The Pan-Pacific Trade Union Secretariat (PPTUS) was a regional subdivision of the
Red International of Labor Unions (RILU, commonly known as the Profintern), the trade union organization associated with the
Communist International. Established in
Hankow,
China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
, in May 1927, the PPTUS attempted to coordinate
communist
Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a s ...
activity in the organized labor movement of China and the
Pacific basin, including particularly
Japan
Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...
,
Korea
Korea ( ko, 한국, or , ) is a peninsular region in East Asia. Since 1945, it has been divided at or near the 38th parallel, with North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) comprising its northern half and South Korea (Republic o ...
,
Indonesia
Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...
, the
Philippines
The Philippines (; fil, Pilipinas, links=no), officially the Republic of the Philippines ( fil, Republika ng Pilipinas, links=no),
* bik, Republika kan Filipinas
* ceb, Republika sa Pilipinas
* cbk, República de Filipinas
* hil, Republ ...
,
Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...
, and the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
.
Organizational history
Establishment
The Pan-Pacific Trade Union Secretariat (PPTUS) was established as the Asian and Pacific branch of the
Red International of Trade Unions
The Red International of Labor Unions (russian: Красный интернационал профсоюзов, translit=Krasnyi internatsional profsoyuzov, RILU), commonly known as the Profintern, was an international body established by the Comm ...
(RILU or Profintern), to coordinate radical trade union activities in China and the countries
Pacific basin, which shared oceanic-based trade relations. The idea for a Pan-Pacific conference originated with Communists in the Australian trade union movement, who sought to emulate a previous conference of Pacific seamen and dock workers which had been held in
Canton
Canton may refer to:
Administrative division terminology
* Canton (administrative division), territorial/administrative division in some countries, notably Switzerland
* Township (Canada), known as ''canton'' in Canadian French
Arts and ent ...
in June 1924.
[E.H. Carr, ''A History of Soviet Russia, Volume 14: Foundations of a Planned Economy, 1926-1929, Volume 3, Part 3.'' London: Macmillan, 1978; pg. 800.]
A convention call was issued for a gathering to be held in
Sydney
Sydney ( ) is the capital city of the state of New South Wales, and the most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Sydney Harbour and extends about towards the Blue Mountain ...
,
Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...
on July 1, 1926, at under the auspices of the communist-led
New South Wales Trades and Labour Council, but the
Nationalist
Nationalism is an idea and movement that holds that the nation should be congruent with the state. As a movement, nationalism tends to promote the interests of a particular nation (as in a group of people), Smith, Anthony. ''Nationalism: The ...
government of
Stanley Bruce denied travel visas to the assembly's scheduled participants and the meeting was therefore postponed and moved to another location.
A second effort at organization would not follow until the following year, with the
Profintern initially seeking a gathering at Canton In conjunction with
May Day of 1927. Rapidly changing political events in China in the spring of 1927 had made both the time and the place impossible, however, and the decision was made to move to the safer ground of
Hankow, immediately following the closure of the
5th Congress of the Communist Party of China Hankow was selected owing to its place at the center of the
Wuhan
Wuhan (, ; ; ) is the capital of Hubei, Hubei Province in the China, People's Republic of China. It is the largest city in Hubei and the most populous city in Central China, with a population of over eleven million, the List of cities in China ...
government of the
Kuomintang
The Kuomintang (KMT), also referred to as the Guomindang (GMD), the Nationalist Party of China (NPC) or the Chinese Nationalist Party (CNP), is a major political party in the Republic of China, initially on the Chinese mainland and in Tai ...
, a revolutionary nationalist organization which was at the time briefly in alliance with the international Communist movement.
[Harrison George, "Two Years of the Pan-Pacific Trade Union Secretariat (Part One)," ''Daily Worker,'' vol. 6, no. 148 (Aug. 28, 1929), pg. 3.]
The convention opened on May 20, 1927, and was attended to delegates from 8 nations — China, the Soviet Union, Japan, Indonesia, Korea, France, the United States, and Great Britain.
[Carr, ''A History of Soviet Russia, Vol. 14,'' pp. 801-802.] Planned delegates from India and Australia ran afoul of their various departments of state, while Philippine delegates decided against attending due to the turbulent situation in China, marked by mass arrests and executions of Communists and trade unionists in Canton.
A single delegate from Mexico arrived late.
[Carr, ''A History of Soviet Russia, Vol. 14,'' pg. 802.] The opening of the convention was the cause of a mass one day strike in Wuhan, with an estimated 100,000 workers participating in a mass demonstration.
