Martov And Zinoviev: Head To Head In Halle

230 Pages·2011·7.01 MB·English

by  November Publications

Martov and Zinoviev:
Head to head in Halle
With introductory essays by
Ben Lewis and Lars T Lih
Published by November Publications Ltd
BCM Box 928, London WClN 3XX
© November Publications
ISBN 978-1-4478-0911-1
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data:
A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library
Typeset by November Publications Ltd
Printed by Lulu, www.lulu.com
First edition 2011
Dedicated to the United Opposition
and the victims of Stalinist counterrevolution
Contents
I. The four-hour speech and the
significance of Halle
Ben Lewis 7
War and collapse 10
The USPD and two revolutions 13
International realignments 19
Comintern's 2nd congress 22
Martov and Zinoviev 26
History 32
Translation 34
Acknowledgements 35
II. Zinoviev: populist Leninist
Lars T Lih 39
Party and class: civil war (1919-21) 41
NEP (1922-25) 47
The peasantry: hegemony and 'who-whom' 51
Civil war 51
NEP 54
Opposition in 1925: flip-flop or continuity? 57
Conclusion 58
III. Twelve days in Germany
Grigory Zinoviev 61
Petrograd, Smolny, November 13 1920 61
The journey 63
The congress 67
The Amsterdam International 71
Karl Kautsky 79
'The lower-downs versus the higher-ups' 82
Martov and the Mensheviks 83
The agrarian question 86
The national question 86
Terror 88
The soviet system 89
Soviet Russia 91
Splitting the conference 92
'.An undesirable foreigner' 94
The 'Bolshevik debates' in the Reichstag 97
The journey back to Russia 101
Life in Germany 1920 102
The German workers' movement 107
IV. World revolution and the Third
International
Grigory Zinoviev 117
V. Martov in Halle
Lars T Lib 161
VI. May the USPD be preserved
Julius Martov 167
Neither reformism nor revolutionism 167
Why do the Bolsheviks insist on the 21 conditions? 169
Comintern and Soviet foreign policy 170
Comintern and Bolshevik terror 175
The necessity of a new international 178
VII. Closing words
Grigory Zinoviev 181
VIII. The 21 terms and conditions of
affiliation to the Communist
International 193
Glossary 198
Index 222
Head to head in Halle
m:Jodyenbeilage 3um merliner S!:ogcblatt
3u~ 9Uc!lten fiel)t anon wie 31ar £infen - <inen bolbcn il.lnabtlan9i9cn tfnfenl
Front cover of the popular German satirical magazine, Ulk, from October 29
1920. Entitled 'Cunning Russian strike: it depicts a sabre, emblazoned with
'Moscow: splitting the USPD in two. In the one hand the victim carries a brief
case bearing the name of USPD left leader Daumig. The briefcase in his other
hand is that of Dittmann, the USPD right leader. The caption reads: "Whether
you look right or left, you see an Independent cleft"
6
I
The four-hour speech and the
significance of Halle
Ben Lewis
Party comrades! It is not without a feeling of deep inner stirring and emo
tion that today I step onto this stage - the stage of the party congress of
the class-conscious German proletariat, of that proletariat from which we
have learnt so much and from which we will learn even more. Indeed, we
have not come here merely to provide you with news of the experiences
of our proletarian revolution, but also to learn something from the Ger
man proletariat and its great struggles. We will not forget that the German
proletariat has gained much experience in the two years of revolution it
has been through; that there is not a single town in this country where
proletarian blood has not been shed for the proletarian revolution. We
will not forget that proletarian fighters like August Behel, Wilhelm Lieb
knecht and others have struggled in the ranks of the German proletariat.
We will not forget that the German working class includes real heroes of
the world revolution: Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg.
These are the opening words to one of the most significant speeches of the 20th
century workers' movement, delivered by Bolshevik leader Grigory Zinoviev
at the Halle congress of the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany
(USPD). Many on the left will not have even heard of the speech or the split
which followed it. With a few honourable exceptions, Zinoviev's speech is often
overlooked by histories of the Weimar Republic and the German workers' move-
7
Head to head in Halle
ment more specifically.
Between October 12 and 17 1920, the sharp debates fought out at Halle were
to shape the entire future of the German and indeed the whole European work
ers' movement. Two opposing motions were placed before the 392 mandated
delegates. They dealt with two simple yet profoundly controversial questions.
Firstly, should the USPD affiliate to the Communist International, born in the
aftermath of the Russian Revolution? Or was this unnecessary because the par
ties of the old Second International, which had ceased to function during World
War I, were already reforming? Secondly, should the USPD fuse with the young
Communist Party of Germany (Spartacus),1 or would this mean sacrificing its
autonomy to an organisation that had just recently split away from it?
In 1920 the USPD had something close to 800,000 members and a press
which included over 50 daily papers. But with revolutionary sentiment spread
ing like wildfire across Europe, the USPD stumbled from one crisis to the next.
In spite of its recently acquired fractious nature,2 the German workers' move
ment was enormously powerful. As Europe's leading industrial power, Germany
was centrally important to the world revolution that the Bolsheviks had banked
on in 1917. Russia was a backward country with an overwhelming peasant ma
