Abraham Ascher

Russian Marxism and the German

Revolution, 1917-1920*

An issue uppermost in the minds of Marxists in Russia from 1917 to 1920 was
the progress of the German revolution. !his is hardly surprising, for a central
tenet of the Marxist creed had long been that the socialist revolution would
he staged first in advanced, highly industrialized societies with a politically
conscious and mature working class. In Germany these prerequisites seemed
to exist to a degree unparalleled anywhere else. The country was the most
industrialized on the continent and it had the largest and best organized socialist
movement in the world. Moreover, European Marxists regarded the leaders of
German Social Democracy with enormous respect not only for their organi-
zational skill but also for their theoretical contributions and their political
wisdom. As early as 1892 Engels had lauded the German working class for its
_political capacity, discipline, courage, energy, and perseverance ... Four
hundred years ago," he continued, -Germany was the starting point of the first
upheaval of the European middle class; as things are now, is it outside the
limits of possibility that Germany will be the scene, tOO, of the first great
victory of the European proletariat? - I) For the next two decades the primacy
of the German movement was accepted dogma in radical circles.
To be sure, German Social Democracy's support of the war in 1914 undermined
faith in its revolutionary commitment among many Marxists. But a faith so
deeply rooted dies hard. Those Russian Marxists who opposed the war enter-
tained the hope, if not the conviction, that the policies of the German party
were essentially the result of a betrayal by the leadership rather than of a
rational decision by the -masses."
• I should like to express my appreciation to the Friedrich Eben Stiftung for financial aid
that C.Dabled me to do research I t European libraries. I should also like to express my
gntitude to the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peaee for support and permis-
lion to use iu rich holdings on twentieth century Russia.

I) F. Engels, SocuUJm: Uropi/VI /VIa Srientific (New York, 1935), 29.

391
After the revolution broke out in Russia, Marxists of all shades of opinion kept
a watchful eye on events in Germany. In view of the paramount imponance they
attached to Germany in their conception of the progress of the world revolution,
Russian Marxists might have been expected to correlate their internal policies
with careful, dispassionate judgments of the direction events were taking there.
Thus, on those occasions when they acknowledged the remoteness of a revolution
in Central Europe, consistency with their dogma should have prompted them
to consider the abandonment of proletarian rule in Russia. Actually, however,
Russian Marxists tended to proceed quite differently. In their assessments of
the German situation they took as their point of departure the Russian Revolu-
tion and the policies they considered most likely to furth er the kind of revolu-
tion they favored.
Several consequences resulted from this approach: First, wishful thinking got
the better of their analytic powers, so that their judgments frequently bore
little relationship to the real state of affairs in Germany. Second, when their
information was accurate but failed to fit into their ideological preconceptions,
they tended to revise their predictions about the course of the German revo-
lution without modifying their basic doctrines. Of course, in propounding the
legitimacy of a seizure of power by a minority in Germany, the Russian Marxists
did deviate from orthodoxy. But they refused to acknowledge that their position,
which was an extension of Bolshevik strategy in 1917, constituted a modification
of their creed. Third, as there were differences among the Russians over domestic
policies, there emerged the interesting phenomenon of orthodox Marxists, all of
whom had access to the same set of facts, developing estimates of the German
revolution drastically at variance with each other. Finally, almost every time
Russian Marxists changed their views about Germany, the changes were related
as much to a reappraisal of the situation at home as to any other factor. This
might be termed a classic demonstration of the primacy of domestic affairs in
shaping thinking about foreign revolutionary movementS.

The extent to which Russian revolutionaries counted on a social upheaval in Ger-

many is dramatically revealed by an incident related by Nikolai Sukhanov in
his memoirs. On the fourth day of the revolution in Russia Sukhanov entered
the hall in which the Petrograd Soviet was meeting and heard a .. hurricane of
applause« and a .. deafening hurrah ... The agitation was indescribable.« Osip
Ermanskii. a left Menshevik, was standing on the President's table with a
copy of Russkii Siovo in his hands which announced that the revolution in
Berlin was in its second day and that Kaiser William had abdicated. Sukhanov
marvelled that such nonsense had fallen into the hands of so respected and

392
well-informed a newspaper, and that such a large number of people readily
believed the report. Subsequently, there was a retraction, but this .. could not
dampen the enthusiasm of the crowd that had been electrified by the startling
news from the lofty platform ...!)
Very soon, however, as it became evident that the revolutionary fever had
not yet gripped Germany, Russian Marxists began to offer somewhat more
sober accounts and estimates of the situation in Central Europe. From March,
1917, until November, 1918, when a revolution did break out, four fairly
distinct analyses and prognoses emerged. Three of these were developed by
different Menshevik groups. The Bolsheviks at any particular moment publicly
set forth appraisal, but it would be misleading to assume that it remained
unchanged. Nor would it be accurate to maintain that there was harmony
within their ranks on the issue of Germany. True, the disputes among
them did not lead to the kind of factional division experienced by the Menshe-
viks and once the leaders reached a decision those who disagreed with it rarely
continued to press their arguments in public. But within the Bolshevik party
there did appear different estimates of events in Germany and the of6cialline
was revised during that year and a half.
Throughout 1917 the dominant group within the Menshevik movement was
the Centrists, led by Fedor Dan and Irakli Tseretelli. Opposed to the war for
two and a half years, they became .. revolutionary defensists« in March, 1917.
They now advocated a negotiated peace without annexations and indemnities
and hoped to persuade the Entente Powers to adopt their proposal. But until
a general peace in accordance with their principles was concluded, they believed
that Russia should continue the military struggle in -defense of the Revolution.«
It was this concern that prompted the Centrists to pay particular attention to
developments in Germany. Two weeks after the downfall of the tsarist autoc-
racy, lzvestiia, one of their organs;') declared that the .. entire democracy« was
-impatiently awaiting« news about the reaction in Germany to the revolution.
It seemed clear to the Centrists that if the German proletariat remained loyal
to its Government, the German rulers would seize the opportunity .. greedily
to fall upon« Russia with the aim of destroying the regime, which represented
a direct threat to the old order everywhere.
But lzvestiia warned that it would be naive to expect the German masses to rise
up against the Government simply out of a sense of solidarity for their Russian
comrades. Only a combination of an internal crisis and favorable foreign
developments would generate the hoped-for outburst. Russia could do nothing

I) N. Sukhanov, Z"piJlei 0 TrtloliHlsu (petrograd. 1919), vol I, 2<1.

I) Strictly speaking, h.!Jestii" was at this time the organ of the Petrograd soviet, whim,
however, was dominated by the Menshevik Centrists and Social Revolutionary Centrisu;
the twO groups agreed on basic iS1iues.

393
to promote the former, but she could do much to further the latter. The Pro-
visional Government should renounce all aims of conquest, thus assuring the
German workers that if they were to revolt they would not have to face a
Russian army bent on annexations. Such an assurance could best be guaranteed
by taking all necessary steps to prevent the return of tsarism. »On the day it is
clear to the German proletariat that the return to power of the tsar is impossible,
its revolutionary energy will at once grow.«')
The Petrograd Soviet was less circumspect and publicly called upon the German
workers to overthrow their regime. It reminded them that in 1914 they had
taken up arms against Russia in the conviction that they were defending
European civilization against Asiatic despotism. But this argument was no
longer valid: »Democratic Russia cannot be a threat to freedom and civiliza~
tion.« On the contrary. it was »semi~autocratic « Germany that now embodied
the reactionary state.') The logic of the Russians was sound, but their premise
was not. For they failed to realize that to a large extent simple patriotism
had been behind the Germans' decision to support the war.
In the course of 1917 the Centrists were encouraged by increasing signs of
popular unrest in Germany, but they warned, in line with their defensist policy,
that the only way Russia could hope to intensify the mood of disaffection was
by offering the strongest possible resistance to the German army. In their view,
nothing could set back the revolutionary movement in Central Europe so much
as easy victories for Hindenburg, which would only strengthen the monarchical
regime and dismay the proletariat.')
Shortly after the coup d'etat in November, 1917, by which time the Bolsheviks
were moving towards a separate peace and confidently predicting the imminence
of the German revolution, the Centrists' hopes dimmed considerably. They
asserted that the Bolsheviks Radek and Hanecki, reporting from Stodtholm,
were exaggerating out of all proportion the significance of certain disorders
in the German navy. They pointed out that a few days before the coup, Haase,
a leader of the German Independent Socialist Party (USPD) had told Gol-
denberg, the Soviet representative in Stockholm, that the Russian press was
making far too mum of the unrest in the navy. Haase had, in fact, considered
it his »duty to declare that one must not count on a revolution in Germany, at
least not until the end of the war.« Russia, concluded the Centrists, could not
hope to be saved from the .horrors of anarmy and counterrevolution« by a

4) .Rossiia i Gerrnaniia,« IZ fJtJtiior, Marth 14, 1917. In the footnotes I have used the original
dates as they appeared on the sourtes; there will therefore cx:casionally be a discrepancy
of thirteen days between the dates in the teXt and those in the notes.
5) .K narodam V5cgO mira,. Ibid., March 15, 1917. For similar statements see »Nakonets~tO,.
in the Menshevik paper R4bow(tior G(tZttor, Marth 16, 1917 and »Borba za mir i zashchita
revoliutsii,. ibid., March 31, 1917.
•) »Reaktsiia v Germanii,« h(Jtstijor, October 6, 1917.

394
socialist regime in Germany.'} Obviously, the Centrists' pessimism was, at least
in part, a weapon in their conflict with the new rulers of Russia.
The Menshevik Internationalists and the Centrists were dUefly divided over
Russia's policy tOwards the war. Vigorously opposed to the Provisional Gov-
ernment's posture of .revolutionary defensism,e and its policy of waging an
offensive war, the Internationalists favored a firm pursuit of peace without
annexations and indemnities, even at the cost of a complete break with the
Entente. In fact, they urged publication of the secret treaties between Russia
and the Entente in order to expose what they held to be the imperialist character
of the conflict. In their view, such a course on the part of Russia, the only
country under control of radicals, might well spur on revolutionary agitation
in the West.
Unlike the Centrists, the Internationalists seem to have conceived of revolution-
ary actions as possessing an infectious quality. Martov, their outstanding leader,
spoke of the .mighty flame of the Russian Revolution« scattering sparks through-
out Europe: • You don't know the day or the hour,« he declared, when the
upheaval might begin in .one or another parte of the West. The Internationalists
exuded particular optimism about Gennany, where, they contended, .significant
masses of the organized working class ... long ago left the guardianship of their
party bureaucracy« and were courageously opposing the leadership of their move-
ment. They were confident, moreover, that those .significant massese reflected
the will and wishes of -broad strata of the Gennan people.« -Revolutionary
Gennany is in the process of gathering its forces ... « The InternationalistS'
expectations from an upheaval in Europe were considerable, even though
expressed in rather vague terms. Late in July, 1917, when Martov feared that
the response to the Bolsheviks' -adventurous policy« of July 3- 5 might be a
shift to the right within Russia, he declared that a speedy outburst of revolu-

1) _Predrybornyi manevr,. RAJ,odJaw Gaze/a, November 10, 1917. The Centrin.s were quite
right in $tuing mat the Indepcndenu in Germa.ny held OUt no hope for a revolution in
the immediate future. In October, 1917 Hilferding mought it eztremely unlikely mat
there would be a revolution in Germany until after the war, which he thought would last
at least until the end of the summer of 1918. In De,ember, 1917 Hilferding wrOte Kautsky
that Trouky, who in 1905 had maintained that a dictatorship of the Russian proletariat
was possible if the proletariat in the Wen $Cized power, must be awaiting an upheaval in
Germany.•But this hpextation seems to me to have little justification. And I am afraid
that the present regime [i. e. the Soviet regime] will not be able to maintain iudf.•
Hilferding pointed out that the situation in Germany ",as not comparable to that in
Russia. There did not exist an armed reTolutionary proletariat and peasantry in a mili-
tary force whose _officer corps was completely disorga.nized.• Hilferding to Kauuky,
October 13. 1917, Kauuky Archive, DXIt, 630; Hilferding to Kauuky, December 3,
1917, Kautslr.y A.rchive, DXII, 631, on deposit at the International Institute for Social
History, A.msterdam, hereafter tited as ItSH.

395
tionary activity in the West would "give our own revolution new, powerful
impulses ...8 )
The right-wing Mensheviks who had been defensists since 1914 and called for
a .. decisive victory .. over Germany, consistently held that a German revolution
was an extremely remOte possibility.') The ferment in Germany seemed to them
inadequate and they, too, stressed that the Independents themselves were not
expecting an upheaval in the near future. 'Ihe Rightists thought it highly naive
to suppose that the German proletariat would take to the streets simply because
they had been infected by the revolutionary fever that had seized Russia.
Conditions in the two countries differed profoundly ... Social contradictions..:
were not nearly as sharp in Germany as in Russia, the ruling classes in Germany
had been far more willing than their Russian counterparts to make concessions
to the people and, most important, the German Government had been able to
exploit the popular pride in its military victories in order to strengthen its
position. If anything, suggested the Rightists, it would be their policy of waging
an offensive struggle against Germany until the enemy's military establishment
had been solidly defeated that would loosen the stranglehold of the old regime.
'Ihen it would be possible for the German proletariat to raise its head politically
and exert influence in favor of a democratic peace.") The Rightists came closer
to a correct understanding of the situation in Germany than the other Menshe-
viks, but their argument, like that of the Centrists, had one fatal flaw: The belief
that Russia was still in a position to contribute to a military defeat of Germany.

