[Red_Army]

I'm a communist and am very interested in African liberation struggles especially the one of Patrice Lumumba. The bad part is that I can't seem to find any books on him and the ones I do find I can't afford . Can anyone try to fill me in on the beliefs and actions of Lumumba and why the CIA decided to kill him? (bastards, they came to my school today to propagandize the kids into murdering innocents )

[Pongetti]

Personally, I don't think Lumumba was all he's cracked up to be. I think he was all charisma but didn't really have much in the way of true leadership qualities and I think his assasination is part of the reason he's been put on a pedestal of great leaders. I also wouldn't necessarily call him a communist revolutionary. He was revolutionary, yes, but he wasn't about communism, he was about independance.

In fact, besides anti-Europeanism, I can't say I really know what his ideals were. I'm not sure he even had any, I don't believe he ever campaigned as a communist, though he was probably left leaning. He had a tendency to change his mind quickly. In fact, he first went to the United States for financial and logistical support to supress the Katanganese secession. When he didn't get that he immediately went to the Soviets, they accepted. I don't think the US liked him beforehand (hence rejecting him), but this is what got the West really going. In their eyes Lumumba was now a commie sympathiser and had aligned himself with the Soviets.

The Americans decided he had to go because he represented Soviet interests. It was just another Cold War battle.

And where's the ecstatic delight emoticon when you need one? Someone else interested in the Congo! OMG!

[Red_Army]

Thank you for informing me, I barely know anything about African liberation struggles because they don't teach them well in our schools, I don't know where I heard he was a communist. The only other African revolutions I know about at all are in Agnola, Algeria and Western Sahara. Could you recommend any books on any African Liberation struggles?

[Pongetti]

It's very common for him to be labeled a communist, the view of the west concentrates more on these subjects. You tend to get everything about this, what pertained to the rest of the world and little about what pertained to the Congolese. The Congo's modern history certain involves the cold war though.

Unfortunately most of my knowledge is just general knowledge on the DR Congo so I don't know of any specific books. I'm sure you've heard that Che Guevara fought alongside Laurent Kabila in the DR Congo, though it probably won't inspire you much. There are a few other countries with a history of communism too. The other Congo (now Republic of the Congo), and Mozambique for instance.

[Red_Army]

Yes, Ive read a biography on Che Guevara and it covered that sad fight in Congo. What I remember from that biography is that the man Che had counted on, Mitoudidi drowned because he fell off of a boat and struggled for 15 minutes because the people in the boat couldn't reach him... It was from there on that Che gave up hope.

[N'Djamena]

Some great books are at:

http://www.amazon.com/

[useless]

Actually there has never been any broad socialist or communist party in the Congo. Not under Belge rule and not later.
Mainly there were great movements to gain independence and to emancipate from European cultural imperialism. The most influencal leader has been Lumumba.

There are some books about him, but only in French. In my opinion the best research on the Congo is made in Tervuren/Bruxelles.

[Red_Army]

Thank you for these ideas.

[GunsnRoses]

Personally, I don't think Lumumba was all he's cracked up to be. I think he was all charisma but didn't really have much in the way of true leadership qualities and I think his assasination is part of the reason he's been put on a pedestal of great leaders. I also wouldn't necessarily call him a communist revolutionary. He was revolutionary, yes, but he wasn't about communism, he was about independance.

In fact, besides anti-Europeanism, I can't say I really know what his ideals were. I'm not sure he even had any, I don't believe he ever campaigned as a communist, though he was probably left leaning. He had a tendency to change his mind quickly. In fact, he first went to the United States for financial and logistical support to supress the Katanganese secession. When he didn't get that he immediately went to the Soviets, they accepted. I don't think the US liked him beforehand (hence rejecting him), but this is what got the West really going. In their eyes Lumumba was now a commie sympathiser and had aligned himself with the Soviets.

The Americans decided he had to go because he represented Soviet interests. It was just another Cold War battle.

And where's the ecstatic delight emoticon when you need one? Someone else interested in the Congo! OMG!

Sorry for re-opening a very old post but I just felt that Pongetti wasn't just to old Patrice here, and seeing that at least Red-Army is still an active Po-Fo member I just want to set things straight.

First of all I have to remark that Lumumba did have clear and noble ideals. He was all about national liberation, pan-Afrikanism (please look at his speech in 1959, which he held in Nigeria on March the 22nd, called : 'African Unity and National Independence' ) and finally about social justice.
His speech at the Proclamation of Congolese Independence is truly one of the greatest speeches of the 20th Century:

'For though this independence of the Congo is today being proclaimed in a spirit of accord with Belgium, a friendly country with which we are dealing as one equal with another, no Congolese worthy of the name can ever forget that we fought to win it a fight waged each and every day, a passionate and idealistic fight, a fight in which there was not one effort, not one privation, not one suffering, not one drop of blood that we ever spared ourselves. We are proud of this struggle amid tears, fire, and blood, down to our very heart of hearts, for it was a noble and just struggle, an indispensable struggle if we were to put an end to the humiliating slavery that had been forced upon us.'

Yes, he was not able to revert the Congo Crisis in the 60's, and yes he made mistakes which worsened the situation, but I am convinced that throughout the struggle he always had his Congolese brothers in his heart. Furthermore, I think very few leaders would have been able to succesfully defeat the many and difficult challenges which Lumumba had to deal with; only 5 days after independence a mutiny in the army had already erupted, Katanga and the Kasai succeded, Belgium invaded Congolese soil and the Belgians which were crucial for Congo's public service were leaving the country at unprecedented rates. Some of them were admittedly caused by Lumumba's faulty decisions but then again, many of them were not.

Pongetti is, however, right about one thing. Lumumba wasn't a communist. Much ink has been spilled over Lumumba allegedly being a communist, the main evidence being his call for support towards the Russians. But he didn't make this call because he shared the same opinions with the Russians, he made this call out of sheer panic. The Belgians had invaded his country, the UN was not effective in fighting the Belgians and the successionists of Katanga province, and there was a large mutiny in the army. It was a call of last resort. Krushchev wrote: 'I could say that mr Lumumba is as much a communist as I am a Catholic.' It was purely circumstantial that Lumumba's deed sometimes resembled a hang for Communism.

I hope that you still find the information useful.

[Potemkin]

It may interest you to know that the Soviets named their third-best university (after Moscow and St Petersburg) 'Lumumba University' between 1961 and 1992: Wiki page

[GunsnRoses]

That´s right, that was after his murder when Lumumbism got a real boost.
Lumumba had messed up his relations with the Western hemisphere before and of course the USSR was quickly to pull him on their side. It's always nice to have a young, impassioned leader on your side, especially if your entangled in a Cold War. But this relation was not as harmonious as the USSR would let its people believe. It was merely a strategical move in a Cold War, and both Lumumba and Kruschev knew it. Lumumba was certainly not a convinced communist; economically, Lumumba was closer to liberalism than communism; he wasn't favorable to collectivisation of the agriculture, but counted on private, foreign investment. Moreover, Lumumba was not an internationalist, as a communist would be, but principially a nationalist.

[houndred]

I was at Moscows best University, Lomonsov, Patrice Lumamba was, in those days, for the training of foriegn Marxists. They dumped the name when they dumped the communists.

[Gletkin]

No, just foreigners. They weren't necessarily Marxists.
I would actually bet the majority of them weren't. Most of them were Third World students who were just there to take advantage of Soviet technical training. They weren't interested in establishing "the dictatorship of the proletariat".

Of course, the second un-spoken purpose of PLU was to keep these politically un-reliable foreign students away from constant un-supervised contact with average Soviet citizens.