Kyaw Nyein

Kyaw Nyein became involved in student politics at Rangoon University in the academic year 1933/34. While hospitalized in the university infirmary in 1933, he met and befriended freshman student Aung San and later introduced him to Thein Pe Myint and Than Tun.[5] In the same year, he ran in the elections for the executive council of the Rangoon University Student Union (RUSU) together with Thein Pe Myint and Aung San, and after being elected became editor of the RUSU Bulletin.[3][4] By the end of 1935, the RUSU executive council was dominated by political students and presided over by Nu, a senior law student and friend who described Kyaw Nyein as "an easy conversationalist with a good sense of humour.”[6]

During the university student strike of 1936, Nu, Raschid, Aung San and Kyaw Nyein formed a strike council and set the strike strategy and objectives.[7] As the protests persisted and spread to other schools and colleges in the country, they wrested major concessions from the university administration. Raschid recalled that „the burden of negotiating and operational leadership fell to Aung San, Kyaw Nyein and myself."[8] After the strike, he and the other strike leaders established the All Burma Student Union (ABSU) to organize students nationwide.[7]

In 1937 or 1938, while preparing for his law degree, Kyaw Nyein began to work at the customs department to provide for his parents and support himself and his political friends.[2] In 1939, he founded together with Thakin Mya, Aung San, Ba Swe and Thakin Chit the People's Revolutionary Party (PRP), which organized clandestine activities for a planned armed struggle against the British.[4][9]

Aung San left Burma in 1940 and established contact with Japanese army intelligence officer Suzuki Keiji. In early 1941, the PRP leadership embraced Aung San's plan for an armed uprising supported by the Japanese intelligence unit Minami Kikan (ja). Kyaw Nyein and other PRP members selected and sent young nationalists -later to be known as the Thirty Comrades- to Japan for military training.[10] In February 1942, he recruited over 200 Burmese soldiers of the Burma Rifles and took them in pilfered trucks to Tharrawaddy where they were supposed to foment a local rebellion together with Ne Win and Bo Yan Aung of the Thirty Comrades before the Japanese troops arrived. The plan failed, and Kyaw Nyein and Ne Win reportedly had to walk back to Yangon by foot.[10][11]

During the Japanese occupation of Burma, Kyaw Nyein was Cabinet Secretary in the Civil Executive Administration under Prime Minister Dr. Ba Maw, and later served as Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs.[12] In August 1944, he participated in negotiations between members of the Communist Party of Burma, the PRP and the Burma National Army that led to the founding of the anti-Japanese resistance organization, Anti-Fascist Organisation (AFO), which later became the Anti-Fascist People's Freedom League (AFPFL). Kyaw Nyein was a member of the AFO Supreme Council, the Military Council, and the executive committee and assigned as Political Commissar to Division (6), Pyinmana.[12][13]

After the war and the return of the British colonial administration, Kyaw Nyein, Thakin Mya, Ba Swe and other AFPFL members founded the Burma Socialist Party (BSP) to counter the growing influence of the Communist Party of Burma (CPB) within the AFPFL, by now the major political alliance and umbrella-organization in Burma's struggle for independence. Thakin Mya became the chairman of the BSP while Ba Swe served as general secretary and Kyaw Nyein as joint secretary.[14][15] Amidst growing tensions within the AFPFL, Than Tun from the CPB resigned in June 1946 as General Secretary of the AFPFL. In August 1946, Kyaw Nyein was appointed as new General Secretary by the AFPFL Supreme Council presided over by Aung San.[16][17]

He was an advisor to Aung San in the London Talks with Prime Minister Clement Attlee on Burma's independence in January 1947.[18] Upon his return from London, he was handed the portfolio of Minister for Home and Judiciary in the Governor's Executive Council.[19] He accompanied U Nu in July 1947 to London for further negotiations with Prime Minister Attlee, and on the way back, visited Yugoslavia to study the country's constitution and socialist system as a member of the Special Committee of Burma's Constitutional Assembly. Certain features of the Yugoslav Constitution, particularly those relating to minorities, were eventually incorporated in Burma's 1947 constitution.[20]

