The wiki article just spents one line on his Chinese visit to
Shanghai in 1920 :
' Lenin was impressed enough by him to send him as a Comintern
representative to China, to help the formation of the Communist
Party of China, and he was present at the First Congress of the
Chinese Communist Party in July 1921 when the Communist Party of
China was formally established.'
sneevliet.jpg (36.71 KiB) Viewed 696 times
Today not many Chinese will hear a bell ringing by hearing the
name Sneevliet ..yet every 'red' book wil mention him as the
founder of the Chinese communist party together with Mao under
the pseudonym Maring ,sometimes also Maling . He suffered a
lonely execution in German captivity on april 12 1942 in KZ
Amersfoort Holland .
Today being remembered by a butt-ugly concrete viaduct over a
butt ugly highway named after him in my hometown Amsterdam ,
totally lost in time ....
Postby Heinrich » Fri Jul 08, 2011 2:48 am
Added some manuscripts of maring as stored in the International
Institute of Social History, Amsterdam
Its written in english and added as a pdf you can download here:
Hendricus Josephus Franciscus Marie
Sneevliet, known as Henk Sneevliet or the pseudonym Maring (May
13, 1883 - April 13, 1942), was a Dutch Communist, who was
active in both the Netherlands and the Dutch East-Indies. He
took part in the Communist resistance against the German
occupation of the Netherlands during World War II and was
executed by the Germans in 1942.
Early life
Sneevliet was born in Rotterdam and grew up in 's-Hertogenbosch.
After finishing his education, he started working for the Dutch
railways in 1900 and became a member of the Sociaal
Democratische Arbeiders Partij (SDAP, the predecessor of the
Dutch Labour Party) as well as the railway union. From 1906,
Sneevliet was active for the SDAP in Zwolle, where he became the
first social democrat city council member in the elections of
1907.
Sneevliet was also active in the Dutch railway union, the NV and
in 1911 he became its chairman. In the union, Sneevliet was one
of the more radical voices. When an international sailor strike
was called in 1911, several of the more radical Dutch unions
took part, but the majority of the union movement, as well as
the majority within the SDAP were against it. For Sneevliet,
this led to his alienation from both and strengthened him in his
decision to leave the Netherlands for the Dutch East Indies.
Dutch East Indies
Sneevliet lived in the Dutch East Indies (roughly equal to
present day Indonesia) from 1913 until 1918 and he soon became
active in the struggle against Dutch rule. In 1914, he was a
co-founder of the Indies Social Democratic Association (ISDV),
in which both Dutch and Indonesian people were active.
He also returned to union work, becoming a member of the
Vereeniging van Spoor- en Tramwegpersoneel, a railway union
which was unique in having both Dutch and Indonesian members.
Thanks to his experience as a union leader, he soon managed to
turn this still fairly moderate union into a more modern and
aggressive union, with a majority of Indonesian members. This
union would later form the base for the Indonesian communist
movement.
ISDV was strictly anti-capitalist and agitated against both the
Dutch colonial regime and the privileged Indonesian elites. This
led to much resistance against the ISDV and Sneevliet himself,
both from conservative circles as well as from the more moderate
SDAP. In 1916 therefore he left the SDAP and joined the SDP, the
predecessor of the Communist Party of Holland (CPH, later CPN).
After the Russian Revolution of 1917, Sneevliet's radicalism
gained enough support amongst both the Indonesian population as
well as Dutch soldiers and especially sailors that the Dutch
authorities got nervous. Sneevliet was therefore forced to leave
the Dutch East Indies in 1918. ISDV was repressed by the Dutch
colonial authorities.
Even after his return Sneevliet stayed interested in Indonesian
developments and in 1933 he was condemned to five months
imprisonment for his solidarity actions for the Dutch and
Indonesian sailors who took part in the mutiny on "De Zeven
Provinciën", which was put down by an air bombardment in which
twenty-three sailors were killed and which at the time aroused
considerable passions in the Dutch public opinion.
Working for the Comintern
Back in the Netherlands, Sneevliet was somewhat marginalised by
the leadership of the CPH, who criticised his tactics in the
Indies. He therefore spent more time in the union movement,
where he helped organise the 1920 transport strike. The same
year he was also present at the second congress of the Comintern
in Moscow, as a representative of the Partai Komunis Indonesia
(PKI), which was the successor to Sneevliet's ISDV. Lenin was
impressed enough by him to send him as a Comintern
representative to China, to help the formation of Communist
Party of China, and he was present at the First Congress of the
Chinese Communist Party in July 1921 when the Communist Party of
China was formally established.
Sneevliet was not impressed by the party and argued for
cooperation with the Kuomintang and Sun Yat-sen, with whom he
had established contacts personally. However, this is a policy
which seemed reasonable at the time but proved disastrously
wrong within a few years, when Chiang Kai-shek succeeded as the
head of nationalists after Sun Yat-sen's death (see Chinese
Civil War). Things came to a head in 1924, largely due to the
worsening political climate in the USSR.
Back in the Netherlands
In 1927, after years of worsening relations between Sneevliet
and his followers and the CPH leadership, Sneevliet broke all
ties with the CPH and the Comintern and formed his own party,
the Revolutionair Socialistische Partij (RSP), this later became
the Revolutionair Socialistische Arbeiders Partij (RSAP) after
fusing with the Independent Socialist Party (OSP), which had
earlier formed under the stewardship of Jacques de Kadt and Piet
J. Schmidt. The RSP signed the Declaration of the Four[1] in
August 1933 along with the International Communist League, led
by Leon Trotsky, the OSP and the Socialist Workers' Party of
Germany. This declaration was intended as a step towards a new
International of revolutionary socialist parties. In the end the
RSAP broke from the Trotskyists in 1937/38[2] and became a part
of the International Bureau of Revolutionary Socialist Unity
along with the Independent Labour Party (Britain) and the
Workers Party of Marxist Unification (POUM) Spain.
In the 1930s, therefore, Sneevliet and his party concentrated
more on national issues, gaining some successes in organising
the unemployed movement, strike actions, and the struggle
against the rise of fascism. In 1933 Sneevliet, while still
imprisoned, was elected a member of the Tweede Kamer, or Lower
House, a position he mainly used to propagandise. Central to the
activity of the small party was its relationship with a small
trade union federation, the NAS, and it was due to a dispute
concerning this body that the RSAP split from Trotsky's ICL.
However, the worsening political climate both abroad and
nationally and the constant struggle against both the Stalinist
and Social Democrat parties, as well as government interference,
took a heavy toll on Sneevliet and his group. When war broke out
on May 10, 1940, Sneevliet immediately dissolved the RSAP.
Death
Some months later he founded a resistance group against the
German occupation, together with Willem Dolleman and Ab Menist,
the Marx-Lenin-Luxemburg-Front (MLL-Front).[2] This was largely
engaged in producing propaganda for socialism and opposing the
Nazi occupation of the Netherlands and as such was heavily
involved with the February strike of 1941.
As a known Communist, Sneevliet had to go into hiding even
before he started his resistance activities. For two years he
managed to keep out of the hands of the Nazis, but in April 1942
they finally arrested both him and the rest of the MLL-Front
leadership. Their execution took place in the Amersfoort KZ on
April 12, 1942.[3] It was reported that they went to their
deaths singing The Internationale.[2]
Berani karena benar – Dapper zijn omdat het goed is.
a monument for those executed together in '42 in Amersfoort far
away from this cemetary ...
its the only 'real' monument hes mentioned on ,a mass grave
where all 8 were reburied
(Westerveld cemetary Driehuis)