The keynote address at the founding conference of the PPTUS was delivered by Profintern chief
Solomon Lozovsky.
The gathering determined to establish permanent headquarters of the new organization in the Chinese industrial city of
Shanghai
Shanghai (; , , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ) is one of the four direct-administered municipalities of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The city is located on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the Huangpu River flow ...
.
Personnel and constituent organizations
![Browder-Earl-R-1939](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5c/Browder-Earl-R-1939.jpg)
The First Secretary of the PPTUS was American
CPUSA
The Communist Party USA, officially the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA), is a communist party in the United States which was established in 1919 after a split in the Socialist Party of America following the Russian Revo ...
member
Earl Browder
Earl Russell Browder (May 20, 1891 – June 27, 1973) was an American politician, communist activist and leader of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). Browder was the General Secretary of the CPUSA during the 1930s and first half of the 1940s.
Duri ...
, later to become General Secretary of that organization.
[Lawrence, "Australia and the Comintern — An Incident," pg. 72.] Other members of the inaugural secretariat of the PPTUS included
Jack Ryan of Australian,
Crisanto Evangelista from the Philippines,
Su Chao-jen of China, and
K. Kawasaki of Japan.
Editor of the group's English-language official organ was another American,
Harrison George
Harrison George was a senior Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA) leader. He is best remembered as the editor of the official organ of the Profintern's Pan-Pacific Trade Union Secretariat (PPTUS) as well as the party's West Coast newspaper, ...
.
The PPTUC counted among its members eleven radical trade union organizations. These were the
Australian Council of Trade Unions, the
All-China Federation of Trade Unions, the
Indonesian Labor Federation, the
Japanese Trade Union Council, the
National Minority Movement
The National Minority Movement was a British organisation, established in 1924 by the Communist Party of Great Britain, which attempted to organise a radical presence within the existing trade unions. The organization was headed by longtime unio ...
(Great Britain), the
Confédération Générale du Travail Unitaire (France), the
Korean Workers and Peasants Federation, the
Philippine Labor Congress, the
National Confederation of Farm Laborers and Tenants of the Philippines, the
All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions (USSR), and the
Trade Union Educational League (USA).
Member organizations endorsed a seven point platform which pledged the PPTUS to carry on a joint struggle against war between the military powers of the Pacific, to defend the Chinese Revolution, to aid oppressed nations of the region to liberate themselves from imperial powers, to fight against racial and national barriers, joint action, and a unified world trade union movement through a single Trade Union International.
[Lawrence, "Australia and the Comintern — An Incident," pg. 73.]
Development
While the headquarters of the PPTUS was nominally located in Shanghai, in actuality the "home office" of the organization (as its leading functionaries referred to it) was
Moscow
Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 million ...
— headquarters city of the Comintern and Profintern and location of the various World Congresses and Enlarged Plenums of these organizations.
[Josephine Fowler, ''"To Be Red and Oriental": The Experiences of Japanese and Chinese Immigrant Communists in American and International Communist Movements, 1919-1933: Volume 1.'' PhD dissertation, University of Minnesota, 2003; pg. 132.] It was from there whence financial resources flowed and where organizational decisions were debated and determined, with representatives of the various constituent Communist and trade unions living permanently in Moscow's
Hotel Lux
The former Hotel Lux in Moscow
Hotel Lux (Люксъ) was a hotel in Moscow during the Soviet Union, housing many leading exiled and visiting Communists. During the Nazi era, exiles from all over Europe went there, particularly from Germany. A n ...
.
Historian
E. H. Carr
Edward Hallett Carr (28 June 1892 – 3 November 1982) was a British historian, diplomat, journalist and international relations theorist, and an opponent of empiricism within historiography. Carr was best known for '' A History of Soviet Rus ...
counts two early successes of the Pan-Pacific Trade Union Secretariat: the adhesion of the 70,000 member Philippine national trade union congress in June 1927 and the Australian Council of Trade Unions, claiming 500,000 members, in August of that same year.
[Carr, ''A History of Soviet Russia, Vol. 14,'' pg. 1040.]
Individuals associated with the Pan-Pacific Trade Union Secretariat were subjected to repression by the various national governments. The Chinese movement was effectively smashed in various cities throughout the second half of 1927, culminating with the crushing of the Canton rising of December 1927.
In March and April 1928 a wave of arrests were conducted in Japan, leading to the imprisonment of 638 individuals, with 218 sentenced to long terms of imprisonment and hundreds of others held in jail for more than 18 months without hearing or trial.
