse through which most feminists of their time remained, they still faced a similar fate. Their cause was relegated by their parties, organizations, and their male counterparts to a secondary tier. Their rights were to be fulfilled once the primary political goals of the movement were to be achieved. For some, such as Imili

Faris Ibrahim, the leftist discourse became too narrow for their demands and too unreceptive.

Maqbula al-Shalaq and Falak Tarazi became fully involved in the Communist Party, working to organize women and increase their participation in the party. Both were founders of the League of Syrian Women for the Protection of Maternity and Childhood, which was considered a communist-backed organization by the US, and both were accused by the US ambassador to

232 Syria in the late 1940s of being Soviet agents due to their activism among Syrian women and put on 24-hour-surveillance.709

Imili Faris Ibrahim continued to be active for the rest of her long and productive life within the women’s movement. When she ran for parliament in 1953, she was not affiliated with any political party. She served as the president of the Lebanese Women’s Council for twenty-two years. She was also the secretary of the Women’s Arabic and Cultural Assembly established by

Nur Hamada.710 She was awarded the High National Cedar Award for High Achievements by the president of the Lebanese Republic in 1992.

709 They circulated the communist-backed Stockholm Peace Petition calling for a ban on atomic weapons and petitioned the US Embassy against nuclear proliferation. Ambassador Keeley not only described them as ‘half-educated dupes of Soviet propaganda’ but also requested that Salah al-Din al-Tarazi, Falak’s brother, be dismissed from the Syrian foreign ministry if he could not control his ‘spinster sister’. See Moubayed, Syria and the USA, 90–91. 710 Thompson, Colonial Citizens, 157; Nisa’ Fi Al-Zaman; Ibrahim, Al-Haraka al-Nisa’iyya al- Lubnaniyya. 233 CONCLUSION

In 1947, the Friends of the Soviet Union organized a trip to Moscow. Upon their return,

Imili Faris Ibrahim, Ra’if Khuri, and Qadri al-Qal‘aji were confronted with the Soviet Union’s acceptance of the partition plan for Palestine in 1947 and the dilemma that this created within the

Left. These three individuals refused to accept the decision of the Communist Parties of Lebanon and Syria to go along with the Soviet Union’s decision, along with others from within the

Party.711 They were accused of Titoism in a smear campaign directed by the Party in al-Tariq, and were excluded from participation in all circles of the Communist Party, including publishing in al-Tariq, which by the late 1940s had come directly under the control of the Communist Party and was no longer connected to the League Against Nazism and Fascism.

Ra’if Khuri, Imili Faris Ibrahim, and Yusuf Yazbik would continue to be part of the

Lebanese and Arab political scene. However, the post-1948 period would mark the demarcation of dogmatic and strict lines around the Communist Party that would obliterate the space parallel to the party through which the Left had developed since the end of World War One. Ra’if Khuri would continue to publish independently as well as primarily in Nassib al-Matni’s newspaper, al-

Telegraf. After the estrangement from the Communist Party and the Titoist accusations, Khuri,

Faris Ibrahim, and other literary figures would form a literary group that published in al-Telegraf a column under the name Ikhwan ‘Umar Fakhuri (Brothers of ‘Umar Fakhuri), in honor of

Fakhuri who had died in 1946. Qadri al-Qal‘aji would go on to assume prominent positions in

711 The decision was actually taken by Khalid Bakdash, since Farajallah al-Hilu, the Secretary General of the Communist Party of Lebanon had rejected the party’s decision and was accused of harboring bourgeois tendencies that he had to shed by writing a self-criticism letter. Ismael and Ismael, The Communist Movement in Syria and Lebanon, 1998, 38–39. 234 the Syrian President al-Za‘im Adib al-Shishakli’s regime between 1952 and 1953. He would later publish in 1956 Tajribat ‘Arabi fi al-Hizb al-Shuyu‘i (An Arab’s Experience in the

Communist Party) in which he denounced communism as a foreign and imported ideology, mourning the years he had spent supporting it.

While it is important to acknowledge and understand the party decision to accept partition in 1947 that caused numerous schisms within the party and outside it, it is more salient to realize that 1947 was only the end result of a process in which dissent and heterogeneity became increasingly unacceptable within the Party. Therefore, the significance of the pre-1947 history partly lies in its ability to illuminate possibilities about the Left that were most probably no longer available after 1947.

This dissertation has focused on intellectuals and activists who fell, in hindsight, between the margins of political life during the Mandate, arguing for their significance and contribution to that political scene. It has emphasized the local agency of individuals who did not historically belong to an elitest class, and has shown the possibilities they embodied within their own time and place. These leftists promoted social justice through the platform of anti-imperialism and established the basis of the Communist Party of Lebanon and Syria. They argued for a unique role for Arab literati that focused on political and social realities and sought to change these realities towards a better human condition. By spearheading the front against forces of fascism and Nazism, leftists proposed new ways of thinking about nationalism that were linked to internationalism. Moreover, feminist leftists demanded political rights for women and for the equal implementation of all democratic principles across class and gender lines.

