I do not know that much about the Cold War in regards to the Middle East, but most Marxists of whatever variety hold very positive opinions on Nasserism, Pan-Arabism during the Cold War or even Ba’athism. While Nasser didn’t align too closely with the Soviet Union, whether due to ideological disagreements or simple pragmatism / necessity, he was still a socialist, even if not a Marxist one.

So I have been wondering in particular since a lot of communists see Nasser and other pan-arabian or “arab-socialist” leaders like Gaddafi positively, why did the North and South Yemen split remain throughout the cold war? As far as I’m aware South Yemen was at least nominally a marxist-leninist state while North Yemen initially was a monarchy, but was then overthrowing by a pan-arabist pro-Nasser movement, ending up socialist in some way. Was there not enough common ground found for Arab communists to fully integrate themselves within Nasser’s pan-arabism?

Likewise Syria “left” the United Arab Republic following a coup by disgruntled Syrian military leaders, but interestingly enough the communist party of Syria seems to have supported this coup and secession from the UAR. I cannot find much on the reason however. Could someone explain this?

  • Kaffe@lemmygrad.ml
    8·
    9 months ago

    Flames of Liberation lecture on Baathism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufJzwzdM8sE

    Baath of Iraq Self-Crit on problems with their relationships with Nasserism, the CP, and the Kurdish movements: https://www.marxists.org/history/iraq/baath/index.htm

    The split is seemingly bigger than it really is. Nasserists are viewed by the Baath as too focused on Arab state power, disregarding the non-Arab groups (like the Kurds) and differences between Arab nationalities (Syria and Iraq have much more complex polities than Egypt). The Baath of Syria split with the Iraqi branch due to ideological differences in trying to understand class dynamics (they are very different, and Syria is much more complex). The Communists in the region had a weak line on the Israel Question due to influence of French and English CPs. None of this was unbridgeable and much of it was bridged, but due to circumstances on the ground and miscommunications and opportunism, there was a lot of violence to these struggles which all sides regret.

    As for Yemen I’m not sure what the differences were, it’d be best to seek out the writings of the groups involved during that period. I’m going to conjecture that MLs in power have similar views to the Baathists as Scientific Socialists, that they sought to develop their specific place as a bastion of anti-Imperialism rather than a utopian immediate Unity that disregards the concrete, specifics.