In March 1949, at the height of the communist insurgency, Kyaw Nyein and five fellow socialist ministers resigned from the government under unclear circumstances.[22] According to the autobiographical account of one of the ministers, the Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces, General Ne Win had forced their resignation.[23] Ne Win had entered a cabinet meeting alleging that he had struck a deal with the communists who were ready to join the government under the condition that all socialist ministers resigned. Kyaw Nyein and the other socialist ministers stepped aside but demanded that Prime Minister U Nu should remain the head of government.[23] Although Ne Win's overture to the communists eventually failed, he assumed the civilian positions of Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister in Nu's government until September 1950 while remaining the Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces.[24][25] During his time in the cabinet, Ne Win tried to tackle the domestic conflicts by getting assistance from the United Kingdom and United States. Together with the Minister for Foreign Affairs E Maung, he visited London and Washington in June 1949 signaling Burma's willingness for a possible Pacific area security pact. At the same time, Prime Minister U Nu suggested in parliament that Burma should enter into economic and defense treaties with countries of economic interest.[26] The reversal of Burma's avowed neutralism since independence was vigorously opposed by Kyaw Nyein. As Secretary General of the AFFPL and majority leader, he led the response in parliament warning in his speech of the dangers of becoming associated with power blocs.[26] In the end, Washington and London sent a small supply of arms but otherwise were reluctant to assist Burma's government in its domestic conflicts. Later in the year, U Nu reaffirmed Burma's neutralism declaring that he was neither interested in anti-Left nor anti-Right but only anti-aggression pacts.[26]

Kyaw Nyein returned to U Nu's cabinet in 1951 and set up the Ministry of Cooperatives, which he handed over to U Tun Win in 1954 to create the Ministry of Industries. In 1956, he became Deputy Prime Minister of National Economy to oversee and coordinate the industrialization of Burma.[27]

Kyaw Nyein was described as "the brain of Burma's drive to socialism" envisaging socialism as being based on nationalization of industries and developing an import substitution industrialization under government control.[28] However, a moderate Socialist and less doctrinaire than some of his colleagues in the BSP,[29] he gradually moved away from an orthodox socialist nationalization policy in favor of a mixed economy. In March 1957, he declared to create an economic climate that was conducive to foreign investment and private capital, a policy shift that was confirmed by Prime Minister U Nu who announced hat the government would divest itself from many economic projects.[30]

Louis Walinsky, an American economic consultant to the U Nu-government, who was highly critical of Burma's focus on import substitution industrialization and advocated greater investments in the agricultural sector, described Kyaw Nyein as one of the outstanding ministers in the administration.[31] He claimed later that "[i]f the dynamic U Kyaw Nyein had been named Minister for Agriculture, rather than Industries, at the very outset of the program, there is no question that Burma’s recovery and development would have proceeded at a steadier and more rapid pace.”[32]

Already during the independence struggle, Burma's socialists expressed the need for a cooperation of Asian Socialists against colonial rule. While attending the Asian Relations Conference in Delhi in 1947, Kyaw Nyein and other leading members of the Socialist Parties of Burma, India and Indonesia devised the idea of a common venue where Socialist Parties of Asia could discuss issues and exchange experience.[33] In March 1952, Kyaw Nyein headed the 'Preparatory Committee for the first Conference of Asian Socialist Parties' in Rangoon with representatives of the socialist parties of India, Burma and Indonesia. The Preparatory Committee also began publishing Socialist Asia, which would later become the organ of the Asian Socialist Conference. The Asian Socialist Conference was founded at a first conference held in Rangoon January 6 to 15, 1953, and established the ASC as independent socialist organization.[34][35] The ASC proposed the formation of a 'Third Force' in world politics and adopted a resolution that called for support of democracy, condemning capitalism, communism and imperialism.[36][37]

