From Out of the Rubble

Grenada’s most valuable export in 1983, and perhaps for all time, was paper. The reams of documents seized by U.S. forces just a year ago paint a remarkably rich picture of life in revolutionary Grenada, where the New Jewel Movement (NJM) wanted, in the words of its leader, Maurice Bishop, to “sink the ideas of Marxism-Leninism among the working class.” Where those ideas did not sink of their own accord, which was among much of the population, these disciples of Lenin were—the documents reveal—ready with the cement overshoes of subversion and repression. In the end, Bishop was assassinated by party rivals who demanded “firmer Leninism” in dealing with the “low mood of the masses.”

The documents also reveal that Grenada matched its narrowly repressive domestic policies with a foreign expansiveness that made it the rising star among new Soviet properties. The Grenadians eagerly pursued this status, expressing disappointment when Moscow did not receive Grenadian leaders with the same pomp as their Nicaraguan and Cuban counterparts. But the Grenadians scrambled for recognition; NJM delegations relentlessly advanced Soviet positions at meetings of the Socialist International and in other international forums.

ED

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Edward W. Desmond

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Grenada’s most valuable export in 1983, and perhaps for all time, was paper. The reams of documents seized by U.S. forces just a year ago paint a remarkably rich picture of life in revolutionary Grenada, where the New Jewel Movement (NJM) wanted, in the words of its leader, Maurice Bishop, to “sink the ideas of Marxism-Leninism among the working class.” Where those ideas did not sink of their own accord, which was among much of the population, these disciples of Lenin were—the documents reveal—ready with the cement overshoes of subversion and repression. In the end, Bishop was assassinated by party rivals who demanded “firmer Leninism” in dealing with the “low mood of the masses.”

The documents also reveal that Grenada matched its narrowly repressive domestic policies with a foreign expansiveness that made it the rising star among new Soviet properties. The Grenadians eagerly pursued this status, expressing disappointment when Moscow did not receive Grenadian leaders with the same pomp as their Nicaraguan and Cuban counterparts. But the Grenadians scrambled for recognition; NJM delegations relentlessly advanced Soviet positions at meetings of the Socialist International and in other international forums.