Of her many prominent roles, Stassova was best known in the Comintern as the Secretary of the International Red Aid (MOPR). Here on the tenth anniversary of the founding of the class war prisoner defense organization.
‘International Red Aid—Ten Years’ by Helena Stassova from Labor Defender. Vol. 9 No. 1. January, 1933.
Secretary of the M.O.P.R.
The I.R.A. came into being at a time when the White Terror was raging without restraint or hindrance, in the period of the first few years following the war, when the bourgeoisie triumphed over the proletariat of Germany, Hungary, Italy, and the Baltic States, and the White Terror reigned all over the capitalist world.
It was not by accident that the first initiative for the creation of an international society in aid of the champions of revolution was provided by the land of the Soviets, upon whose vast territories tzarist Terror had raged up to the October revolution. This Terror, after ruling Russia for centuries under the tzars, was called into life again by the White Guardist hordes and the imperialists during the years of the intervention.
The toiling masses who had shattered the apparatus of bourgeois and landowning rule, and had driven the parasite classes out of the country forever, still retained the memories of the ac cursed past very clearly in their minds. The Schlüsselburg and the Peter-Paul fortress still stood as monuments to the memory of the best of the revolutionary fighters, who had languished and died within their walls. The sound of the swish and thud of the knouts still echoed in the air. The great Vladimir highroad still ran from the plains of Europe over the mountain ranges of the Urals, far into Asia, to the snow fields of Siberia, to the ore mines of Nertschinsk, to the uninhabited deserts of Taiga, where thousands of prisoners had dragged out their existence in chains, lost forever to the outside world.
The Association of the Old Bolsheviki, and the league of former political convicts and banished, when they suggested the idea of the founding of the I.R.A., merely gave expression to the thoughts and feelings of the millions of the toilers of the Soviet Union. The vitality of the idea was at once confirmed by the immediate and unanimous enthusiasm with which it was taken up by the toiling masses all over the world. The proletarians and toilers of the capitalist vanguards, grasped and felt the necessity of the immediate creation of an international organization for the struggle against White Terror and for the relief of its victims. They say clearly that the ebbing tide of wars and revolutions was bound to rise again before long, drawn irresistibly by the general post-war crisis of the capitalist system.
The decade which has passed since the I.R.A. was formed has shown how urgent is the need of the idea incorporated in this association. In spite of all persecution, in spite of the illegality forced upon it in dozens of countries and in all colonies, in spite of sabotage from the social fascists, who forbid the members of their parties to join the I.R.A., and induce them to become members of the counter-revolutionary and interventionist organization of the “Matteotti Fund,” with its deceitful title of “Aid for the victims of Terror in countries without democracy”–in spite of all this the I.R.A. has grown steadily and b come steadily stronger. It appears at its World Congress on 10th November in Moscow as a mighty organization of twelve million members, possessing Sections in 70 countries.
This fact is worthy of special note, for it must be remembered that the considerable majority of the members are non-party workers, peasants, and working intellectuals. The membership card of the I.R.A. is the proud possession of social democratic workers and members of reformist trade unions, as well as of communists and adherents of the Red trade union movement.
These achievements have been won by long and persistent struggles. We need only remember the Sacco-Vanzetti campaign, the magnificent efforts of the masses mobilized against the challenge of dollar justice by the I.R.A. Sections in both hemispheres. We need only remember the campaign against the Terror of the Rumanian occupation in Bessarabia, against the bloody summary courts of Tatarbund and Chotin. We need only remember the dozens of campaigns against the atrocities of fascism in Italy and in the Balkans, in Poland. And today we see the Scottsboro campaign, in which the I.R.A. is leading the struggle to save nine innocent Negro boys.
The World Congress of the I.R.A. takes place in the midst of a situation characterized by the close of the period of the relative stabilization of capitalism, and by the transition to a new cycle of wars and revolutions, whose issue depends on the extent to which the camp of proletarian revolution is successful in winning over and welding together the majority of the working class.
This new phase of the general crisis of the capitalist system has already been ushered in by war on the territories of China and Manchuria, a war which must be regarded as the forerunner of gigantic massacre of the peoples on the waters and coasts of the Pacific, and as the forerunner of a second world imperialist war. In capitalist Europe we already see the first flickerings of the conflagrations of war. The last hour has struck for the predatory “equilibrium” of Versailles. And meanwhile the preparations for a renewed and determined intervention against the Soviet Union are being deliberately and openly worked out in Geneva, to the accompaniment of a continuous obbligato on peace.
The broad waves of the turbid and bloody flood of capitalist Terror are rising, for the capitalists see in war and intervention their sole salvation from crisis and revolution. The whole history of White Terror cannot parallel the brutality being exercised by the apparatus of capitalist rule at the present time. There are over 200,000 revolutionists languishing in the prisons, the great majority of them stigmatized as common criminals.
10 years ago juridical executions might be counted by hundreds only, but today by thousands. In the same proportion the number of arrests have increased, the number of persons injured during the dispersion of demonstrations and meetings, the number of political trials, the number of persons simply shot down without trial or sentence. The right of asylum for political refugees exists no longer. Those who enjoy this right today are only the White Guardist bandits, the Gorguloffs, the cliques of terrorist conspirators these indeed enjoy this right, and in addition the subventions of the governments and capitalists who calculate upon utilizing these elements for purposes of intervention.
The I.R.A. must exert its utmost efforts to organize the resolute self-defence of the masses against the orgies of White Terror. Our organization celebrates its tenth year of struggle under the slogans: “Down with Terror. Down with War. Defend the Soviet Union.”
Labor Defender was published monthly from 1926 until 1937 by the International Labor Defense (ILD), a Workers Party of America, and later Communist Party-led, non-partisan defense organization founded by James Cannon and William Haywood while in Moscow, 1925 to support prisoners of the class war, victims of racism and imperialism, and the struggle against fascism. It included, poetry, letters from prisoners, and was heavily illustrated with photos, images, and cartoons. Labor Defender was the central organ of the Scottsboro and Sacco and Vanzetti defense campaigns. Editors included T. J. O’ Flaherty, Max Shactman, Karl Reeve, J. Louis Engdahl, William L. Patterson, Sasha Small, and Sender Garlin.
PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/labordefender/1933/v09n01-jan-1933-lab-def.pdf