In December, 1917, the Menshevik Centrists and Internationalists formally

joined forces and henceforth there existed two Menshevik groups in Russia,
the Majority, led by Iulii Martov, and the Rightists, whose most prominent
spokesman was Alexander Potresov. By early 1918 it was, of course, becoming

S) Raf. Grigorev, _Neotlo:thnaia :tadacha, .. NOfJaiIJ Zhizn, July 2 (15), 1917; Iu. Manov,
.Chto zhe teper?,. ibid., July 16 (29), 1917; Iu. Martov, .Razoblachenie Michaelis, ..
ibid., July 19 (August 1), 1917; Raf. Grigorev, .Krizis viani - kri:tis internatsionala, ..
ibid., July 21 (August 3), 1917; Raf. Grigorev, .Otvec tsentralnykh imperii,.. ibid.,
September 12 (25). 1917; see also N. Sukhanov's speech at the uni6cation congress of the
Social Democrats in ibid., August 24 (September 6), 1917.
• ) Plekhanov did not write very much on Germany during 1917. but the general drift of
hi, views corresponded more closely to that of the right wing Mensheviks than to that those
of any other group. See G. V. Plekhanov. God na rodine (Paris, 1921), vol. I, 236 and
vol. II. 247. Plekhanov did not formally join the Rightists apparently because he believed
that a successful conclusion of the war was not simply the main t:l$k of the day but the
only one, whereu Potresov, leader of the RightiSts, W3.$ very skeptical about the
desirability or feasibility of hastening an end to the war. See 1. Lande, Meruhevizm v
1917 godu (Unpublished. New York, 1966, on deposit at the Inter-University Project
on the H istory of the Menshevik Movement, New York City, I, 7.
It) A. Klivanskii, . Perspektivy revoliutsii v Germanii,.. Dm, April 15, 1917; A. Potresov,
title of article illegible, Den, June 24, 1917.

396
increasingly difficult for the Mensheviks to publish their oplfllons. But the
available sources indicate that throughout 1918 the Majority was highly skep-
tical about the likelihood of a revolution in Germany, and on this issue there
seemed to be little difference between the two wings. Martov saw growing signs
of mass opposition to the war in Germany, but no indications that the proletariat
was about to take power. And he feared that the ,.utopian« policies of the
Bolsheviks, which he felt were leading Russia to economic ruin and possibly
to a victory of the counterrevolution, would surely weaken radicalism in Central
Europe. II) Ermanskii held that the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk had dealt Gennan
socialism a cruel blow. Before the peace, social conditions in Germany had been
almost desperate, but the treaty would enable German imperialism to extract
such ,.colossal« profits from Russia that it could easily overcome itS economic
problems and thus dampen the revolutionary fervor of the working class. It)

The Rightists continued to argue in 1918 that there was no evidence to suggest
that a German revolution was imminent. The war had reduced the chances for
such an occurrence, as was demonstrated by the fact that the majority of the
German proletariat supported the government's policy.
The Bolshevik analysis of the Gennan situation changed perceptibly during
191 7 and 1918. Early in 1917 it did not differ basically from that of the Men-
shevik Centrists. The Bolsheviks also contended that the only guarantee against
a defeat of the Ru,sian Revolution was a social upheaval in Europe, and
especially in Germany... In order really to triumph, the Russian Revolution
must become the starting point of a world-wide movement, must open an era
of general revolt by the oppressed nations against the imperialist system.« But
the Bolsheviks warned their followers not to expect the upheaval in the West
to materialize in the near future. The most effective means at the disposal of
Russian Marxists for spreading the world revolution was to induce their own
government to renounce its annexationist plans and immediately initiate
negotiations for a general peace. The Bolsheviks made it clear that their proposal
did not betoken weakness or a desire for peace .. at any price.« That was a
pacifist slogan, .. but not our slogan.«'I)
The Bolsheviks' line shifted after Lenin retumed to Russia in April, 1917. In
conformity with Lenin's advocacy of a soviet seizure of power, Zinoviev now
contended that only a .. completion« of the Russian Revolution would unleash
the upheaval in Germany. The proposal to initiate peace talks was meaningless
as long as Miliukov and Guchkov were determining Russian foreign policy,
II) Iu. Manov•• Evropeiskii proleu.riat i ruukaia revoliutsiia,_ !LJbothii J,,'trnats;omd,
I (1918), 32-36.
'I) A. Ermanlkii•• Rabodlii incernatsional,« ibid., 10-20.
11) .Mezdunarodnye ganntii pobedy runkoi revoliuts.ii._ PrlWda, March 17, 1917; _Ger-
manskie socsialiny i russkaia revoliuuiia._ PrafJJa, March 19, 1917.

397
for both men were committed to uphold the secret treaties of Nicholas 11 with
France and England.")
Interestingly, the Bolsheviks now spoke with greater optimism of events in
Germany. In an obvious attempt to lend weight to the argument that seizure
of power by the soviets was realistic, they claimed, early in May, that there
was new ferment in Germany which clearly indicated a deepening of the mood
of discontent. Pravda reported that comrades who had just arrived from Swit-
zerland had learned of serious disorders and massive strikes in Berlin and
Leipzig. In Berlin alone 300,000 people were said to have participated in a
demonstration against the war. The police had attacked the crowds and bloody
clashes ensued. Pravda confessed that it had very little concrete information,
but it nevertheless felt free to conclude that -Prom all that we know, one thing
is clear: The revolutionary movement in Germany is becoming stronger each
day, and the German revolution cannot be delayed either by William II or
by former socialists of the type of Scheidemann ... U ) From this time on, the
Bolsheviks made much of every report and rumor about unrest in Germany,
each time claiming it to be a sign of significant intensification of revolutionary
fervor.
After the Bolsheviks came to power, their daily press became even more
optimistic about a revolution in Germany. On November 21, 1917, /zvestiia
assured its readers that the -German proletariat is already mobilizing its
forces, .. and that the -struggle has ... begun, even though it has not yet assumed
a violent character, .. After a series of strikes in Germany late in January, 1918,
the same paper declared that -In Germany the revolution has broken out: in
her heart, in Berlin, a soviet of workers' deputies has been formed .• Early in
February Pra'fJda announced that in creating the -soviet. the people of Berlin
had now armed themselves with -the weapon in the struggle for a class
dictatorship of the proletariat.•
Within a few weeks the Bolsheviks admitted that their claims had been
premature. If) The disorders had been suppressed by the government, a turn
Ii) G. Zinovie..., _Nasha revoliuuiia i npadno-evropeislr.ii proletariat,. Praflda, April 8, 1917.
II) _Kanun revoliutsii ... Germanii,. Pravda, April 20, 1917. The article refers to the fint
strike in Berlin durinK the war. Ju immediate cause was the announced reduction in food
rations. The strike, in whim about 250,000 worken in the metal and wood industries and
in transportation participated, lasted tWO days, except for some plants, where it continued
(or another five days. There were no violent clashes with the police; nor did the nriken
make specifically political demands. For details see Smulthess' E.ropiiisc:htr Gtsc:hic:hts-
Italtndar (Munidt, 1920). vol. 58, 41H14.
" ) The strike began in Berlin on January 28 and quiddy spread to other citi~. These StOP-
paKts were motivated by political rather than economic considerations, but .they did nOt
connitute an attempt to bring about socialism in Germany.• The worken asked for
immediate negotiations ror peace, more equitable distribution of food supplies, and an end to
the state of siege. For details see S. W. Halperin, Gtrma", Tritd Dtmocracl (New York,
1946), 42.

398
of events that the Communists did not find at all surprising: ,.The proletariat
is tied hand and foot within the clutches of the military situation, its best
leaders are in jail, prison sentences are issued as if from a cornucopia. We are
therefore not surprised that at this present moment the revolutionary proletariat
in Germany is not in a condition to survive under the yoke of the unprecedented
repression that has been imposed upon it.« But the defeat was only temporary,
assured the writer: ,.The recent speeches by our comrades, the representatives
of the Independent Party in the German Reichstag [denouncing the Treaty of
Brest-LitovskJ, serve to assure us that the revolution in Germany is only under
pressure, but not crushed, that the revolutionary proletariat of Germany is
preparing itself for a new fight against the ruling classes.«
It is, of course, very difficult to say whether or not the Bolsheviks believed
these exaggerations. There was very little reliable information about Germany
available to them, and, given their profound doctrinal commitment, it is
perhaps not surprising that they seized at every report of disorder in Ger-
many, no matter how questionable the source or minor the incident, and let
their fantasies go to work. But regardless of whether the assertions were the
result of deliberate fabrication or - more likely - of wishful thinking, their
political and psychological significance is clear.
By contending that the ,.October Revolution has brought forth a strong
improvement in the position of the proletariat in all of Europe,« the Bolsheviks
were saying, in effect, that even within the prescribed Marxist framework
their coup was justified. All they had done was to set off the spark: The con-
flagration was now spreading to the more industrialized states, which would
immediately move into the socialist phase without having to undergo a ,.March
Revolution.« In addition, by stressing the impending upheaval in the West,
the Bolsheviks could attempt to counteract one of the most agonizing fears
of party and nonparty persons alike, that of isolation. ,.The Revolution is now
no longer alone,« proclaimed lzvestiia. ,.The proletariat of Austria-Hungary
and Germany is rushing to the aid of the Russian Revolution.« Finally, the
Bolsheviks could use the ,.German argument« to flatter the Russian people
and spur them on to greater efforts. The Russians, by their example, had given
the world upheaval its initial impetus, and ,.the stronger our workers' and
peasants' government, the more definite the character of our revolution, the
faster it develops, the faster will the revolutionary movement develop in the
West ... Your cause is the cause of the entire world.«I1) Such proclamations
were clearly designed to invest the labors and sacrifices of the people with an
11) On the Bolshevik a.uessment of the progress of the German revolution immediately after
the coup see . Evropeiskii proletariat zagovoril,« iZfJutjja (petrogr:l.d), November 8, 1917;
,.Mirovaia revoliuuiia stala faktom,« ibid., January 20, 1918; .Perspektivy zapadno-
evropeiskoi revoliuuii,. P,a'CIda (Petrograd), February 3, 1918; .Razvitie r-evoliutsii na
zapade,. ibid.; .. Penpektivy revoliuuii v Gumanu,« ibid., Mardi 9, 1918.

399
irresistible nobility of purpose, but they could hardly be effective if there
were not at least some signs of revolutionary progress in Central Europe.
In time, however, the optimistic reports were a factor in promoting dissension
within the Bolshevik leadership. When, early in 1918, Lenin urged acceptance
by Russia of the extraordinarily harsh peace terms set by the Germans, there
emerged strong opposition to him within his ranks. Believing that an internal
crisis was at hand in Germany, a sizeable number of prominent Bolsheviks
reasoned that capitulation would strenghten the reactionary forces and thus
betray the one socialist movement that could, if triumphant, be a tremendous
help in consolidating the Bolshevik regime. In countering this argument Lenin
developed a far more cautious and subtle assessment of revolutionary possibili-
ties in Germany than any that appeared in the press.
He did not by any means belittle the importance for Russia of events abroad.
On the contrary, in March, 1918 he insisted that :> without a German revolution
we shall perish - perhaps not in Petrograd, not in Moscow, but in Vladivostock,
in still more distant places to which we may have to retreat, and the distance
to which is perhaps greater than the distance from Petrograd to Moscow. But
in any case, under every possible conceivable circumstance, if the German
revolution does not come - we shall perish.«") Nor did he deny the growth
of revolutionary ferment. Late in January, 1918 he, too, announced that .We
are no longer alone.« He boasted that it was not mere theory, nor the . fantasy
of impractical people« to believe that . we, having created the soviet power,
have called into being such attempts in other countries.« It was, in fact, in the
conviction that this would occur that he had favored the seizure of power in
1917, and he believed that developments since then had justified his prognosis. It)

But in an obvious reproach to those Bolsheviks who were arguing simply from
historical analogy, Lenin stressed that it would be unwise to expect Germany
to follow precisely the pattern set by Russia in 1917. Events in Central Europe
were unlikely to move as swiftly. History had proved that it was far more
difficult to start a socialist revolution in advanced countries with highly devel-
oped capitalist and democratic institutions than in the .country of Nicholas
and Rasputin, where a huge part of the population was entirely indifferent
about how the people lived in the outlying regions, about what happened there.
In such a country it was easy to start a revolution, as easy as lifting a feather .•
Lenin acknowledged that so far the .international world revolution« was no
more than a .very nice fairy tale, a very beautiful fairy tale.." which, to be
sure, contained an element of reality: For the revolutionary mood was indeed
maturing and the revolution would come to Germany and it would .inevitably.

18) v. I. Lenin, Sochintniu. (2nd ed., Leningrad, Moscow), vol. XXII, 322.
" ) Ibid., 225.

400
triumph. Before it did, however, the masses might very likely suffer IOextraor·
dinary difficulties« and IOsevere defeats.«
According to Trotsky, Lenin privately informed him at this rime that he was
willing to risk a c:ollapse of the Russian Revolution in order to ,.assure the
success of the German revolution, - which he considered IOvastly more important
than ours.« But he was restrained by the impossibility of predicting the date
of the upheaval in Central Europe. Lenin therefore concluded that IOat the
moment, there is nothing so important as our revolution. It must be safeguarded
against danger at any price.« In addition, Lenin believed it were Russia to
continue the military struggle against Germany and thus lead the first soviet
state to ruin, reactionary elements in Central Europe would be strengthened
immeasurably. Just as the English workers had been frightened by the defeat
of the Paris Commune in 1871, so, too,many members of the German proletariat
and IOsemi-proleta riat« not yet committed to socialism would be completely
alienated from what would appear to them to be a dying cause.")
As the responsible leader of the government Lenin had perforce to be cautious
and realistic, traits which were in any case among his strongest personal and
political assets. Karl Radek, however, the Bolsheviks' foremost authority on
German affairs, could afford to give free rein to his euphoria. In September,
1918, he is reported to have boasted to the Danish ambassador in Petrograd
that ,.1 have 400 agitators in Berlin, and in two months the city will be ours....I' )
His role, it would seem, was to provide the comforting and glowing predictions
generally absent from Lenin's analyses.
Early in October, 1918, shortly after the Social Democrat Philipp Scheidemann
had entered the German Government and an end to the war appeared to be
approaching, Radek gave a speech in Moscow in which he declared that lOwe
stand ... on the eve of the German and Austrian revolutions. « True, the German
working class had not yet rebell ed even though German imperialism had col-
lapsed,,. butwe can predict with mathematical precision that it will be forced to
rise up in rebellion, that it will rehel, for we know that there are now in Ger-
many tens of millions who will follow Liehknecht ... for we know that in the
German prisons there languish workers for whom the police . . . [has been]
looking in tens of cities as though they were illegal workers, for we know that
there exists a German Bolshevism working hand in hand with us, a Bolshevism
that is striving for the same things as we, and that this German Bolshevism is
now weak, as our Bolshevism was weak during the March days but will, quicker
than Russian Bolshevism, become strong, rise up and win over the masses.-

") Ibid .• 3~301, 319, 322, 32+-32.5. L. Troukr, My Li/e: all <lmmpt <It tin IflltobiogrlJphy
(New York, 1930). 382.
") Reidukallzlei, Akun betrt/lmd Buithllngm zlIm .Ibsl..nd. vol. I, Akten Nr. 2.508/3, 011
deposit:l.t the Deutsche Zelltraiarcniv, Potsdam. E:lst Germany.