The situation faced by radical trade unionists in China was reportedly even more draconian, with a report by Teng Chung-hsia submitted to the PPTUS in 1928 asserting that nearly 38,000 had been killed in China — including 25,000 killed in fighting various government and paramilitary forces and 13,000 who suffered execution.
[Jacques Guillermaz, ''A History of the Chinese Communist Party, 1921-1949.'' ]968
Year 968 ( CMLXVIII) was a leap year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar.
Events
By place Byzantine Empire
* Emperor Nikephoros II receives a Bulgarian embassy led by Prince Boris (the ...
Anne Destenay, trans. New York: Random House, 1972; pg. 226. By August 1930 total membership in semi-underground red trade unions in the whole of China controlled by the Kuomintang is said to have been reduced by mass killings and attrition to just 49,826 members.
Second Conference
The second international conference of the Pan-Pacific Secretariat was convened in the
Soviet
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...
Pacific port city of
Vladivostok
Vladivostok ( rus, Владивосто́к, a=Владивосток.ogg, p=vɫədʲɪvɐˈstok) is the largest city and the administrative center of Primorsky Krai, Russia. The city is located around the Zolotoy Rog, Golden Horn Bay on the Sea ...
,
Siberia
Siberia ( ; rus, Сибирь, r=Sibir', p=sʲɪˈbʲirʲ, a=Ru-Сибирь.ogg) is an extensive geographical region, constituting all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has been a part of ...
on August 1, 1929.
[Carr, ''A History of Soviet Russia, Vol. 14,'' pg. 1042.] By this time it was already clear that the PPTUS had failed as an instrument for amplifying labor radicalism, with Solomon Lozovsky noting that "extremely unfavorable conditions" had rendered the organization unable to meet openly in any capitalist country in the region.
A total of 25 voting delegates and 17 observers were able to make it to Vladivostok for the opening of the assembly, with many Asian delegates blocked from attendance by government restrictions.
Grand designs for a new labor international were deemphasized in favor of practical politics in defense of the Russian Revolution against imperialist intervention.
[Lawrence, "Australia and the Comintern — An Incident," pg. 74.] The conference adopted a program of activity which called for the organization of a mass campaign at the shop level to "explain the imperialist policy against the Soviet Union" and to make use of mass demonstrations and enlist the labor press in this campaign.
It also called for the establishment of special committees of transport workers and workers in munitions plants to obstruct production of war materiel for use in any future conflict against the USSR.
E.H. Carr notes that the only record of the second and final conference appears in a pessimistic account by Lozovsky in the Comintern magazine ''Kommunisticheskii Internatsional,'' with the memoir of one participant published a quarter century later indicating that the gathering was moved to Shanghai during the proceedings.
Official organ
The official organ of the Secretariat was initially named the ''Pan-Pacific Worker,'' a monthly magazine. Only two issues of the English-language publication were able to be published in Hankow before the publication was shut down by the Kuomintang government following a violent split between the Chinese nationalist movement and its temporary Communist allies. Plans were made to move production of the periodical to Australia, but this scheme fell through, and in December 1927 the editorial office was moved to Shanghai, where underground production continued throughout 1928.
Production of the journal in Nationalist China was difficult and dangerous. In May 1928 PPTUS chief Earl Browder and his assistant, the Latvian-American Communist
Karlis Janson, reported to Moscow that earlier that year one Shanghai print shop suspected of having printed a radical leaflet had its entire staff of 17 workers taken out and summarily shot.
[Fowler, ''"To Be Red and Oriental,"'' pg. 3.] The effect of the terror had been immediate, with the PPTUS unable to obtain printed materials from their own clandestine printing shop for three months.
Browder's own time in Shanghai was correspondingly short, lasting from February until June 1928, after which he departed for the "Home Office" in Moscow and thereafter to the United States.
Editor of the publication was
Harrison George
Harrison George was a senior Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA) leader. He is best remembered as the editor of the official organ of the Profintern's Pan-Pacific Trade Union Secretariat (PPTUS) as well as the party's West Coast newspaper, ...
. Secretary of the Pan-Pacific Secretariat Earl Browder sought to move George and the editorial office of the magazine from Shanghai to San Francisco in February 1929 and consulted with the Comintern to this end, with the move following shortly thereafter.