This dissertation has shed a light on the interconnectivity and often overlap between various trends within the Left. Leftists intertwined the class struggle with the national liberation

235 struggle, anti-imperialism, and anti-fascism; they also mobilized for greater rights for workers, local democratic elections, non-sectarian political systems, and rights for women. This contribution allows for integrating the history of the Middle East during the interwar period and

World War Two into the developing fields on internationalism and anti-imperialism. While the discourse on anti-colonialism continues to be predominantly monopolized by nationalist politics in Middle East history, this dissertation represents an attempt to consider anti-colonialism and anti-imperialism in the context of the fluidity of the interwar period and the role that communism, the Soviet Union, and the Left played in that struggle in the Arab context. It has shed light on the inclusivity of the politics of internationalism in a region where ethnic, national, and religious differences were being continuously emphasized by the state, the elite, and the colonial powers. The politics of difference institutionalized during that period into the Lebanese system continue to be central to Lebanese state and society today.

This dissertation has intervened more broadly into the field of Middle Eastern history by inscribing into the history of Arab states of the twentieth century a narrative of democratic, anti- fascist, anti-sectarian, and anti-colonial voices from the Left of the political spectrum. This intervention is situated in the historiographic trend within Middle Eastern history that has reclaimed these voices, either through unpacking sectarianism and contextualizing it, or by emphasizing non-sectarian and inclusive narratives.712 My work has benefited from and added

712 A selection from this historiography includes Orit Bashkin, The Other Iraq: Pluralism and Culture in Hashemite Iraq (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009); Ussama Samir Makdisi, The Culture of Sectarianism: Community, History, and Violence in Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Lebanon (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000); Hanna Batatu, The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq: A Study of Iraq’s Old Landed and Commercial Classes and of Its Communists, Baʻthists, and Free Officers (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978); Benjamin Thomas White, The Emergence of Minorities in the Middle East: The Politics of Community in French Mandate Syria (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011); Ilham Khuri-Makdisi, The Eastern Mediterranean and the Making of Global Radicalism, 1860- 236 upon this historiography by putting at the forefront Arab men and women who, in the colonial period that determined the structures, institutions, and futures of their nation-states, adhered to and fought for democratic values and a socially just and inclusive political system. By challenging the inevitability of the sectarian political option in Lebanon and a communally divided Syria, I have shown that non-sectarian, democratic, and inclusive forms of governance were a possibility; the fact that they did not prevail as the option chosen for the Lebanese state upon independence did not mean they were inconsequential.

In turn, by placing a leftist intellectual milieu in Mandate Lebanon as part of the larger trends and ideas circulating simultaneously around the globe during the interwar and World War

Two periods, this dissertation has intervened into the field of World History. It primarily contributes to narratives that have moved World History away from a Eurocentric approach, and expands its scope to include non-western voices, especially on issues of democracy, social justice, and more generally leftist politics. Furthermore, this dissertation has illuminated new insight into the intellectual multi-directional currents of the interwar and World War Two periods, rather than the unidirectional approach of the movement of ideas from Europe to the rest. This dissertation is thus a contribution to recent approaches in global intellectual history that emphasize the significance of understanding the local and global as intertwined rather than separate spaces.

1914 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010); Malik Abisaab, Militant Women of a Fragile Nation (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2010); Israel Gershoni, Arab Responses to Fascism and Nazism: Attraction and Repulsion, 2015; Zachary Lockman, Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996); Elizabeth Thompson, Colonial Citizens: Republican Rights, Paternal Privilege, and Gender in French Syria and Lebanon (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000). 237 APPENDIX

Figure 1

Caption: First issue of the newspaper al-Insaniyya (L’Humanité), the mouthpiece of the Lebanese People’s Party, published on May 15, 1925. The image is that of the crowds gathered to celebrate May 1st in 1925 in Beirut.

Source: Centre des Archives Nationales, Beirut.

238 Figure 2

Caption: First cover of the journal al-Tariq 1, no.1 (December 20, 1941) established in 1941 as the mouthpiece of the League Against Nazism and Fascism in Syria and Lebanon.

Source: Widener Library Collections, Harvard University.

239 Figure 3

Caption: Cover of the journal al-Tariq 1, no.4 (February 20, 1942), depicting a Soviet soldier stabbing a Hitler-faced dragon.

Source: Widener Library Collections, Harvard University.

240 Figure 4

Caption: Friends of the Soviet Union’s trip to Moscow, 1948. Imili Faris Ibrahim (second from left) and Ra’if Khuri (fourth from left) can be seen in this picture.

Source: Family photos of Imili Faris Ibrahim in Beirut, Lebanon.

241 Figure 5

Caption: Imili Faris Ibrahim (1914-2011).

Source: Family photos of Imili Faris Ibrahim in Beirut, Lebanon.

242

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Archival Material

Lebanon

Jafet Library, American University of Beirut

Centre des Archives Nationales (Mu’assasat al-Mahfudhat al-Wataniyya), Beirut

Family Papers of Imili Faris Ibrahim – Beirut

Family Papers of Yusuf Ibrahim Yazbik – Hadath

United States

Widener Library, Harvard University – Cambridge, Massachusetts

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Sawt al-Sha‘b (Beirut, 1943-1945) al-Sahafi al-Ta’ih (Zahle, 1922-1924) al-Tariq (Beirut, 1941-1946) al-Ma‘rad (Beirut, 1922-1925)

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