~Ol
 Radek assured his audience that his claims were not based on sentiment but
on a ,.cool analysis of the situation.«")
Behind Radek's .. cool analysis« lay the conviction that the new German Gov-
ernment, formed early in October and containing tWO Social Democrats,
faced a hopeless dilemma. It could either try to make peace or continue the
military struggle, but whichever choice it made would lead to revolution. Should
the government decide on the second alternative, it would have to contend
with the growing hostility of the war-weary masses. The German people, tired
and hungry, were, in Radek's view, not willing to continue to fight and since
a government that included Social Democrats would have to allow somt
freedom of discussion and right of assembly, the door would be opened to an
expression of discontent and to demonstrations, which the government could
not tolerate in wartime. Violent clashes between the proletariat and the police
would quickly ensue and spread throughout the country.
If, however, the government decided to sue for peace on the basis of the
unfavorable Fourteen Points, an internal upheaval could also be expected.
Hundreds of thousands of soldiers were clamoring to return to their families,
but rapid demobilization would produce mass unemployment because the
supplies of raw materials were inadequate and industry would have to be
reorganized for the p.oduction of nonmilitary goods. Should the government
decide to demobilize gradually, it would arouse the wrath of all those desperate
to return home. Thus. in suing for peace Germany would face the prospect
of an uprising either by disgruntled soldiers or by the unemployed. ,.There is
no third way out .• n)
Radek conceded that a triumphant revolution in Germany would probably be
subjected to foreign intervention. He did not fear France or Italy, where he
thought the workers would rebel once the German proletariat had seized power
and removed the threat of German imperialism. But he suspected that the Eng-
lish and American capitalists were still strong enough to bridle their respective
working classes. And, having done so, the Anglo-Saxons would strive to crush
the German revolution and maintain the old order in Europe.
Under these circumstances it would be Russia's duty to ,. take every risk, even
the risk of a temporary suppression of the Russian Revolution« in order to
help the comrades struggling in Europe. ,. Whatever happens on the Rhine,
on the Seine, affects us as much as that which happens on the Nieman and
Dnieper ...• For Russia could not complete her revolution, could not organize
her economy without help from a victorious European proletariat. She did not
have enough technicians or machines to reconstruct the ruined economy on

") K. Radek., K,..shtnit rtI"/'l'JIlIUJrO'O imptri41izm4 i ZlIdllc»i muhdunllrodno,o rllboC»t,o

JrlllJJIl (Moscow. 1918). 34.
U) Jbid., 30-32.

402
her own .• The German workers, the European workers can help us complete
our work; without them we cannot triumph, we can triumph only with them,
and our duty will be to help them win.«") Radek's speech contained much that
was mere rhetoric, but in it one detects a note of desperation. By the fall of 1918
the Bolsheviks' difficulties - economic, political and military - were so grave
that his pronouncements about the German revolution may legitimately be
taken to reflect the deepest aspirations of the Soviet leadership. Only help from
abroad, it seemed, could prevent a complete collapse. Whether or not Radek's
optimism and promises were mere bravado was to be demonstrated within the
next few weeks.

II
Throughout October, 1918, as the political crisis in Germany intensified, the
Bolsheviks followed events there, in Lenin's words, .with the greatest attention
and ecstasy. «U) In the daily press the predictions of a new Communist triumph
became more frequent and confident. And now almost every writer on Germany
became addicted to a practice which Lenin had already tried to discourage,
though occasionally he himself succumbed to it, that of drawing analogies
between events in Central Europe and those that had occurred in Russia in
1917 . .. History,- said one commentator, :> repeats itself. And it is very good that
it repeats itself. This makes it possible to learn from mistakes, this teaches [us]
how to avoid mistakes. It is only necessary to be able to make use of the lessons
of history.c l ' ) The Russian experience would guide the Germans to a smoother
and faster establishment of proletarian rule.
The mood among the Bolshevik leaders was one of tense expectation when the
news of the start of the revolution in Germany reached Russia on November 10,
1918. It is not surprising, therefore, that newspapers were only too ready to
give credence to the most exaggerated reports. Pravda jubilantly announced
that all of northern Germany was in the hands of the rebellious workers, soldiers
and sailors and that, in fact, a .. Soviet Germany. had been created. Krasnaia
Gazeta declared that .All power in Germany belongs to the soldiers, workers
and sailors .•• Yes,. wrote another paper, .. our foreign worker-comrades have
gained all the experience from our revolution and are following in our foot-
steps«; only they were proceeding much faster than the Bolsheviks had in
1917.11 ) Two days after these pronouncements the Russian people were told
that .The leader of the Gennan revolutionary proletariat, Comrade Liebknecht,
") Ibid., 36, 41.
II) Lenin, Scx;hineniia, vol. XXIII, 215 .
• ) ••Sotsial-demokratic;heskaia' dlernaia sotnia,« Pravda (Moscow), Octo~r 22, 1918.
IT) Practically the entire first page o f Pravda (Moscow), November 10, 1918 wu devoted
to repotu about Germany; see also Krasnaia Gauta. November 10, 1918; Pravda (Petro-
grad), November 10, 1918.

403
 has proclaimed the socialist republic.• !') This was true enough. but what the
poople were not told was that Liebknedlt's words were merely a gesture
designed to push the government to the left.
The Soviet leaders and the people were overcome with delight. Lenin's face
»shone joyously, as it had on May 1, 1917«. These were among ,.the happiest
days in Ilich's life.:.") M. Philips Price, an English journalist, recalls having
been at a session of the Sixth Soviet Congress when, at twO o'clock in the
morning, Radek announced that the ,.German fleet at Kiel had hoisted the Red
flag ... I don't think I shall ever forget the scene which followed. Every dele-
gate rose and yelled. The roar of cheers lasted for ten minutes.« The next day
was declared a public holiday and that evening there were -great public meet-
ings, at which the speakers referred confidently to the social revolution which
had already begun in Europe, and which foreshadowed the end of the isolation
of the Russian Soviet Republic.Ol IO ) According to Radek, in the factories there
was »such enthusiasm as ... [he] had never seen«. He addressed crowds of
workers, warning them that the German revolution would impose great obliga-
tions on Russia, for the people in Germany were hungry and the Soviet regime
would have to send help. ,.1 could not find a single person who was indifferent
or weary. ,We shall go hungry, but we will help our German brothers.' This
exclamation of mine was unanimously picked up by the masses of workers. «")
There were, of course, widespread disorders in Germany, soviets were being
formed and, indeed, a revolution was in progress, but it is clear that the Bolshe-
viks were laboring under a grave misapprehension: They assumed that the
Spartacists and Independents, whom they considered their compatriots, had
the upper hand.
Although outwardly he gave every appearance of relief and delight, Lenin
harbored certain misgivings even at this early date. There seems to have been
a conflict in his mind between Marxist dogma and political realism. Theory
told him that Germany was ready for a socialist revolution and that having
undergone such a transformation she would align herself with the only other
proletarian state, Russia. His political sense, however, told him that a social
upheaval in Germany might actually increase the dangers for the revolution
in Russia, which was always the most pressing concern for him. Even before
the revolution, in early October, 1918 he had expressed the fear that the collapse
of ,.German imperialism« would result in a »growth in the impudence, brutality,
reactionary determination and aggressive attempts on the part of Anglo-French
imperialism«.ft) Early in November he privately admitted suspecting ,.that the

II) .. K sobytiiam v Germanii,. K,amaja Gauta, November 12, 19111.

") N. K. Krupskaia, Vospominanjia 0 Ltnine (Moscow, 1957), 395.
aD) M. Philips Price, My Reminisctncts of tht Russjan Revolution (London, 1921 ), 348- 349.
U) K. Kadek, . Noiabr, _ K,asnaia Nov, No. 10 (1926), 141-142.
U) L enin, Soc:hineniia, vol. XXIII, 215-216.

404
social revolution in Cen tral Europe is developing tOO slowly to provide us with
any assistance« against military attack.") And when word reached him of the
November disorders he voiced his greatest apprehension: That Germany might
capitulate to the Entente and join in a crusade against Russia. To gain a clearer
picture of what was happening in Germany, Radek tried to establish direct
contact with Haase and Liebkne<:ht on the Hughes teletype, but neither one
could be reached.'·) On November 12, Chicherin, Commissar for Foreign
Affairs, finally made contact with Oscar Cohn, a leader of the U.S.P.D., and
the information he received reflected the uncertainty of the situation in Ger-
many.
Chicherin raised some pointed questions: He wanted to know what kind of
agreement had been concluded between the Independents and the Majority
Socialists, whether a Constituent Assembly or a Congress of Soviets would be
convened. what the status of the Reichstag was, whether the new government
was prepared to pursue a policy of nationalization without compensation, and
who would be appointed to head the Departments of Foreign Affairs, Defense,
Navy, Treasury and Internal Affairs...We are now very interested in one special
question - will several of our colleagues be granted free passage to Berlin? We
should like to delegate Comrade Zinoviev and several others to Berlin. _N )
Finally, Chicherin informed Cohn that as an expression of solidarity two
trainloads of grain had been prepared and were ready to he sent to Germany
to aid the . revolutionary German workers- . For the rest, the Commissar did
not try to disguise his anxiety: .. In general, the present moment is very critical
and the tempo of developments in each separate country can tum out to be
decisive for success .. .- The major source of confusion in Russia seems to have
been the lack of clarity on the role of the Independents, whom the Communists
considered very friendly to their cause, if not quite as reliable as the SpartacislS.
Cohn's reply was equivocal. H e assured Chicherin that power was in the hands
of the soviets and that the new government, composed of Majority Socialists
and Independents, intended to form a German Socialist Republic. But then he
pointed out that the question of the convocation of a constituent assembly had
been postponed pending a consolidation of the revolution, which meant that
the new authorities had not necessarily opted for a soviet system of govern-
ment. The economic program also had not yet been worked out in detail; nor
had a deci sion been reached on the appointments to the various ministries.
Cohn thanked the Commissar for the offer of the grain, but he appeared non-

U) Pricc, (Jp. cit., 345.

:14) Radck. »Noiabr._ 141.
U) Ioffe had been expdlcd on November 5 for engaging in revolutionary propaganda.
GUnter Rosenfeld, an East German histo rian, briefly toudtes on the convcrsation between
Chidterin and Cohn, but neglect, to men tion Chicherin's desire to send Zinovicv to Berlin.
Sec G. Rosenfeld, SowjttrMpltmd Mnd DCM tsrhland 1917-1922 (Berl in, 1960), 149-1 50.

405
committal: .1 will immediately inform the government about your generous
and fraternal offer. Fraternal solidarity is the first precondition, and also the
most potent means, for the victory of the revolution of the Russian and German
people.« He also promised to look into the question of reestablishing diplomatic
relations with Russia and of permitting Ioffe to return to Germany as Russian
envoy. One bit of news must have been particularly disturbing to Chicherin:
That Liebknem.t had refused to join the revolutionary government. l I) This was
a sure sign that the leaders in Germany had refused to follow the Russian
model of 1917, which was in fact the reason for Liebknecht's unwillingness to
participate.
Chicherin's urgent request to send Zinoviev, one of the most ardent and skilful
Bolshevik agitators, to Berlin must have been a severe jolt to the Majority
Socialists, who were determined to prevent a revolution along Russian Lines
and who certainly were not eager for Russian intervention in German affairs.
They were even more disturbed 11) when they learned that already on November
11 the Soviets had beamed a radio broadcast to the Workers', Soldiers' and
Sailors' Soviets in Germany expressing regret about the designation as Chancellor
of Ebert, awho for four years had supported William and the capitalists«. The
broadcast called upon the German people to dismiss all the aScheidemanner«
from governmental posts, for together with the aErzbergers« they would betray
them to the capitalists. It also suggested that the masses not give up their arms,
but, instead, awith weapons in their hands seize power everywhere and form a
Workers', Soldiers' and Sailors' Government with Liebknedlt at the head«.
Finally, the Russians promised food: There was plenty of grain for both Russia
and Germany in the Ukraine, in the Don and Kuban regions. It was imperative
to prevent the White Generals Denikin, Krasnov and Skoropadski from appro·
priating the supplies. The German soviets ought to order the German troops in
the Ukraine to attack athese bands« from the north and within a few weeks
the counter·revolutionaries could be defeated; . then there will be bread for
yoU.«M) The Soviet leaders, in their anxiety to break out of isolation, seemed
to be committing precisely those blunders that were bound to gain them addi·
tional enemies.
The uncertainty and apprehension about developments in Germany that these
various moves betokened were confirmed by additional reports in the press.

-) . Razgovor po priamomu ptovodu mezhdu narod nym kommissarom Chicherinym (Mos-

kva) i deputatom Oskarom Koo (Berlin),« 1%'(I~stii. (Moscow), November 1), 1918.
11) See the discussions of the German ubinct in The Political l1Utit~tio"s of the Gm"a"
R",ol~tio" 1918-1919, e<!s. C. B. Burdidt and R. H. Lun (New York, Washington, Lon-
don, 1966), 70, 72, hereafter cited as Th~ Political 11Utit~tio"s.
M) Reported in Dit Fr~ih~it .' Berli"~r Or,a" dtr Unabhii",i,rn So%iaIJtmohatisch~" Parui
Dt Htschlands. November 19, 1918.

