Communist labor movements and their global entanglements in second half of the 20th century

• Applicant: Dr. Johanna Wolf
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: from 2020 to 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 435371988

The project reconstructs the mobilities of communist trade unionists as part of the global labor movement in the 20th century. The study thus maps if and how the networks of the communist trade unionists before and between the two world wars left a legacy during the beginning of the Cold War and decolonization. It aims to explore and identify the trade unionist´s different imaginaries of communism, their global networks and spaces of interaction. While the project profits from sociological and historical mobility studies about global migration, it reconstructs mobility driven by political agendas. The alleged immobility of the socialist camp has been challenged by studies, which reconstruct the transnational dynamics of mobile communist actors crossing the boundaries of the Soviet bloc as well as searching for contacts to the "West" and the "Global South". The purpose of this project is to reconstruct the plurality of mobilities of communist trade union activists in the second half of the 20th century, thus in two directions. Firstly, the entanglements between communist labor movements with those of the "West" are examined, the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU), its interactions with the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), as well as the engagement of the WFTU in the International Labor Organization (ILO). Secondly, the study traces encounters with and mobilities of communist trade union activists from the "Global South". The project will zoom in on two case studies: on India, because of the country’s longer tradition on labor movements, and its key role in the navigation of the bloc competition and of the non-alignment movement; and on Mexico, which has a peculiar position in the history of international communism, and for whose imaginaries the Mexican revolution of the 1910s and its aftermath has played an important role for communists.

• DFG Programme: Research Fellowships
• International Connection: Netherlands
• Host: Professor Leo Lucassen, Ph.D.