As socialist party leader, Minister of Cooperatives, and lead-planner of the Asian Socialist Conference, Kyaw Nyein led in July 1952 a civil-military delegation to Belgrade that opened an era of mutually beneficial relationship between Burma and Yugoslavia.[38] At that time, the two countries found themselves in a similar position. Yugoslavia, ostracized by Stalin and excluded from the economic organization of the Eastern Bloc, was seeking new alliances. Burma was likewise trying to establish international relations outside the East and West Blocs and sought to get access to arms outside a restrictive defense treaty with the United Kingdom that infringed on her sovereignty as the Rangoon-based British Service Mission monitored and evaluated Burma's request for arms purchase from outside sources including the United States. Subsequent to the visit, the two countries exchanged embassies, and Burma, after securing in Yugoslavia a major arms supplier, terminated the contract with the British Services Mission.[39] Invited by Kyaw Nyein to the Asian Socialist Conference to be held in Rangoon the following year, Milovan Đilas led the Yugoslav delegation and established contact with many Asian socialist attending the conference. In 1955, President Tito visited India and Burma, a trip that was considered one of the most consequential and significant for Yugoslav foreign policy as it put the country on the trajectory to the helm of the Non-Alignment Movement.[40]

In December 1952, Kyaw Nyein led also a high-level Burmese delegation to Israel. He considered Israel a kindred country with a social democratic party in power and was interested in the country's expertise in arms production as well as in co-operative settlements such as the Kibbutz. Following his visit, Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett attended the Asian Socialist Conference in Rangoon in 1953, and diplomatic relations were established between the two countries with David Hacohen appointed first Israeli ambassador to Burma.[41]

In August 1954, Kyaw Nyein began negotiations with the Japanese government in Tokyo over reparation payments for damages inflicted on Burma during the war.[42] He signed a reparation agreement on 25 September with foreign minister Katsuo Okazaki that set the pattern for later settlements with the Philippines and Indonesia whose negotiations with Japan had been in a deadlock holding up the normalization of diplomatic relations.[43][44] The settlement was followed by a peace pact between Japan and Burma, which he signed in Rangoon on 6 November 1954.[45] With regard to Kyaw Nyein's foreign policy achievements, an American analyst remarked that

U Kyaw Nyein is the essence of diplomacy. Though his reputation is based upon other factors, it is to his credit that Burmese relations with Yugoslavia have developed with the warmth and certainty of the past few years. As a cabinet member he has tackled the most difficult of all Burma's foreign treaty negotiations—the peace and reparations settlement with Japan.

— John Seabury Thomson, 1957[43]

A rift between Nu and Kyaw Nyein in 1958 led to an acrimonious split of the AFPFL that pitted the faction of U Nu and Thakin Tin known as the Clean AFPFL against the Stable AFPFL led by Ba Swe and Kyaw Nyein.[46] Helped by votes from the faction of "legal" communists in the parliament, Nu defeated a motion of no confidence tabled against his minority government by Ba Swe and Kyaw Nyein.[47] The rift within the ruling party destabilized the government and ultimately led to a military caretaker regime by the chief of staff of the armed forces, Ne Win. After eighteen months, the caretaker government held general elections in which Nu's party defeated the Stable-AFPFL, and Kyaw Nyein lost his parliament seat.[48]

After the coup d'état in March 1962, the Revolutionary Council led by General Ne Win dissolved all political parties and other institutions of parliamentary democracy. Kyaw Nyein was detained in August 1963 and released in 1968 at the height of tensions between Burma and China and an escalating civil war between Burma's armed forces and the China-backed Burma Communist Party.[49] In the same year, he and other veteran politicians among them U Nu and U Ba Swe were invited by General Ne Win to advise the Revolutionary Council on drafting a national constitution and "ways of improving the country's stability and prosperity."[50] He was part of a group of twenty-one politicians who proposed the return to democracy with a mixed economy. A minority of eleven from a total of thirty-three members of the advisory committee recommended a one-party system. Ne Win rejected the majority advice.[51] In 1974, Ne Win established a Soviet-style one-party socialist system based on a new constitution