406
The Bolsheviks acknowledged that they had little precise information about
the course of the revolution and warned that it would be some time before
the outcome would be dear. They admitted that a coalition government had
been set up by the Majority Socialists and the Independents, but it seemed
obvious to them that Ebert had decided on that arrangement not be<:ause he
fa vored adoption of the USPD's program but only because he felt it necessary
to give the appearance of having mass support. Such a government, however,
would simply demonstrate to the German people how a -democratic govern~
mente acts during the last skirmishes between the proletariat and the bour-
geoisie. _Liebknecht will be the teacher who will interpret these well-known
lessons to the masses .• -) Radek hesitated to give credence to the report that
a coalition government had been formed; but if it really existed he had no doubt
that it would last only for a few weeks"') He was right in his prediction, but
wrong in presuming that the new regime would be dominated by Spartacists.
On November 12 the Soviet Government issued a statement indicating that
it considered it necessary -to maintain maximum caution in the assessment of
the revolutionary movement that was taking place in Germany«."} Within
two days the mood of enthusiasm that had gripped so many people at the first
news of unrest in Germany had been tempered, though not replaced, by Lenin's
attitude of watchful waiting.
What really seems to have persuaded the Bolsheviks that the revolution in
Central Europe had taken a wrong turn was the German Government's
reje<:tion of Russia's offer of grain. It is not dear exactly when the Germans
decided to refuse, but the official statement sent by Haase on November 17
did not appear in hvtstiia until the 19th. Haase expressed his government's
deep appreciation for Russia's readiness to make the sacrifice; this would nOt,
however, be necessary, as President Wilson had promised to send supplies into
Germany. Haase also indicated that the question of the renewal of diplomatic
relations would be taken up by the government very soon. The refusal of the
grain should not have surprised the Soviet leaders. After all, they could hardly
have expected a government whose downfall they had publicly called for to
rush into close relations with them. Moreover, it must have been obvious to
them that too intimate an association with Rus.sia would only have worsened
the conditions of peace imposed upon Germany by the Entente. U)

-) _Gospodin Sheideman pod seniu krasnogo tnameni,. PrafJJa (MoJtow). November 12,
1918.
") K. Radek, . Revol iuuiia v Germanii:a,. hfJtstu.. (Moscow). November 12, 1918.
, .) . V sovete narodnykh komissarov,. PrafJJa (Mosco",), November 12, 1918.
'') There is no doubt th:at this was a rul fur of the German Government. The nOtes of the
German cabinet meeting of November 18 cont:ain the following statement: .Continuation
of discussion on Germany's relations with the Soviet Republic. Haase favor. postponing
Forut ttung Seite 408

~07
But henceforth Soviet wrath knew no bounds, Radek exclaimed: -For the
second time, as on August 4: J udas Iscariot has committed perfidy. «U) On
November 19 Iurii Steklov, editor of the Moscow lzvesr;ia, speculated that
Germany might secretly have concluded a treaty with the Entente against
Russia. He considered their refusal of grain not only a crime but a terrible
blunder. For only through an alliance with Russia could Germany safeguard
the republic. Once the Entente had crushed Russia, it would turn against
the new German regime.") By November 23 Steklov was convinced that
- Wilson has promised to give grain to the starving population of Germany
on the condition that the Gennan revolution remain the protector of bourgeois
,order' «.") Another writer asserted that -By refusing the grain that was being
sent by Russia as an expression of fraternal help in order to please Wilson, the
German social·traitors have pinned their hopes on the favor of Anglo·American
imperialism«.") Not only Ebert but even H aase, a member of the party the
Bolsheviks a few months earlier had called . our comrades«, was now accused
of pursuing counter·revolutionary policies for nothing more than a piece of
bread.")
On November 21 the German authorities made public a decision that seemed
to the Bolsheviks to confirm their suspicions: The Government announced that
it would be - undesirable for the moment« to renew diplomatic contact with
Russia. To the Communists it was now a matter of - full clarity« that the
Independents, too, were lackeys of imperialism bent on preventing a genuine
revolution.·) Radek denounced them for never having urged the people to
wage war against capitalism: »they only complained like old women and
contributed nothing to the revolution that broke out in November, 1918 and
triumphed.« In addition, he censured them for agreeing to the retention of
members of the middle class in high positions and for their failure to press for

Fnrtset:tung von Seite "07

any definite action. Reporu rrom the emh,usies in The H ague, Berne, and Stockholm arc
presented. According to these reports, the Entente is wi11ing to meet the present bourgeois
socialist republic halfway in the matter of peace terms and food supplies, but only as long
as the government adheres to its present composition under Ebert's leadership. The Entente
would, however, intervene with all iu might to forestall the rise of Bolshevism. If Joffe,
for one, were co return, that alone would suffice to alte r the prospC<:U of peace.• See The
Poiiti(,d Institutions, 70.
tI) Radek, .Noiabr,- 142.
4') Iu. Steklov, . Mezhdun.arodnaia solidarnost,. /zvtJtiia (Mo~ow), November 17, 1918;
lu. Steklov, _Bole:tn i lekarstvo,. Ibid., November 19, 1918.
41) Iu. Steklov, . Revoliutsiia razvivaeuia,« iZfJtstiia (Moscow), November 23, 1918. See
Footnote "2 .
..) .Germanskaia rcvoliutsiia i ru"kii Khleb,« Pravda (Moscow), November 19. 1918.
U) K. Radek, ~Kontr·revoliuuionnaia politika Gaase i Eberta,« /zvtJtiia (Moscow), Novem·
ber 20, 1918.
61) . Polnaia iasnoSl,. Pravda (Moscow). November 21,1918.

i08
the introduction of socialist measures and close relations with Russia. U ) All
hopes that the Bolsheviks had had that a coalition government would somehow
turn out to be -socialist « in their sense of the term were fully dissipated. They
were more convinced than ever that only Liebknecht could save the day and
then only through a second revolution.")
In speculating on the furore course of the German revolution, the Bolsheviks
now evolved a doctrinal innovation, without, however, conceding that
they were doing so. With the growing disappointment in events in Central
Europe, the Russian leaders increasingly came to argue that the Soviet system
was, in all its essentials, the model for every country aspiring to a proletarian
order. Hitherto, of course, it had been generally assumed by Marxists that the
advanced countries would be the pathfinders in the construction of socialism.
True, late in 1917 Lenin had asserted that a republic of soviets was a higher
form of democracy than the _customary bou rgeois republic with a constiroent
assembly«, but he did not then elaborate this theme into a universal imperative.sl )

In November, 1918, however, Radek claimed that the Soviet example was the
only correct one for all countries. He was disputing Kautsky and other leaders
of German socialism who held that in countries where the proletariat constituted
a majority there would be no need for civil war or terror: a constituent assembly
would vote to establish socialism. Radek argued the contrary: -The Soviet
system, Soviet power - this is not the product of Russia's ba&.wardness - this
is a new form of constructing socialism created by history - a form that has
even deeper roots in the West than in Russia. « The last phrase was clearly
designed to salve the conscience of Marxist purists.
Radek considered Kautsky's view mistaken because it seemed inconceivable to
him that the ruling classes would ever surrender their wealth or social and
economic privileges without a struggle. He also contended that no revolution
in history had ever developed in such a way that at its beginning the majority
of the people had understood what policies its interests demanded. True. a
revolution is always staged by a class, constituting the bulk of the population,
that can no longer develop and live under prevailing social and political
conditions. But only a small section of this class realizes what it must do to
push the revolution forward, and then it draws the majority along with it.
In conformity with Lenin's elitist views, Radek asserted that -The dictatorship
of the vanguard of the class breaks and smashes all barriers, emancipates the
class composing the majority of the population and only as a result of the

it) Arnold Stroman (Radck), Dit Dt,mdu Rtflol.tion odt, tr<lll, 1ch<lll, wtmr (Moscow, No·
vtmbcr, 1918).
6&) _Krakh shcidemanovskoi politiki,_ Pratlda (Moscow), November 26, 1918.
tI) Lenin, Somintniia, vol. XXII, 131-134.

409
conflict, only after the resistance of the minority interested in the old order
has been broken, can the new ruling class renounce dictatorial measures, i.e.,
violence«.
Moreover, Radek believed that ,.democracy, a constituent assembly, parliamen-
tarism .. could not serve as the institutional framework for the creation of a
socialist order. His reasoning was odd, and more than a bit syndicalistic. He
held that the members of bourgeois parliaments were not equipped by training
or interest to supervise the building of railways and power stations, an activity
he identified with the establishment of socialism. They were elected to the
legislature because the people had confidence in them as human beings and in
their general political outlook. In fact, in the imperialist era parliaments served
as mere ,.umbrellas ... The really important work was done by commissions of
expens drawn from the bureaucracy and bourgeoisie. Thus, those in Germany
who had come out in suppon of a constituent assembly were actually advocating
the continuing domination of fin ance capital. But a society determined to build
socialism could not permit such veiled exercise of power. It would have to
eliminate the .. parliamentary talking shop .. as the country's "center of gravity.
and replace it with a "workers' collective. consisting of workers and technicians,
that is, the soviet as he conceived of it.")
Two months after Radek had expounded these views, at a time when the
prospects for a Communist victory in Germany seemed even bleaker, Bukharin
elaborated on his comrade's thesis. He denounced those who considered Bolshe-
vism a type of ,. Asiatic socialismoc and argued that the establishment of social-
ism in the economically advanced countries would require even more violence
than in Russia. Germany, it seemed to him, was a classic example of a country
which would have to undergo an ,.intense civil war" because it lacked those
.. intermediate .. social groups between capitalists and proletariat who, in back-
ward countries, tended to moderate the class struggle. Even the intellectuals,
who in Russia had created a genuine movement of protest, were in the main
tied to finance capital. Hence, the .. only correct tactic ist the ,Asiatic' tactic of
the Communist Party .. ,A)
By now, of course. Lenin also set forth this position and it became a guiding
principle for Russian CommunistS. In his Letter to the Workers 0/ Europe and
America of January 21, 1919 he maintained that ..The entire course of
development of the German revolution and especially of the struggle of the
,Spartacists', i.e. the genuine and only representatives of the proletariat, against
the alliance of the treacherous scoundrels, the Scheidemanns and Sudekums,

II) K. Radek. ,.Sovety i udlredillr.a .,. Germanii•• IZfltstiu, (Moscow). November 29. 1918 ;
see also Kh. G. Rakovskii, ,.Dilr.tatura prolttariata i germanskaia rtvoliutsiia,. /ZtotJtijA
(Moscow), Dectmber 11, 1918.
A) N. Bukharin, »Grnhdanskaia voina v Evropt,. PrA",dA (Moscow). January 15, 1919.

410
 with the bourgeoisie - all this clearly shows how history has fonnulated the
question with respect to Germany: .Soviet Power' or a bourgeois parliament.
regardless of the mask (such as .National' or .Constituent' Assembly) under
which it may appear.«")
In keeping with these notions. by late November. 1918 the Russian Bolsheviks
were beginning to apply a sole criterion in assessing the progress of the German
revolution: To what extent were the Spartacists (organized as the German
Communist Party on the last day of the year) in a position to direct the couese
of events in the country? From the very outset the Russian leadership had had no
faith in the Majority Socialists. By the cnd of November the Independents,
too, had been relegated to the rubbish heap of history. Only the Spartacists.
a minority within the working class and an even smaller minority within the
country as a whole. were trusted to work for true socialism. The analogy
between the positions of the Spartacisu in 1918 and the Bolsheviks in 1917
(though the latter had commanded greater support within the proletariat than
the former) was obvious. It seemed as though the Communist cause could not
anywhere gain the support of the majority of the population. Hence the
emphasis on elitism, class struggle and violence even in industrialized states.
where the Bolsheviks had previously thought it possible to establish socialism
peacefully through recourse to the ballot.
From the Bolshevik point of view the news from Germany continued to be bad.
but this did not seem to discourage the commentators in Moscow and Petrograd.
'They interpreted each defeat of the Communists in the light of similar defeats
suffered by the Russian Communists in 1917. And just as a year earlier each
defeat had had within it the seeds of victory, so the setbacks in Germany could
be relied upon to lead to triumph. Steklov did not doubt. early in December.
that -The development of the German revolution is taking place in accordance
with the inexorable laws of history.« It seemed to him that the -inevitable
response to the provocative actions of the counter-revolution« would be a
-decisive offensive« by the proletariat against the bourgeois order. -The German
KornilovJhchina will have as its epilogue the German October.« As he wrote,
Germany was experiencing her -July Days«, and as had happened in Russia
in those days the government was making it increasingly easy for the generals
to come out into the open and organize a counter-revolutionary movement. But
the masses were responding by becoming more militant. _Thus, rhe
situation is clarifying itself. The great spirit of history is working indefatigably.
Revolutionary Germany is moving at full steam towards its October.«")

N) Lenin, Srxhintnii4, vol. XXIII, 496.

M) Iu. Steklov, :oNa vsclr.h parakh k g~tman5komu oktiabriu,_ iz'fJutjj" (MOISCow). December
10, 1918; for a similar piece of rhetoric see A. Joffe, _Germanskaia Kerenshchina,« lzfJtJtjj"
(Moscow). December 17, 1918.

411
Although they may have considered the ,.German October- inevitable, the
Bolsheviks did not take any chances. When the executive committee of the
first AU-German Congress of Workers' and Solders' Councils, to be held on
December 16, 1918, invited the Russians to send a delegation as guests, Moscow
accepted with alacrity and appointed several outstanding party men, including
Radek. But the entire group was stopped at the border and refused admission.
Radek, however, disguised himself as an Austrian prisoner of war and managed
to enter Germany.
Radek's various - and fascinating - activities in Germany during his stay of
one year need not be discussed here,") for while abroad Radek could hardly
influence the thinking of his comrades in Moscow because of the difficulty in
communicating with them. But his change of heart about the revolution in
Germany during his stay there is noteworthy. It would seem to suggest that
the exuberant optimism of the Russian Marxists was at least in some measure
a consequence of their ignorance of the situation.
As soon as he arrived in Berlin, towards the end of December, Radek visited
the office of Rote Fahne, where he met the most important Spartacist leaders.
He immediately questioned them on the strength of their movement. He was
told that they were only just beginning to gather their forces. ,.When the
revolution began, we did not have more than fifty people in Berlin .• A few
days later he attended the first congress of the German Communist Party and
was deeply impressed by the -youth, [and] inexperience of the party. The
link with the masses is very weak. The congress' attitude towards negotiations
with the Left Independents is ironical. I did not feel that a party was already
before me.• II ) Subsequent developments in January, 1919, the suppression of
the Spartacists and the murder of Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, only con-
firmed him in the conviction that German Communism was not yet ready to
attempt a seizure of power.
During the initial stages of the uprising the government demonstrated
such weakness that he thought it could have been overthrown, but the
insurgents in the streets had not been well-organized and had no leaders

M) They have already been thoroughly treated in several studie,. In !lny case, my main
concern is the attitude towards the German revolution of those Muxisu who lived in
Russia. See E. H. Cur, tbt BolJhttJi/r Rt'IJolution 1917- 192) (London, 1953). vol. III,
1~10t, 312-320; O-E. Sdluddekop£, _Karl Radck in Berlin: Ein Kapitel deuts<h-russi-
scher Beziehungen im Jahre 191 9,_ Au;'i" JHT Sozial,m;'ichte, II (1962), 87-166; S. Rotter,
SO'I}iet lind Comintem Polic, towllrd GeT"",n" 1919-192) (Unpublished dissertation,
Columbia University, 1954), p'lSfim.; W. Lerner, Kllrl &dc/r on World R",olution: A
StMd, in RttJoiutiontuy StrllUl' lind Tllttits (Unpublished dissertation, Columbia Univer-
sity, 1961 ), 132-140.
IT) Radek, _Noiab r,. 149, 152.

