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>> 127  From Universal Values to Cultural Representations Avner Ben-Zaken 1929 was a crucial year in the history of the Marxist movement in EretzIsrael /Palestine. After a decade of stimulating circulation of Marxist ideology and the establishment of local Communist parties that were declared official branches of the world communist movement—the Comintern—by 1929, the Middle Eastern Marxist movement abruptly changed. The Comintern came to see eastern European Jewish Marxists , who engendered and stirred these processes, as a cultural impediment responsible for the scarce reception of Marxism beyond the elite intelligentsia. Realizing that Marxism had not trickled down to the Arab masses, the Executive Committee of the Comintern dictated a personal transformation: it ejected European Jews from the leadership of the parties and installed local Arab and Jewish activists. The Arabization of the parties had profound ideological ramifications. The universal working class in the Middle East, which included European immigrants, had to follow a leadership that was no longer devoted to the universal struggle of the working class but that accommodated Marxist ideology to national and cultural differences. Marxism transformed from a freefloating universal ideology into a national discourse affected by practices of local “monadic” cultures. When Marxism circulated outside Europe, cultural tension was the prism through which it was introduced and received. The presentation of Marxist discourse not as an artifact of European culture and history but as a “scientific,” “objective” program to analyze history and to transform society further intensified this cultural tension. Marxists needed intermediaries fluent in both European and Middle Eastern cultures and languages who could effectively disseminate Marxist ideology in 128 > 129 political and social matters. The cultural encounter between Marxism and the Arabs, however, did not go smoothly. The eastern European Jewish Marxists “stumbled on a great impediment,” since the Arabs did not have enough “intelligent workers” who could propagate Marxist ideology among the locals. “We are still convinced,” Meirson optimistically concluded, “that the prospects of having a revolution in Palestine are quite high.”2 At this early stage, the committee did not have doubts about the sincere intentions of and the practical prospects of using eastern European Jews as agents of the world communist movement in the Middle East. Nikolai Bukharin, who participated in this meeting, further urged the Jewish Communists in Palestine to detach themselves from any Zionist affiliation and to devote major parts of their activity to recruiting Arabs, an activity that was an “enormously important vocation.”3 By May 10, 1923, the Comintern officially approved the admission of the Palestinian Communist Party (PCP), whose role the Comintern had clearly defined: “to educate supporters from the Arab masses; to look for constructive connections with Arab national groups and with peasants; and to help in establishing a Communist party in Lebanon and Syria.”4 The PCP enthusiastically followed the Comintern’s assignments, primarily in pursuing activists in Lebanon and Syria with whom they could initiate the circulation of Communist ideology. In 1924, Joseph Berger-Barzilay came to the Oriental Department of the Comintern in Moscow, which was responsible for supplying political and social assessments of the conditions and possibilities of promoting the antiimperialist struggle and the establishment of Communist parties. Berger-Barzilay found there “various Orientalists deeply engaged with research work on the orient, and maps of the Middle East decorated the walls.”5 Beyond briefings on the general conditions in Syria, Lebanon , and Egypt, the officials in the Oriental Department particularly instructed him to travel to Beirut and to seek among the growing socialist circles potential activists who could establish a local Communist party. Berger-Barzilay met local radicals such as Yusūf Yazbak and Fu’ād Shamālī,6 as well as Artin Madoyan, a representative of a small Armenian Marxist organization called Spartacus, informing them that the Comintern had empowered him to establish a local Communist party. A few weeks later, Berger-Barzilay orchestrated the negotiations 130 > 131 Hopes for regional anti-imperialist struggles were let down, and soon the French suppressed the revolt. The PCP’s regional aspiration for leadership suffered a series of failures . By the second half of the 1920s, the party retreated to its home base and focused on creating grassroots support from the Arab workers in Palestine. The cultural nature of Sephardic Jews, however, complicated the simplistic dichotomy between Arabs and Jews. In rejecting the national Zionist implications of the revival of Hebrew, the party printed most of its pamphlets in Yiddish. As late as 1923, it published the first Hebrew pamphlet which...

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