Books

• Abadi, Jacob (2004). Israel's Quest for Recognition and Acceptance in Asia. London: Frank Cass Publisher.
• Aye Kyaw (1993). The Voice of Young Burma. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Southeast Asia Program.
• Ba Maw (1968). Breakthrough in Burma. Memoirs of a Revolution, 1939-1946. New Haven/London: Yale University Press.
• Butwell, Richard (1963). U Nu of Burma. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
• Egreteau, Renaud (2013). Soldiers and Diplomacy in Burma. Singapore: NUS Press. ISBN 9789971696733.
• Fleischmann, Klaus (1989). Die Kommunistische Partei Birmas. Von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart [The Communist Party of Burma. From Its Beginnings to the Present] (in German). Hamburg: Institut für Asienkunde.
• Liang, Chi-shad (1990). Burma's Foreign Relations. Neutralism in Theory and Practice. New York: Praeger.
• Dr. Maung Maung (2011). Thet Shi Yar Za Win [Living History] (in Burmese). Yangon: Unity Publishing House, first published by Thamma Meitta in 1956.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)
• Dr. Maung Maung (1961). Burma's Constitution. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)
• U Maung Maung (1990). Burmese Nationalist Movements 1940-1948. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)
• U Maung Maung (1980). From Sangha to Laity. Nationalist Movements of Burma 1920-1940. New Delhi: Manohar Publications.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)
• U Nu (1975). U Nu. Saturday's Son. New Haven/London: Yale University Press.
• Rose, Saul (1959). Socialism in Southern Asia. London: Oxford University Press.
• Rubinstein, Alvin Z. (1970). Yugoslavia and the Nonaligned World. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• Steinberg, David I. and Hongwei Fan (2012). Modern China-Myanmar Relations Dilemmas of Mutual Dependence. NIAS Press.
• Taylor, Robert (2015). General Ne Win: A Political Biography. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.
• Thakin Tin (2014). Ko Dwe Lut Lat Yeh Taik Pwe [First Hand Experience of the Independence Struggle] (in Burmese). Yangon: Seiku Cho Cho.
• Thein Pe Myint (1999). Kyaw Nyein (in Burmese). Yangon: Sar Oke Zey.
• U Thu Wai (2012). Hpasapala U Kyaw Nyein [AFPFL U Kyaw Nyein] (in Burmese). Yangon: Tagaung.
• Trager, Frank N. (1966). Burma. From Kingdom to Republic. London: Pall Mall Press.
• Walinsky, Louis J. (1962). Economic Development in Burma 1951-1960. New York: The Twentieth Century Fund.
• Win Win Aye (2000). The Role of U Kyaw Nyein in the Politics of Myanmar (1948-1958). Yangon: History Department.

Articles in Journals, Readers, Encyclopedias, Thesis, Dictionaries & Special Publications

• Bečka, Jan (1995). Historical Dictionary of Myanmar. Lanham, Md.& London: The Scarecrow Press.
• "Burma. A Special Supplement". The Atlantic. Washington D.C. February 1958. Retrieved 2020-10-19.
• Callesen, Gerd (2001). Socialist Internationals. A Bibliography. Publications of the Social-Democratic and Socialist Internationals 1914–2000 (PDF). Bonn, Germany: Library of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung for the International Association of Labour History Institutions.
• Čavoški, Jovan. "Arming Nonalignment. Yugoslavia's Relations with Burma and the Cold War in Asia, 1950–1955" (PDF). Cold War International History Project, Working Paper No.61. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center. Retrieved 2020-10-27.
• U Kyaw Nyein (February 1958). "Burma. An Introduction". The Atlantic. Washington D.C. Retrieved 2020-10-19.
• Lamb, Peter; Docherty, James C. (2016). Historical Dictionary of Socialism. Rowman & Littlefield.
• U Law Yone (February 1958). "Burma's Socialist Democracy. Some Problems of Practical Politics". The Atlantic. Washington D.C. Retrieved 2020-10-19.
• May Day 1955. Socialist International & Asian Socialist Conference. 1955.
• Thomson, John Seabury (1957a). "Burma. A Neutral in China's Shadow". The Review of Politics. 19 (3): 330–550. doi:10.1017/S003467050001202X. S2CID 145457603.
• Thomson, John Seabury (1957b). "The AFPFL. Continuity in Burmese Politics". The Antioch Review. 17 (Fall): 297–313. doi:10.2307/4609966. JSTOR 4609966.
• Trager, Frank N. (1956). "Burma's Foreign Policy, 1948-56. Neutralism, Third Force, and Rice". The Journal of Asian Studies. 16 (1): 89–102. doi:10.2307/2941548. JSTOR 2941548. S2CID 159515583.