412
 competent in the art of insurrection. The masses dissipated their strength by
occupying buildings that had no strategic importance and were completely
crushed within a few days by military units. In the wake of these events Radek
felt that the only rational course for the Communists was to gather together the
nucleus of the party, reestablish connections and try to discover how their
comrades had been killed.")
Within another three weeks Radek himself was imprisoned and during the
following year he conducted his famous conversations with German army
officers, statesmen, and journalists from whom he gained a clearer picture of
the internal situation in Germany. His doubts about the imminence of a revolu-
tion increased as he came to realize that the Communists simply did not have
the masses behind them and that the bourgeoisie was far stronger than he had
suspected. In September, 1919 he not only argued that the .. struggle for the
proletarian dictatorship .. in Germany would be a long one, but claimed that
Russian Communists had .. always envisioned .. a more protracted conflict in
the West than in Russia, a statement that is not even accurate for Radek's own
predictions of a year earlier.")
By the time he returned to Russia in January, 1920 he had come to the conclu-
sion that instead of basing her policy on an early Communist triumph, Russia
ought to develop closer relations with bourgeois Germany.") His experience in
Germany also inspired him with bitterness towards the Social Democrats and
respect for the conservative elements, both of which, as we shaH see, led him to
some peculiar judgments about the proper tactics of German Communism.
Within Russia, however, the Communists continued to exude optimism. They
interpreted the suppression of the disorders late in December as another tem-
porary defeat. The general situation, they stressed, was one of great instability:
The bourgeoisie and their .. agents«, the Social Democrats, were no longer strong
enough to hold on to power and although the workers still did not possess quite
enough strength to take it into their hands, they could prevent the government
from consolidating its position. Admittedly, large numbers of proletarians had
fallen into a mood of inertia, but this state of affairs was bound to end very
soon, as it had in Russia in 1917.11 )
The Bolsheviks were not even visibly shaken when they learned of the defeat
of the Spartacists in January, 1919. At first, they confessed that they had very
little information about the street battles and simply hoped for the best.l I) On

'I) Ibid., 152-154.

P) See Radek'J Imer of Marm 20, 1919 in A. Paquet, Dtr Gtist dtr lbmisthtn RNlo/.. tio1l
(Munich, 1920), VII-Xl, Arnold Suuthan (Radtk), Die EntwiJel ..1Ig dtr J, .. tschtn RNlG-
l .. ti01l "TId die A .. /,,,bm dtr kommNniJtisthen P"rtti (Stuttgart, September, 1(19), 12-13.
H) Rouer, op. cit., 70, 83.
II) lu. Steklov, _Neu$toichivoe ravllovesie,« bvtslU" (Moscow), December 29, 1918.
II) .. Nonia skhvaaa,« PrlwJ" (Moscow), January 10, 1919.

413
January 15 the author of the lead article in Pravda admitted that the insurrec-
tion had probably been crushed in Berlin, bu t in his view that did not neces-
sarily signify defeat of the entire action. Developments in the provinces could
still turn the tide, for .Berlin is not the decisive center of the working class
movement.« But then he backtracked and acknowledged that the -first wave«
of the uprising most likely had been put down and speculated on the reasons
for the failure.
The author of this analysis blamed the defeat on faulty judgment and the use
of improper tactics: The revolutionary workers had launched the attack before
the entire working class had been gripped by . revolutionary consciousness ..
and before they had agreed on the tactics to be followed. Word had reached
Moscow that Liebknecht, Luxemburg and Paul Levi, the three most important
Spartacist leaders, had opposed the uprising and instead had favored participa-
tion in the elections to the constituent assembly. The writer also criticized the
insurgents, as Radek did, for opening the attack by seizing newspapers instead
of storming the real centers of power. Badly organized, poorly led, the uprising
was doomed to fail. A )
The news of the final defeat of the insurrection and of the cruel massacre of
the two Spartacist leaders quite naturally evoked a strong reaction in Moscow.
The Russian Communists held the .butchers .. Friedrich Ebert, Scheidemann and
Gustav Noske directly responsible for the outrage and vowed revenge. More
than ever they were convinced that the struggle for power .can only take the
form of a civil war." .Only by means of an anned struggle by the masses - and
unfortunately by means of a red terror - can the German proletariat carve its
way to power.« Recent events had demonstrated that class antagonisms were
tOO sharp for any other course.N )
The Bolsheviks were convinced that the next round in the armed conflict
would not be long delayed. They based their expectations on more than
abstract faith in the militancy of the proletariat. They pointed to the
deterioration in the economy, which they were sure would further radicalize
the masses. 65 ) They were also persuaded that the political situation was becom-
ing intolerable. The real victor of the January uprising, they claimed, was not
Scheidemann, but Hindenburg. Up to now the bourgeoisie, still frightened by
the working class, had supported the Social Democrats. With the defeat of
the proletariat, however, Scheidemann had become superfluous. He had spilled
.rivers of blood - the bourgeoisie needs seas [of blood]. .. It would therefore
move towards a restoration of the monarchy and hand over power to the

U) .Osuzhdennyi palam,.. Pravda (Mo,cow), January 15, 1919.

14) .Srnysl sobytii,« Pravda (MOlCOW), January 19, 1919.
~) .Tigr upivaetsia kroviu,« Pr4vda (Moscow), February 8, 1919.

414
generals, who in reality already exercised it. But when faced with such a
brazen triumph of counter-revolution the masses would finally abandon the
Social Democrats .• The more open the dictatorship of the military, the clearer
the servile infirmity of the Social Democrats, the more powerful proletarian
communism will become. A crisis is thus inevitable, as it was in the past. But
now the fighters for the revolution will suffer neither from divisions nor from
illusions. And if in January the workers could not topple the government of
Scheidemann and Ebert, in the not very distant future they will completely
overturn both the military dictatorship and its institutional screen .....)
The suppression of the January uprising marked the end of the initial phase
of the German revolution. During the first three months it had become clear
that the Social Democrats at the head of the government were determined
not to follow the Russian example and that the German Communists were
too weak to seize power. For the Communists in Russia this two-fold develop-
ment was profoundly disappointing but, dogmatic in their adherence to what
they considered the only correct Marxist analysis of world events and desperate
for help from abroad, they held on to their optimistic prognoses. Although the
Bolsheviks generally cannot be accused of inflexibility, on the question of
Germany most of them exhibited a remarkable inability to change their theory
to fit the facts. It would appear that for too long they had been nurtured on
the view that Germany, more than any other country, was ripe for the prole-
tarian revolution.

III
The outbreak of the German revolution proved to be yet another source of
controversy among the Mensheviks. Throughout 1918 the right and left had
taken opposing positions on the Soviet regime: Both were critical, but whereas
the left, the dominant group led by Martov, considered the new order basically
progressive, the right, led by Potresov, denounced it as counter-revolutionary
and refused to support it. As we have seen, the two groups had agreed in 1918
that a socialist revolution in Germany was unlikely. The right maintained this
position after November, 1918. The left, however, came to believe that it had
been mistaken in its views on world revolution and this realization had a
subtle, though significant, bearing on the thinking of the Majority Mensheviks
throughout 1919.
For a year the Majority Mensheviks had condemned the Bolsheviks for their
"utopian" attempts to introduce Communism in a backward society and for
the terror used against the other socialist movements. Still, the political behavior
of the Majority Mensheviks might best be described as that of a loyal opposition;

" ) .Sheideman i Gindenburg, .. Prllvall (Moscow), January 26, 1919.

415
for after the foreign intervention in 1918 they offered their services to the
government, fully convinced that the interventionists were determined to
destroy all the political and social gains made in Russia since March, 1917.
The only type of intervention these Mensheviks were prepared to tolerate was
a .. comradely intervention- by the socialist international designed to exert
pressure on the Bolsheviks to bring about an end to .. anarchy« and terror in
Russia.
The German revolution seemed to open up the possibility for just such an
intervention. The Majority Mensheviks therefore followed the news from Ger-
many with ~a vid attention ... Martov was fearful, at the outset, that because
Germany's economy had collapsed and the country possessed both a large con-
scripted army and a sizeable number of politically immature people, Bolshevism
might score successes there, tOO.17) But these apprehensions soon gave way to
satisfaction at the turn of events in Central Europe.
On November 26, 1918 the Majority Mensheviks issued a proclamation in which
they expressed their joy that JOin the midst of the orgies of imperialist reaction
there has burst forth in the West the first peal of revolutionary thunder ... !he
proletariat has seized political power on the ruins of imperialism and is prepar-
ing to proceed to the task of social reconstruction. We are not alone ..... ) The
last sentence is particularly significant. It implied that the Majority Mensheviks
assumed that the leaders of the German revolution were basically in agreement
with their conception of socialism and would therefore help them to resist the
distortions of the Communists. The Mensheviks also expected the German
brethren to offer their services and skill in the economic reconstruction of
Russia, thus counteracting the Bolsheviks' hopeless .. utopianism « in economic
affairs,ll)
The decisive importance that the Majority Mensheviks attached to the German
revolution is demonstrated with special force by the final point made in the
proclamation: .. We appeal to the proletariat of the entire world with the request
that in defending the vanguard of the world revolution, - the young German
proletarian state, they do not forget also to defend its rearguard. its deep
rear - the backward agrarian countries gripped by a revolutionary fire, and
most of all revolutionary Russia which has crushed tsarism.«70) Perhaps out of
fear that the German socialists' revolutionary fervor might not be strong enough
to inspire them to a defense of revolutionary regimes in distant lands, the
Mensheviks emphasized that it was also a matter of plain self-interest for the

U) Martov to Stein, October 25, 1918, Nicolaevsky Collection, Hoover Institution on War,
Revolution, and Peace.
II) .. Vozzvanie menmevikov,.. Izvestiia (MOiCOW), November 26,1918.
It) Ibid.
1t) Ibid. The italic, are mine.

416
Germans to do so. If the Entente Powers succeeded in turning Russia, Poland,
the Balkans and Hungary into their -economic and political vassals, ,, it would
be that much easier for them to strangle even those advanced countries in which
the proletariat had come to power.f!)
Although the Majority Mensheviks, like the Bolsheviks, were overjoyed at
the revolutionary outbreak in Germany, the proclamation is striking in that
it reveals a basic disagreement on the meaning the twO groups attached to the
event. The Bolsheviks, as we have noted, were prepared to hail the German
upheaval only insofar as it followed the pattern they had established. The
Majority Mensheviks, however, believed that the hegemony of the world revo-
lutionary movement had now passed to Germany, as is clearly indicated by
their statement that the German proletarian state constituted the vanguard of
the socialist movement.
The same point was made, with even greater sharpness, by Martov in a private
communication of December 5,1918: -We now see the focus of the revolution
not in Moscow, but in Berlin." He added that -Germany is today the heart of
the proletarian world revolution that will lead the backward nations out of
the blind alley into which they were driven by the revolution resulting from
the catastrophe of the war.«") It seemed as though the German revolution
might make it possible for the Majority Mensheviks to extricate themselves
from a dilemma. They yearned for a socialist transformation of Russia, but
because of the excesses of the Bolsheviks they had not been able to lend whole-
hearted support to the regime. Now they assumed that with leadership of the
world revolution again passing to the Germans, the policies of the Bolsheviks
would be modified.'l) This appears to have been one point Martov had in mind
when, at the All-Russian Conference of the Mensheviks on December 28, 1918,
he introduced a resolution noting the - necessity of cooperation between the
Russian and German revolutions.",,) And if the Germans did exercise the
desired influence upon the Russian Communists, the implication was that the
Majority Mensheviks would then find it possible unreservedly to participate
in the building of socialism in Russia.
The sympathies of the Mensheviks were unmistakably with the Independents,

71) Ibid. For the Majority Menshevik,' position on the German revolution see also Parfiinot
Scwtlhc:hlUlie R.s.-D.R.P. 27 Ddt. 191B g. -111m". /9/9 (Moscow, 1919), 11-13.
n ) Ju. Martov. _Ein Brief an die dtuts<hen GenolScn._ De,. Sozi#list, IV (1918). 12, hereafter
cited u _Ein Brief".
11) lowe this interpretation to Mr. Boris t. Nitolat'flky. a leading Menshevik who was in
RUlSia at that time. Convenations with Mr. Nicolaevsky at the Hoover Institution on
War. Revolution, and Peace during July and August 1965.
Tt) Gaztta Pechatlli!tcw. December 30. 1918.

