From Refuge to Revolution: Bolshevism’s Evolution in Ethiopia By Kate Cowcher September 16, 2017 This post is part of our online forum, “Black October,” on the Russian Revolution and the African Diaspora Bolshevik forces marching on the Red Square. Ethiopia’s 1974 revolution looked, at first glance, a lot like that of the Bolsheviks in 1917; a long- reigning autocrat was overthrown in a country of considerable inequalities, following a period of domestic turmoil. Ethiopia even had a “February revolution” of broad-based, popular unrest in and beyond Addis Ababa, followed by several months of attempted reform before Haile Selassie’s ultimate fall in September 1974. Initial appearances, however, mask the longer, complicated history of Ethiopia’s engagement with Bolshevism, as well as the painful course of its revolution. The case against the Emperor had been building since 1960, when there had been a failed coup d’etat by Germame and Mengistu Neway. Of the brothers, Germame was the intellectual, driven by what he had witnessed as governor in Sidamo: the hardships of Ethiopia’s landless peasants. In the years that followed 1960, many voices would join Germame’s in questioning endemic poverty and in denouncing what young Ethiopians insisted was “feudalism.” These included students such as Tamiru Feyissa who used College Day celebrations in 1961 to read his provocative poem, “The Poor Man Speaks Out” and artists such as Gebre Kristos Desta who painted scenes of urban