[Carr, ''A History of Soviet Russia, Vol. 14,'' pp. 1040-1041, fn. 7.] An English-language Australian edition was also produced in that country under the auspices of the PPTUS and the Australian Council of Trade Unions from April 1928 until January 1932. The first editor of this publication seems to have been Australian Communist and trade union activist Jack Ryan. The Australian edition was briefly imported into India for distribution there until it was banned by postal authorities in October 1929.
"Pan-Pacific Worker: Banned in India,"
''Sydney Morning Herald,'' Oct. 23. 1929. pg. 16.
The English-language publication's name changed almost as often as its editorial office relocated, taking on the new name ''Far Eastern Monthly'' in April 1928 before becoming assuming its ultimate name, ''Pacific Monthly,'' in San Francisco in April 1929.
In addition to the English-language magazine, the 2nd conference of the Pan-Pacific Trade Union Secretariat, held in Vladivostok in August 1929, determined to establish a Vladivostok Bureau of the PPTUS which would launch monthly editions of the ''Pan-Pacific Worker'' in Chinese
Chinese can refer to:
* Something related to China
* Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity
**''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation
** List of ethnic groups in China, people of va ...
, Japanese, and Korean.[Josephine Fowler, ''Japanese and Chinese Immigrant Activists: Organizing in American and International Communist Movements, 1919-1933.'' New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2007; pg. 85.] The American center of the PPTUS also took over the publication of the 32-page Japanese biweekly ''Taiheiyo Rodosha'' from early 1932.
Demise and legacy
The establishment of the PPTUS was echoed by the Profintern in May 1929 with its establishment in Montevideo
Montevideo () is the Capital city, capital and List of cities in Uruguay, largest city of Uruguay. According to the 2011 census, the city proper has a population of 1,319,108 (about one-third of the country's total population) in an area of . M ...
, Argentina
Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...
of the Latin American Trade Union Confederation for the coordination of activity of left wing trade union activists and labor unions in Central
Central is an adjective usually referring to being in the center of some place or (mathematical) object.
Central may also refer to:
Directions and generalised locations
* Central Africa, a region in the centre of Africa continent, also known as ...
and South America
South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the southe ...
.[Harrison George, "Two Years of the Pan-Pacific Trade Union Secretariat (Part Two)," ''Daily Worker,'' vol. 6, no. 149 (Aug. 29, 1929), pg. 3.]
In practical terms little was accomplished by the PPTUS outside of the adoption of ephemeral formal resolutions accompanied by the occasional ineffectual demonstration, however.
Plenary conferences
See also
* Jakob Rudnik
Jakob Rudnik (24 March 1894–13 March 1963) was a Ukrainian-born agent for the ''Otdel Mezhdunarodny Sviasy'' (OMS), which was the Communist International's clandestine International Liaison Department.
Noulens Affair
Rudnik rose to notoriet ...
(also known as Hilaire Noulens) - secretary of PPTUS
* Far Eastern Bureau of the Comintern
The Far Eastern Bureau of the Communist International was an organ of the Communist International established in 1921 to develop their political influence in the Far East. The name was used in subsequent years, but the continuity of the organisatio ...
Footnotes
Further reading
* E.H. Carr, ''A History of Soviet Russia, Volume 14: Foundations of a Planned Economy, 1926-1929, Volume 3, Part 3.'' London: Macmillan, 1978.
Frank Farrell, International ''Socialism and Australian Labor: The Left in Australia, 1919-1939'' (Sydney: Hale and Iremonger, 1981), pp. 126-143, 188-197.
* Josephine Fowler
"From East to West and West to East: Ties of Solidarity in the Pan-Pacific Revolutionary Trade Union Movement, 1923–1934,"
''International Labor and Working Class History,'' vol. 66 (Oct. 2004), pp. 99-117.
* Josephine Fowler, ''Japanese and Chinese Immigrant Activists: Organizing in American and International Communist Movements, 1919-1933.'' New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2007.
* Harvey Klehr, John Earl Haynes, and Fridrikh Igorevich Firsov, ''The Secret World of American Communism.'' New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995.
* William Lawrence, "Australia and the Comintern — An Incident," ''Australian Quarterly,'' vol. 23, no. 3 (Sept. 1951), pp. 71-74
In JSTOR
* Albert Resis, ''The Profintern: Origins to 1923.'' PhD dissertation. Columbia University, 1964.
Archival holdings
* Russian State Archive of Social and Political History (RGASPI), Moscow: fond 534, Profintern Archive, opis 4, Pan-Pacific Trade Union Secretariat.
{{Authority control
Organizations established in 1927
Profintern
Comintern
Defunct transnational trade unions