~17
with whose policies they declared their solidarity.f.) Ennanskii rebuked the Bol-
sheviks for denouncing the Independent leaders Kautsky and Ledebour as social
traitors, claiming that the name-calling and criticism levelled against the U.S.P.D.
signified a failure to appreciate the difficulties of the German revolution, which
had not come about in the way Marum had expected. It bad not resulted from
a protracted class conflict but rather from the collapse of Gennan imperialism.
Foreign countries - he named France and the United States - were poised to
intervene in her affairs to prevent the emergence of a socialist regime ... It is as
though history has forcibly foisted upon the Gennan proletariat the weapon
of socialist revolution at that moment when it seems to be least prepared for a
socialist revolution. There has taken place an historical ,miscarriage.· .. The dria
of Ermanskii's speech, which was not fully reported in the Bolshevik press,
seems to have been that a revolution encountering such obstacles deserved
understanding sympathy, not repudiation, from Russian Marum.")
Much as they welcomed the German revolution, the Majority Mensheviks were
not free from misgivings. In the letter already cited, Martov confessed that
although his access to information about Germany was inadequate, he had
received rather disturbing reports. He was puzzled by the retention in the
government of individuals who had belonged to the previous Reichstag major-
ity. Might they not undermine the policies of the new government? He was
especially distressed that Solf, a former Foreign Minister, and Erzberger, a
prominent member of the Catholic Center Party, still played important roles
in the government; they reminded him of Tereshchenko, who had been first
Finance and then Foreign Minister under Kerensky, and Martov feared that
their actions would only aid the Bolshevik cause.
Anomer source of apprehension was the German Government's refusal to
permit the Bolshevik. Rakovsky passage through Germany: this not only
compromised German socialism, but was exploited by the Communists for
their own purposes ... Every [diplomatic] note by Solf insults and enrages,
particularly because of its tone, not only the Bolsheviks but us. " He could
understand that the Germans, under pressure from the Entente, could not
establish diplomatic relations with Russia ... But it is intolerable and damaging
to the highest degree for a socialist government to make a virtue out of necessity
and to adopt the same tone towards Bolshevik Russia that Wilson uses,"
Martov was also disappointed by the behavior of the soldiers' soviets in occu-
pied territories in the East. Again, he could appreciate their unwillingness to
collaborate with local Bolsheviks, But the tendency of the officials of the
soldiers' soviets to deal with Russian representatives in a purely official manner

15) Ibid.
15) .. Mensheviki i .oiu:tnyi imperiali:tm... lzvtstiia (Mosco .... ). December, 10, 1918.

418
and to refuse every attempt of .our comrades .. to establish fraternal relations
led him to suspect that .a deep bond has been maintained between those soldiers'
soviets and the higher commanders... He was astonished that the government
and the socialist party had not yet sent their commissars to aU major areas in
the occupied territories.
Finally, Martov had misgivings about the German Government's cautious
attitude towards initiating socialist measures. He found some truth in Hilfer-
ding's con tention that the construction of socialism was not possible duringa civil
war and that no basic social changes shou ld be introduced until the convocation
of a national assembly. But it could also he argued, suggested M:mov, that only
decisiveness and genuinely revolutionary policies free from .adventurism ..
could effectively prevent the outbreak of a civil war. He warned against
postponing the reconstruction of society for the purpose of gaining the collab-
oration of bourgeois democratic parties. Clearly, what haunted Martov was
that excessive timidity on the part of the German revolutionary leaders would
produce the same denouement as had been caused by la<k of militancy of the
Russian socialists in 1917.
Despite these reservations. Martov proclaimed his solidarity with the German
Independents and expressed the hope that it would soon be possible to establish
contact with them: • We await with impatience the moment when close spiritual
communication between the twO revolutionary nations will be fea sible ... ")
The Majority Mensheviks also differed with the Bolsheviks' evaluation of the
suppression of the January uprising in Germany. Although deeply shocked by
the murder of the Spartacist leaders, the Mensheviks criticized the insurgents
and dismissed the claim that a Communist seizure of power would occur in
the near future. Abramovich reproached the Russian Communists for judging
German developments in terms of »simplified schemes ... They had considered
the January events Germany's" July Days .. and consequently predicted that
the country would soon experience its . October... But Abramovich correctly
pointed out that /zvestiia and Pravda had already designated the disorders in
December as Germany's ,.July.- And if there could be more than one .July-.
,.does it follow from that that there must inevitably be at least one
,October'?! .. H)
Another Menshevik, V. Rudnev, claimed that the entire analogy between . July ..
and. January .. was specious because in July, 1917 the Bolsheviks in Russia were
far from fully crushed. Lenin could go underground knowing that his organiza-
tion would continue to function. In Berlin, however, the government had been

") Martov, .Eio Brief._ 10-12 .

.,., R. Abramovic:h, .Oc:htredDaia zadac:ha ICrmanu.0lo rabocbtgo klaua, .. Vu,dll Vptr,JI.
No.1, January 22, 1'J19.

419
more brutal and the revolutionary leaders had been killed. A more accurate
analogy, it seemed to Rudnev, would be between the January events in Ger-
many and the December, 1905 occurence in Moscow, when the Bolshevik
insurgents were thoroughly and bloodily repressed. 19)
As methods of political analysis, the arguments from historical analogy are,
of course, of limited value. Conditions in different countries and periods vary
tOO much. Recognizing this, Abramovich preferred to analyze the social and
political conditions in Germany, which led him to even greater doubts about
an early victory by the Spartacists. It seemed to him a grave error to ignore
the fact that a ,.huge part. of the German proletariat still followed Scheidemann
and Ebert. The two leaders clearly had behind them the bulk of the advanced
workers belonging to the trade unions and proletarian organizations, most of
the socialist press and a majority of the parliamentary delegation and local
socialist clubs. All these groups, for twenry-five years subject to a highly
disciplined and organized party, were essentially conservative in thought and
action, given to making a fetish of .legality, order and discipline and at all
times prepared to enter into compromises ... Arrayed against that powerful estab-
lishment were the Spartacisu, whose support was principally derived from politi-
cally undisciplined segments of the population: elements from the proletarian
youth and workers and soldiers, who, never having passed through the party
school,were inclined toward spontaneous political activity. Abramovich dismissed
as highly unlikely the possibility that the masses might be swept along once the
revolutionary process had been set in motion by a minority, as had been the case
in Russia. Unlike Russia in 1917, Germany did not have a peasantry, consti-
tuting a majority of the population, determined at all costs to seize the land; nor
was the country still at war, and hence there was no huge army ready to be
swayed by revolutionary propaganda. Under these circumstances, the January
uprising could not have been anything other than a violent attempt by a small,
uninfluential and unorganized part of the proletariat against the majority of the
worki ng class and all other classes. ,.Such an attempt inevitably had to end in
defeat...
Abramovidl fea red that an immediate result of the disorders would be a swing
to the right by Scheidemann, who had had to lean on the bourgeoisie in order to
suppress the workers. Ultimately, however, there was every reason to hope
that the German proletariat would be able to assume power, hut by democratic
means, because of its numerical strength. The prerequisite was unification of the
various conflicting groups within the labor movement. The Spartacists and
Independents, working together, must try to gather around them the broad
masses of workers. -And this cannot be achieved by force through armed out~

19) V. Rudm:v (Ba:tarov), _lui iii dekabr,c M,Jl : nbmtdtfnii not.elmii Motrltsisukii zb.rnotf;
No. S (February 1. 1919), 158-161.

420
bursts, but only by means of systematic influence on the working class in the
course of the further development of political life, especially during the elec-
tions for a constituent assembly.c") These words were emoed by Dan, who
also indicated that the Mensheviks could not condone Scheidemann's behavior.
Within the working class, political struggles must not be waged with guns but
with -words, persuasion, example.cll) What the Majority Mensheviks were
advocating for Germany, in sum, was identical to their proposal for Russia:
A grand coalition of all socialists and an end to violence. These proposals were
as realistic for Germany as they had been and continued to be for Russia.
The Right Mensheviks felt none of the optimism about a world revolution that
inspired the Majority after November, 1918 ..') Claiming that their views were
the only ones consistent with Marxist teachings, the Rightists asserted that
under existing conditions a genuine socialist revolution was out of the question.
Their argument rested less on a detailed analysis of the political situation in
Central Europe than on certain doctrinal presuppositions. The intensification
of the class conflict, they pointed out, had not stemmed from the accepted
Marxist preconditions for the emergence of a socialist order: General impov-
erishment caused by capitalist overproduction and _over-developmentc of
productive forces. On the contrary, the productive capacities of the European
nations had been exhausted by the war. Under such conditions, only political
manges. the elimination of feudal vestiges, and the introduction of social
reforms were possible. Indeed, it seemed to them that the revolutions that
were taking place in Central Europe were political in nature and nothing
more. Even if it were granted that a socialist revolution was being consummated
in Germany, the Rightists were sure that it would soon be suppressed by the
capitalistic Entente Powers.

") Abramovid-!, op. eit.

el) F. Dan, .Bolshoe sobytiia i malenkie ogordleniia,c VJtgda Vp~rtd', No. I, January 22,
1919.
II) It should be noted that the Right Mensheviks were not of one mind on the meaning of
the revolution in Gcnnany. Pavel Borisovich Anlrod, then in the Welt, was far more
willing to concede the possibility of a socialist revolution and its generally - or u least
potentially - beneficial impact on world affairs than were the Reghtim in Russia. I have
not examined his views in depth becluse from 1'118 to 1920 he had very little contact with
the Mensheviks in Russia and he therefore hld no influence on the movement. Moreover,
he did not publish anything on German dlain at this time. He made the mOst extensive
statement on the revolution in Germany in a letter to G. Binstock, written on January 7
lnd 16, 1919. The letter is in the Nicolaevsky Collection, Hoover Institution on War,
Revolution, and Peace. In thu letter Axelrod indicated that he . cherished the greuest
Cl:pectuions from the Germln revolution, and, indeed, the immedilte future, the fate of
the European proletariat, depends on its further progress and result.c For the ren , he
confessed that he had tOO little information to come 10 lny firm conclusions. But he did
criticize the Spanacisu for adopting Leninist methods of struggle and the Majority
Socialim leading the government for not making more concessions to the working class.

421
Moreover, they pointed to the fact that in the victorious countries there were
no signs of any upheavals. This was to be explained by the fact that the nation-
alistic mood inspired in the masses by the military victories induced them to
enter into compromises with the capitalist classes, especially when the latter
were willing to allow the proletariat to share in the economic benefits resulting
from a successful war.
The Rightists contended that the major tasks confronting Europe, and partic-
ularly the vanquished states, were to heal the wounds of the war, to restore
the economies and to strengthen and develop the democratic institutions that
had only recently been established. Socialists could rest secure in the knowledge
that once capitalism was developed to its highest point the moment for socialist
reconstruction would arrive.
The Rightists' position on the likelihood of a socialist revolution in Central
Europe was at this time, as before, a direct reflection of their views on the
proper policies to be followed within Russia. Appalled by the Bolshevik
dictatorship and the attempt to introduce socialism in a backward country,
they were unwilling even to entertain the possibility that a socialist Europe
would aid Russia to attain a genuine socialist transformation. In their view,
the most pressing task for Russia was to reestablish contact with Europe in
order to lifl: the country out of her moral and economic decay. ,.When there is
a fatal, stifling smell of carbon in a room, one opens doors and breaks windows.
Once Peter cut a window to Europe and in that way restored Russia's health.
That is exactly what should be done now.« It was necessary, regardless of the
cost, to permit the inflow of the capitalist spirit, to encourage trade, to break
down the wall between Russia and the world economy and to end all socialist
experiments. In short, the Rightists called for a return to conditions as they
had existed prior to November, 1917 with the exceptions that relations between
employers and laborers were to be more humane and the landlords' land was
to be distributed to the peasants.lS ) From the standpoint of Marxist doctrine,
the Rightists' argument had the virtue of being in harmony with theory, but
given the political situation in Russia their program can hardly be said to have
been distinguished by a sense of realism.

IV
The duality marking the Bolsheviks' attitude toward developments in Germany
became more pronounced during 1919. On the one hand, they continued to
proclaim the imminence of a Communist seizure of power; on the other, they

U) This txposition of the Righlisu' views i, based on a seventeen page typescript at the 115H.
It is entitled .Gruppa partiinykh rabotnikov menshevikoy - oboronuev RSDRP, Dekabr
1918 gada - Ianvar 1919 goda: praekt osnovnykh polozhenii platformy«.

422
warned that it might take longer to achieve the ultimate victory than had
been anticipated. In part, their ambivalence was no doubt a response to the
uncertainty and fluidity of the German political situation. Disorders broke out
sporadically even after the suppression of the January uprising, and the crises
created by the Treaty of Versailles and the revolution in Bavaria suggested deep
instability in Germany.
A sound evaluation of all these events was aU the more difficult because, as
has already been indicated, direct contact by Russians with Germany was
limited. To be sure, the Bolsheviks apparently had some success in forging
links with radica l circles in Central Europe. According to the Gennan Ministry
of the Interior, the infiltration of Russians into Germany had become a very
serious problem. In March, 1919 the Ministry asserted that of 52,000 new
Russian emigres in Berlin 34,000 were Jews and -Among the latter there are
supposed to be a very large number of politically thoroughly unreliable ele~
ments.c Some Jews, it was asserted, actually had official papers from
Communist authorities.") Still, however effective these underground penetra-
tions by Russians may have been, they could not substitute for on the spot
political observation by trained party men. The commentators had to base
their estimates primarily on newspaper reports, into the interpretation of which
they poured a healthy dose of Marxist intuition.
Thus, the meeting of the National Assembly early in February, 1919, prompted
Steklov to predict that the institution would -voluntarily or involuntarilyc
prepare the ground for a restoration of the monarchy. Such a turn of events
would signify that Germany was well on the way towards its Kornilovshchina,
a definite sign of progress from the Bolshevik standpoint. For General Korni-
lov's attempt to seize power in 1917 took place twO months after the . July
Days« and was, in fact, very important in making possible the Bolshevik coup
d'etat.
The impressive: vote that the bourgeois and Social Democratic parties had
received in the election to the Assembly, however, was difficult to explain.
According to Steklov, the results did not mean that a majority of the people
genuinely supported these parties. -It only shows that the mechanism of uni-
versal suffrage under conditions of private property and even more so under
a military dictatorship is a distorted mirror that does not reflect but misrep-
resents the real correlation of forces.c The working class had voted for the
-agents of the counter-revolution« (i.e. the Social Democrats) only because the
genuine revolutionaries (Spartacists) had not participated in the election. But
however many elections were held and however mum was accomplished by

M) Reimsamt des Innern, Allttn bttrtBtnd Urnstllrzbtstrtbungm irn Inl.nd, vol. I. Alum
Nr. Il JI8, OD deposit at the Deuume Zmtralarmiv. Potsdam, East Germany.