jority. The Bolsheviks had always been clear that their continued survival cru
cially hinged on the German working class taking power. Without correspond
ing revolutionary action in Germany, the Bolsheviks knew that the young Soviet
Republic would be condemned to isolation and inevitable defeat. It was sur
rounded by a sea of hostile imperialist powers and subject to the overarching
economic dictates of the world division oflabour.
The importance of the German workers' movement can be traced back to the
success of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD). Between the 1880s and
1914 the SPD had served as a model for the workers' movement internationally.
His criticisms of its programme and its lack of republicanism notwithstanding,
Friedrich Engels could barely contain his delight at its seemingly inexorable rise.
Just before his death in 1895, he wrote:
Its growth proceeds as spontaneously, as steadily, as irresistibly, and at the
same time as tranquilly as a natural process. All government intervention
has proved powerless against it. We can count even today on two and a
quarter million voters. If it continues in this fashion, by the end of the
century we shall have the greater part of the middle strata of society, petty
bourgeoisie and small peasants, and we shall grow into the decisive power
in the land, before which all other powers will have to bow, whether they
like it or not. To keep this growth going without interruption until it gets
I. Formed in January 1919, the Communist Party of Germany (Spartacus) only dropped the suffix
in December 1920. Henceforth I will refer to it as the KPD(S).
2. At the Halle congress, Arthur Crispien mocked the USPD left by pointing out that there were al
ready four different 'communist parties' in Hamburg alone. Paul Levi, then KPD(S) chair, corrected
him with a heckle: there were actually five! Protokolle der Parteitage der USPD, Band 3, Berlin 1976,
p77.
8
The significance of Halle
beyond the control of the prevailing governmental system of itself, not to
fritter away this daily increasing shock force in vanguard skirmishes, but
to keep it intact until the decisive day, that is our main task. 3
Unlike the many 'parties' that parade themselves on today's far left, the SPD had
genuine mass influence and deep roots. As the historian Vernon Lidtke4 has
shown, German social democracy was not so much a political party as it was
another way of life devoted to the political, cultural and social development and
empowerment of the working class. It ran women's groups, cycling clubs, party
universities and schools, published hundreds of newspapers, weekly theoretical
journals, special interest magazines such as The worker cyclist or The free female
gymnast and much, much more. "It was much more than a political machine"
concurs Ruth Fischer: "it gave the German worker dignity and status in a world
of his [sic] own:' Indeed, by 1912 the SPD had become the biggest party in the
Reichstag with 110 seats and over 28% of the popular vote. Depending on their
position in society, many either confidently or anxiously awaited the day when it
would win a parliamentary majority and take over the running of society.
But the SPD's expansion had also planted the seeds of opportunism and revi
sionism that would later undermine it from within. As the party grew, so did the
gulf between its revolutionary theory and the dull routine of putting out newspa
pers, organising in trade unions and contesting elections. 5 The goal of socialism
and human emancipation was increasingly relegated to Sunday speeches, party
congresses, annual festivals and educational events. An increasingly detached
and largely unaccountable bureaucracy of over 15,000 specialist full-timers de
veloped, in which many party trade union leaders and functionaries saw no fur
ther than the struggle for higher wages and better conditions. Reichstag deputies
immersed themselves in minor reforms and parliamentary deals. In other words
the practice of the labour bureaucracy was becoming the norm, finding theoreti
cal expression in the writings of Eduard Bernstein -a former star pupil of Marx
and Engels, who was now questioning the very basis of Marxism itself.
3. F Engels, Introduction to The class struggles in France (http://marxists.org/archive/marx/
works/ 1895/03/06.htm).
4. V Lidtke The alternative culture Oxford 1985.
5. Here I believe that Pierre Broue, the late French Marxist historian who has probably written
the most extensive account of the German revolution, is wrong to assert that "Kautsky did not
renounce the maximum program, the socialist revolution, which the expansion of capitalism had
made a distant prospect, but laid down that the Party could and must fight for the demands of a
minimum program, the partial aims, and political, economic and social reforms, and must work
to consolidate the political and economic power of the workers' movement, whilst raising the con
sciousness of the working class. In this way, the dichotomy was created ... This separation was to
dominate the theory and practice of social democracy for decades:' Whilst it is doubtless the case
that there were flaws in Kautsky's conception of working class rule, the programmatic method he
was defending in the Erfurt programme of 1891 was that of Marx and Engels -ie, the culmination
of the minimum programme's demands were understood to be the dictatorship of the proletariat
or "the socialist revolution'; not what Broue deems mere "partial aims, and political, economic and
social reforms". See P Broue The German revolution 1917-1923 Chicago, 2006, p17.
9