The global circulation of Marxist perspectives on the national question: Borochovism at the service of the Eritrean cause

Abstract

In 1979, a group of activists belonging to the EPLF (the Eritrean People's Liberation Front) came across a materialistic interpretation of the national question, which was penned at the turn of the century by one Dov Ber Borochov (1881-1917), a Russian-Jewish intellectual who was a leading ideologue of Marxist Zionism. Among the fruits of this encounter was a book advocating the Eritrean people's right to self-determination. Owing to developments in the Soviet Union and Marxist circles in the 1920s, Borochov's works were all but ignored throughout the remainder of the century. How, then, did a Spanish translation of his treatise, Nationalismo y lucha de clases (known in English as The National Question and Class Struggle), find its way into the hands of Eritrean nationalists? Furthermore, against the backdrop of Moscow and Havana's open support for Ethiopia, what attracted these Eritreans to the thought of an obscure Marxist-Zionist intellectual?