423
the Assembly, the country faced only these alternatives: A monarchical regime
or a dictatorship of the proletariat, and as soon as the masses began to see
through the -social traitors., an increasing number would opt for the latter
course.N ) Here Steklov contradicted his earlier claim in the same article that
in reality the masses were already behind the Communists.
The Bolsheviks also interpreted the impending acceptance by Germany of the
Treaty of Versailles as an event that would further radicalize the masses. When
Russia submitted to an equally harsh settlement a year earlier, the people could
reconcile themselves to the resulting deprivations because they knew that they
were helping to spread the flame of world revolution. They could be confident
that the authors of the treaty imposed on them would soon be swept from power.
Inevitably, the German workers would come to realize that their country could
be saved if it, too, dedicated itself to the world revolution. For such a move
would surely lead to internal upheavals in the Entente nations. Thus, Pravda
dogmatically stated: -The Versailles Peace must serve as a stimulus for the
triumph of the German proletarian revolution .... )
As the defeats of their comrades in Germany multiplied, the Russians responded
with both a growth in militancy as well as a promise of greater leniency at
home if the revolution succeeded abroad. Pravda warned that in view of the
stubborn resistance of the German bourgeoisie, the workers would -crush them
onl y through piles of bodies, they will drown them in s~as of blood ... the
German revolution will assume forms immeasurably more ,Asiatic' than it has
so far managed to do. «IT) Shortly after this pronouncement, Kalinin, President
of the Soviet Republic, in a statement welcoming the establishment of a soviet
republic in Bavaria, declared that as the number of states friendly to Russia
increased, there would _inevitablyoc follow an _abatement of our internal
disordersoc and _an easing of the burden of the precautionary measuresoc inside
Russia.·) Kalinin could only have had in mind the terror, and thus his comment
foreshadows the Stalinist link, made in the 1930's, between terror at home and
Russia's encirclement by capitalist states.
In contrast to the publicists, by the spring of 1919 some of the Soviet leaders
discussed the German situation with striking sobriety. Both Lenin and Trotsky
seem to have reached the conclusion that the triumph of Communism in Ger·
many was not to be expected in the near future. Both dismissed as unacceptable

M) Iu. Steklov, _Germanskaia uduedilka,. izvtstiia (Moscow), February 9, 1919; S~ also

I u. Steklov, _S falshivoi borodoi,. iz"'tstiia (Moscow), February 16, 1919 ; . Kipiashdtii
kotel,. PrafJda (Moscow), February 22, 1919.
tI) .Vykhod odin,. Pra",Ja (Moscow), May 13, 1919; see also V. Kcn.hcntsev, _Ultimatum,.
/Z fJtJtiia (Moscow), May 11, 1919; _Kommunizm v Germanii,. ibid, J uly 9, 1919.
IT) . 5 bnvaria _ 5 Marta 1919 ge, Pra",Ja (Moscow), Mardt 11, 1919.
Ml _Mncnie predscdatdia V.Ts.t .K.Tov. M.I. Kalinina,. iz",wj;a (Moscow), April 9, 1919.

424
the analogy between Russia in 1917 and Germany in 1918/ 19 and, instead,
suggested, as had the Mensheviks, that Germany was no further advanced than
Russia had been in 1905.")
Trotsky developed this thesis at greatest length. Although he granted the simi-
larities between 1917 and 1918/ 19, his aim was to show that the differences
were perhaps even more significant. In October, 1918 Germany had experienced
her ,.March Revolution.: but the January episode was not quite comparable to
Russia's" July Days.:. For the July defeat in Russia had led to a concentration
of proletarian forces and an organized preparation for the decisive struggle,
while in Germany the January defeat had produced a diffusion of proletarian
forces with uncoordinated strikes and uprisings in various parts of the country.

,.The German revolution has assumed a protracted, creeping character and at

first glance this might arouse the fear that the ruling scoundrels will succeed
in exhausting it by means of an innumerable series of limited skirmishes ..: But
Trotsky believed that the German movement needed this sort of experience in
order to build up the type of ,.centralized revolutionary party.: that hat evolved
in Russia in the course of a dozen years. Shortly after Bloody Sunday in 1905,
the Russian masses also engaged in a ,.chaotic strike movement« and in a series
of spontaneous, bloody encounters with the government, and there were people
at that time who thought that the proletariat was needlessly expending its
energies. But those conflicts taught the Russian movement to mobilize its forces
and to create an effective organization; those struggles prepared the way for
the ,.great October strike.: and for the establishment of the first soviets.
The efforts of the German party, however, were during that early period
directed at an adjustment to the capitalist order. _Once again history reveals
to the world one of its dialectical contradictions: Precisely because the German
proletariat in the past epodl devoted a large part of its energy to the creation
of a self-contained organizational structure and its party and trade union
apparatus occupied the dominant position in the Second International, in the
new epoch, at the moment of transition to an open revolutionary struggle for
power, it turned out to be organizationally extremely defenseless ..: The present
outbreaks were the only means by which the German movement would gain
the necessary experience to liberate itself from the ,.yoke.: of the old party
and to form a new organization capable of seizing power. The process was,
admittedly, tortuous and painful. --But one cannot choose. This is the only way
in which it is possible to develop the class educacion of the German proletariat
for the ultimate victory... There was, therefore, no reason for despair about

81) For Lenin's comparison between Germany m 1918/ 19 and RU5sia m 1905 see Lenin,
SowiTl.(Tliia, vol. XXIV, 320.

425
the course of the German revolution,") Zinoviev took up the same theme and
transformed it into a general law of history: .The stronger the official Social
Democracy in a given country, so much the worse is the cause of the proletariat.
This can now be considered a fully established axiom ..,")
Although Trotsky did not admit it in public. he had actually come to believe
that instead of counting on a successful revolution in Central Europe, Russia
ought to concentrate her efforts in the East. On August 5, 1919 he wrote a
secret memorandum on the international situation in which he said that the
Soviet leadership had to acknowledge that in Europe Communism had suffered
decisive defeats . •After its first period of storm and stress the Communist move-
ment in Germany has been driven in upon itself, perhaps for many long months.
The defeat of Soviet Hungary wilt, in all probability, delay the workers' revo-
lution in the smaller countries: Bulgaria, Poland, Galicia, Roumania, and the
Balkans. For how long will this period persist? This, of course, it is impossible
to say in advance, but it may persist for one year, for tWO, or for five years."
Asia, he thought, offered far better prospects for the next phase of the prole·
tarian revolution and he suggested the possibility of the .preparation of a
military thrust against India to aid the Indian revolution, .• " It seemed to
him that the .intemational situation is shaping up in such a way that the
road to Paris and London lies via the towns of Afghanistan, the Punjab and
Bengal.-")
Trotsky'S memorandum coincided with a general intensification of Soviet
diplomatic activity in Asia and an apparent slackening of interest in German
affairs.'-) Although there were occasional references to sharpening class conflicts
in Central Europe,") on the whole there was relatively little discussion of
Germany in the Soviet press during the last half of 1919 and the early part
of 1920. To a considerable extent, this may probabl y be ascribed to Soviet pre·
occupation with the civil war, then in a critical stage, but most likely it also
had to do with a growing realization that the revolutionary tide had receded.

") L. Trouky, Sochinenii,J (Moscow, Leningrad, 1926), vol. XIII, 97-101. This article originally
appeared under the tide of .Polsumaia revoliutsiia.,. in Pravd.. (Moscow), April 23, 1919.
tI) G. Zinoviev, .Souial-demokratiia kak orudie reaktsii •• KOmmHII;stiam!ej; /nteT1latsiollal.
No.2 (June 1, 1919), Column 18t.
I., The Trotsky Papers 1917-1922, edited and annotated J. M. Meijer (London, The Hague,
Paris, 1964), vol. I, 621-627.
N) See Louis Fischer, The SOt;im in World AJj..irJ (London, New York, 1930), vol. I,
284-289; See also Chapter 26 in E. H. Carr, op. cit., vol. III .
..) . K germanskim rabodlim,_ /ZVtJIu.. (petrograd), September 13, 1919; .V Germanii,.
Pravda (Petrogtad), December", 1919; see also Lenin's assertion on November 22, 1919
in his Sochin eniia, vol. XXIV, 5.. 5.

426
 V
The lagging Bolshevik interest in Germany was abruptly reawakened by the
Kapp putsch of March 13, 1920. This was an attempt by two rightists, General
Walther von Liittwitz, and an obscure East Prussian official, Wolfgang Kapp,
to overthrow the republic. When the government troops refused to fight the
insurgents, President Ebert and the cabinet fled first to Dresden and then to
Stuttgart. Only a remarkably effective general strike, called by the Majority
Socialist leader of the trade unions, Carl Legien, prevented the putsch from
succeeding,") Within four days the coup collapsed.
The German Communist Party at first refused to come to the aid of the republic.
Whether Germany was ruled by a military dictatorship or Social Democracy
was, according to the Communists, a matter of complete indifference to the
proletariat. If anything, a reactionary regime was preferable because it clarified
conditions in the country and was therefore less confusing than a republican
order. Within a day, however, as it became clear that the working class enthu-
siastically favored the general strike, the KPD changed its line to one of half-
hearted support. But it warned the workers that only a soviet regime would
safeguard their interests.") Immediately after the putsch collapsed the Socialists
asked the KPD how it would look upon a purely Social Democratic govern-
ment. The KPD answered that it would act as a .Ioyal opposition«, that is to
say, it would not attempt to overthrow such a government by force"')
E. H. Carr has claimed that .Events during the Kapp putsdt had moved
too rapidly for a pronouncement from Comintern or from any authority in
Moscow«.M) Carr may be right in the sense that there was no time for German
Communists to get advice from Moscow. But Bolshevik commentators in Russia
did analyze the putsch while it was in progress and the conclusions they reached
were identical to those of the KPD on the first day of the general strike.
In the lead article of March 15 lzvestiia declared that .What had to happen
has finally happened .. ,") a theme that was echoed in every discussion of the
putsch for the next four days. All the Bolshevik commentators celebrated the
coup as a magnificent example of how history was repeating itself and proving
the correctness of Bolshevik policies. Even the words used by different authors
were almost identica1. 1°O)

fa) On the Kapp putsdt see Halperin. op. cit., 168-188.

H) O. K. Fledttheim, Dit Kommunistischt Parui Dtlltschlands in dtr Wtim.art r Rtpublik
(Offenbam a. M., 1948). 62~3.
11) Sum a Social Democratic government was not actudly formed; a new coalition govern-
ment including socialists and members of bourgeois parties assumed power.
") Carr, op. cit., vol. Ill, 174.
M) ~18 Brumera v Gennanii,« lZfJtstjj" (Petrograd). Marm 15, 1920.
I") ~protiv diktatury kapitala-diktatura rabodlikb maul,. PrafJda (Moscow), March 17,
Fortsttzung Seite 428

427
The article in /zvestiia claimed that for some time it had been dear that Ger-
many had to choose either a military dictatorship or a proletarian revolution.
That the former choice had been made was entirely the responsibility of the
,.Scheidemanner", who had conceived it their task to lynch the leaders of the
proletariat, imprison the advanced elements of the working class, destroy the
proletarian organizations and close down the worker's press. In carrying out
these policies the Social Democrats had had to lean on, and therefore preserve,
the old military establishment, whose aim had always been the overthrow
of the republic. III)
The authors of all the articles on the putsch were persuaded that the ,.Kornilov
Days .. had arrived in Germany, a view now accepted by Lenin.'") The analogies
with 1905 were forgotten and the revolution was once again proclaimed to
be imminent. /zvestiia urged the German workers not to "raise a finger .. in
response to Ebert's call for a general strike. "To the working class both the
constitutional government and a dictatorship by the generals are only different
political forms of economic autocracy by the bourgeoisie ... And just as Skoro-
padski's rule in the Ukraine and Kolchak's in Siberia had served as a ,.hard,
bloody, but efficacious« school of Communist education for the masses, so the
assumption of power by the generals in Germany would bring closer the moment
of the Communist victory. 1_)
Pravda called upon the German workers to greet the appeal for a general strike
with "disrespectfullaughter«. The proletariat must nOt allow itself to be crushed
for Noske. In any case, Pravda charged that Kapp had actually arranged the
whole affai r with Ebert, Noske and Bauer.'lM) Ioffe, by now a prominent Soviet
diplomat, confidently predicted that .. There is no doubt that not one German
worker will stand up to sacrifice his life for Noske and Scheidemann«. He
admitted that the proletariat might still be too weak to take power, but the
putsch would prove to be an enormous help. "History once again," he said,
-is extremely cruel, winily, mockingly cruel! The ,5<heidemanner' decapitated
the proletarian revolution in order to strengthen their domination, but the
crucified Liebknccht and Luxemburg have risen from the grave against them,
and lirpitz and company have driven the aspen picket into Scheidemann's

Foruttzung von Seite 427

1920; A. l offe, ..Kornilovshchina v Germanii,_ P'IlWil (Pctrograd), March 16, 1920;
l u. Steklov, . Germ<lnskie bonaparty,.. Izwstiill (MoS(ow), March 16, 1920; . Germamkaia
Kolch<lkovshchina u vlani,« p,<tw<t (MoS(ow), Mardi. 16, 1920.
lei) .18 Brumera v Germanii,_ op. tit.
"1) Lenin, Sochincnii<t. vol. XXV, 93.
"') . 18 Brumera v Gcrmanii,.. op. dt.
11M) . Protiv diktatury kapitala-diktatura rabodtikh mau!, .. op. cit.

428
and Noske's grave only in order to prepare the way for the victory of the
resurrected Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg.«'OS)
Radek, who was in Russia again, agreed with these interpretations. But he
introduced a new consideration which suggests that the joy in Moscow over
the putsch was not simply a consequence of the conviction that it marked the
prelude to a proletarian seizure of power in Germany. In Radek's mind the
coup also had important foreign political implications for Russia. He contended
that .. in all probability .. the decisive factor inspiring the right to stage the coup
was its sense of national pride. Kapp and his collaborators were embittered
by the government's agreement to put Hindenburg, 1irpitz and Ludendorff on
trial as war criminals. Moreover, the generals vehemently opposed the Treaty
of Versailles and would dedicate themselves to avenge the shameful peace
imposed on Germany. Tension between Germany and France was therefore
bound to increase, making impossible any united campaign by the two countries
against Russia. In addition, France would need Poland as a restraining force
against Germany and would therefore not incite that country into waging war
against Russia. For Soviet Russia these developments would, quite obviously,
signify .. an enormous improvement in her international position«. Radek there-
fore proposed that the Soviet's attitude towards the new military regime
in Germany be identical to that whim Russia had towards all counter-revo-
lutionary governments in Europe: .. As long as it exists we are ready to live
with it in peace, but we should expect its speedy demise.«lO' ) Radek's analysis,
of course, conformed with the conviction he had formed as a result of his
conversations with German conservatives during his Berlin imprisonment:
That a right wing regime in Germany would not necessarily preclude friendly
relations between Berlin and Moscow.
When the news reached Russia that the workers had moved against the generals
after all, Soviet commentators interpreted that, too, as a victory for Com-
munism. They maintained that ,.The sharp workers' uprisings are directed not
only against Liittwitz and Kapp, but also against Noske and Scheidemann «.
The Social Democrats had the -naivete .. to suppose that their regime was being
defended, but actually the masses had moved against the generals -only in
order to install ... in their place the dictatorship of the proletariat ...l t l ) Even
as late as March 22, izvestiia assured its readers in an article entitled ,.On the
Eve of the Victory of Communism- that the workers were preventing the
return of Ebert to his post as President. '08) And when the Bolsheviks finally
admitted that Ebert had returned to power, they dismissed the entire episode

101) roffe, op. rit.

I") K. Radek. _Yoennyi perevorot v Germanii,« izvt!stiia (Moscow), Manh 16, 1920.
III) _Na udar udarom!,. Izfltstiia (Petrograd), March 17, 1920.
108) .Nakanune pobedy kommunizma ... Izvtstiia (Petrograd), Marm 22, 1920.

429
as a ,.quarrel by Slavs among themselves.} a family squabble. All the forces
of the old regime had again united against the ,.Communist danger •. But there
was still hope: Communists throughout Germany were continuing the struggle
and ,.From Liittwitz's adventure the working class emerges stronger than it
was before •. It should not be forgotten, /zvestiia pointed out, that Kornilov's
attempted putsch in 1917 did not lead to an immediate triumph of the soviets,
but only made impossible the further existence of the Kerensky government.
The workers of Germany were now arming themselves for the next round, as
did the Russian proletariat in August, 1917. 10' )
By March 30 the euphoria in Moscow and Petrograd had subsided considerably.
Steklov, who two weeks earlier had unhesitatingly referred to the Kapp putsch
as Germany's Kornilovshchina, now pushed the revolutionary calendar back
by two whole months: Germany, he said, had only experienced her ,.July
Days-, which, according to Communist writers, was at least the third time
she had done so. Steklov explained that though the bourgeoisie was bankrupt
as a ruling force, the working class was not yet ready to seize power.
A long crisis could be expected; indeed, ,.a protracted, agonizing struggle«
had already begun. llO ) Pravda, however, either had a deficient knowl-
edge of the history of 1917 or an incorrigible inclination towards optimism:
It continued to compare the putsch to the Kornilov Affair and to predict that
the situation in Germany would develop much as it had in Russia in September
and October of 1917. 111 )
Actually, all the Bolshevik commentators on the Kapp putsch had displayed a
surprising lapse of memory. During the Kornilov Affair in 1917 the Bolsheviks
had not hesitated for a moment to come out in support of the Provisional
Government and had. in fact, been among the most ardent and effective
opponents of the coup. Much as they despised Kerensky's regime, they still
considered it a lesser evil than rule by Kornilov. And since the Bolsheviks had
really played a leading role in the struggle against Kornilov, it was relatively
easy for them later to pose as the only true defenders of the Revolution and
to discredit the government for its ,.weakness. in defending itself. Their whole
approam was succinctly described by Trotsky: ,. Use Kerensky as a gunrest to
shoot Kornilov. Afterward we will settle with Kerensky.«11I)
But in 1920, and very oRen thereafler, the Bolsheviks rejected the ,.tactic

1") ,.Vse blizhe k pobede,. /zfltstijll (petrograd), Mann. 23, 1920; ,.Borba prodolzhaeni;L,.
ibid., Mardl 24. 1920; .Proletariat idet k pobede,« ibid., Mardl 26, 1920.
III) Iu. Steklov, ,.Germanskii iul,. /z'lItstiia (Moscow). Mum 30, 1920.
111) ,.N;Lhnune, Pravdll (Petrograd), April I, 1920; .V. Germallii,c ibid., Apri.l 15, 1920.
111) L. Trotsky, My Lilt: .An AtUmpt at lin .Autobiography (New York, 1930), 318; For a
dis.cussion of the Kornilov Affair see A. Ascher, _The Komilov Affair, _The Russilln
Rwinu XII (1953),235-252.

~30
of the lesser evilc. They had come to believe that all their opponents
were .equally evil .. and that the path of political moderation was no
longer viable. In their view a choice had to be made between a proletarian
dictatorship and a counter-revolutionary dictatorship. Of course, whenever
this turned out to be the only choice, it was largely as a result of the activities
of the Bolsheviks themselves. But in March, 1920 in Germany there was still
a middle force in the political spectrum that proved potent enough to disprove
the Russians' claim. The only plausible explanation for the Bolsheviks' refusal
to consider that force preferable to the rightistS and their failure to propose
a tactic during the Kapp episode similar to the one they had followed against
Kornilov, seems to be that their hatred of the Social Democrats had in the
meantime become so fierce that it had distorted their political judgment.
Within a few months the Bolsheviks themselves acknowledged that their tactics
had been mistaken. Kommunistich~skii Inumatsional published letters by three
German CommunistS (Paul Levi, Klara Zetkin and Ernst Meyer) and an article
by Radek, all of them critical of the policies of the KPD's Central Committee.
The editors of the journal declared that .. in the main« they agreed with the
point of view expressed in these pieces. For our purposes Radek's analysis is
the most directly relevant. In it he once again revealed his ideological agility,
for he completely reversed himself in his evaluation of the Kapp putsch.
He charged that the KPD had committed a series of .. completely unpardonable«
mistakes. Above all, the Party had not understood that the coalition govern-
ment, consisting of bourgeois and socialistS, weakened the Social Democrats
because in the eyes of the people they came to be identified with the capitalists.
Since the putsch had been an attempt to restore the Junkers and militarists to
power, its success would have made it possible for the socialists, despite all
their .past treachery«, to put on a .mask of opposition.« They could have posed
as a progressive force and thus deceived the masses anew ...Already from this
simple assessment of the situation it follows that the Communist Party had
an obligation to summon the proletariat to a struggle against Kapp and Lutt-
witt. This obligation was all the more obvious because the struggle against
Kapp andLtittwitz, if it had been waged energetically and mercilessly, could not
have ended in Eb~rt's and Noske's restoration to power. It would have entailed
a shift to the left in the correlation of forces, just as a victory of Kapp and
Liittwitz would have involved a shift to the right.« nl)
Radek attributed the KPD's errors to its great fear of promoting premature,

III) K. Radek, .KommunistimC$kaia partiia Germanii v dni kappovskoi avantiury, _ Komm,,·

niuidmltij lntt"umional II (1920), Columns 2087-20i9.

431
undisciplined, unorganized rebellions. For six months in 1919, while he was in
Germany, he had warned the party that the situation in Berlin was not ripe
for a proletarian seizure of power, that the capitalist system was still tOO
healthy and the masses tOO complacent. The KPD's Central Committee had
accepted his analysis but in the process had gone overboard and fallen into
a mood of quietism. »From the impossibility of seizing political power in Ger-
many (as had already been shown by the experiences in 1919) they concluded
in March, 1920 that it was impossible to do anything at all." This .. cretinism
of opposition to premature rebellion" was bound to lead to a »morass of
temporizing tactics. «Ll.)
Radek also took the KPD to task for its declaration of .loyal opposition«
immediately after the putsch. Before making any such commitment the German
Communists should have tried to prolong the struggle between the socialists
and the right in order to weaken both. Had they remained aloof, the Com-
munists could have discredited the Social Democrats by warning the proletariat
that Ebert and Smeidemann were engaged in .a game. designed to mislead
the people into believing that a genuine workers' government was being created.
In Radek's mind, moreover, the KPD had blundered in making its declaration
without first insisting that the government disarm the whites and wage a
vigorous campaign against the counter-revolutionaries. If, after the KPD had
made all these moves, the Social Democrats succeeded in forming a government,
the Communists should have offered .temporarily" to suspend active opposition
to the new regime, but even then only on two conditions: A promise by the
Social Democrats not to break up the soviets and to recognize them as institu-
tions which might, at a future date, serve as organs of political power capable
of forming a government.
Had the Social Democrats subsequently refused to honor these conditions, it
would have been possible for the Communists to settle accounts with them in
the soviets. Obviously recalling Bolshevik electoral successes in the major
Russian soviets after the Kornilov Affair, Radek asserted that the KPD, too,
could have secured majorities in the leading German soviets because the Social
Democrats' treacherous behavior would have lost them substantial support
among the people.''') In sum, Radek now maintained that the German Com-
munists should have employed a double-edged tactic: Vigorous opposition to
Kapp and an intensified political struggle against the socialists. This recom-
mendation bore a close resemblance to Lenin's tactics of September and October,
1917, but even Radek proposed it only after it was too late.

114) Ibid., 2090.

11') Ibid., 2093-209-4.

432
 VI
By mid-1919 the possibilities for the Mensheviks to publish newspapers or
pamphlets wefe so limited that it is extremely difficult to reconstruct their
views on the perspectives of the German revolution. I have. in fact. not been
able to discover any material by the Right Mensheviks for the period from
1919 to 1920. There is, however, enough documentation to suggest that as the
Majority Mensheviks grew less hostile to the Bolshevik regime they came to
doubt that the Western European movements would move towards socialism
in a way different from that of the Bolsheviks. In short, the Majority Menshe-
viks abandoned the view of the German proletariat as the vanguard of the
world revolution.
The mange in the Majority's thinking seems to have been the result of a slow
process of reassessing Bolshevism over a span of three years. From the very
beginning of the Soviet regime the Majority Mensheviks had felt that they were
confronted by an agonizing dilemma. They had serious misgivings about Lenin's
policies, but they feared even more that active opposition to the Bolsheviks would
aid the counter-revolutionaries, who in their view embraced anyone farther right
than the Social Revolutionaries. To the Mensheviks, the Leninist! were still
_bearers of the general interests of the revolution« and representatives of the
working class. Because of their class affiliation, it seemed possible and even
likely that they could be deterred from their misguided course. But the Majority
Mensheviks considered rule by a tsarist general totally unacceptable and beyond
all hope of redemption.
Hence, shortly after the coup in November, 1917 the Majority Mensheviks
strongly opposed military action against the Bolsheviks lest the defeated include
not only the usurpers of power, but, in Dan's words, the -Provisional Govern-
ment and the entire democracy« as well. Instead, these Mensheviks dedicated
themselves to opposition to the new regime by legal means but eschewed resort
to force. They attempted through involved negotiations to form a government
based on a coalition of all socialists.
When the Bolsheviks became lcx:ked in military struggle against the so-called
counter-revolutionaries and .. imperialist interventionists« the Majority attitude
seemed all the more justified. They then pledged _unqualified support« to the
regime and called upon their followers to join the Red Army and to help in
every other possible way. Surprisingly, Martov and his followers continued
to believe, even in 1919, that it might be possible to persuade the Communists
to create a genuine political alliance between peasants and proletariat which
would constitute a majority of the population. The urban workers were still
to exercise -hegemony« within that alliance, but not by means of force or
terror. It was part of the official Menshevik mythology that the workers would
be able to do $0 because of their .ideological-political superiorityoc and because,

433
as the organizers of the country's economy. they were the only ones capable
of fostering trade with Western states undergoing socialization. lII )
By the end of 1919 the most cogent consideration for the Majority Mensheviks
in reassessing the Bolshevik regime seems to have been that it had lasted and had
thus proved itself a historically necessary phase in the long road to socialism.
This kind of argument had always had a strong intellectual and emotional pull
for Marxists. As Martov put it, ~this dictatorship is a fact and its very duration
testifies that under the given correlation of social forces the revolution could
not have bypassed it. Moreover, having become a fact, this dictatorship, engen·
dered by the forces of the bourgeois revolution, develops under the banner of
socialism and in precisely this form appears on the international arena and
naturally becomes the center to which all revolutionary movements in all coun·
tries are attracted and which draws upon itself the hatred of all conservative
forces.«
In addition, Martov now found striking similarities between conditions in
Western countries and those in Russia in 1917: Economic exhaustion, a shortage
of workers in the production of consumer goods (workers were still in the
army), the prevalence in industry of workers who had not been indoctrinated
by socialists, a lack of common interest between soldiers of a disintegrating
army and the proletariat. liT) Drawing on these similarities with the Soviet past,
Martov further generalized the tendency of history necessarily to repeat itself:
.. In the class struggle entering the phase of civil war there inevitably comes a
moment when the vanguard of the revolutionary class, leaning on the conscious·
ness of the broad masses, whose interests it represents, is forced to realize state
power in the form of a dictatorship of the revolutionary minority. Only stupid
dogmatism could recoil from this perspective.«ILI) In other words, the Russian
experience would serve as the model for the West, precisely the reverse of
Martov's contention in 1918.
It should be noted, however, that the Majority Mensheviks considered their
conception of the dictatorship of the proletariat to be basically different from
that of the Bolsheviks because they viewed it as a brief .. intermediate phase-
in the .. world development« towards socialism. They urged the quickest possible
transformation of the dictatorship into an organ that would foster the .organ·
izcd political initiative and self·government of the entire revolutionary class
or revolutionary classes ... "-) Their slogan early in 1920 was: .. through soviets

lit) On the Majority'l general political outlook .5ee Sorsud4t1l'loltr4tiu, i Ttt'oiilluiu. (Odessa,
1920); OboTomr rn>oiilluii i souud-dt1l'loltrllejj (Sbomik) (n. p., 1920) ; Manoy 10 Axelrod,
January 23, 1920, Axdrod ArchiYe, A(S)3l, USH.
Hf) Ju. Manoy, _Oiktatura i dtmokratiia, .. ZII god (n. p., 1919), J5-J8.
III) Ju. Martov, _Koneu odnoi dvusmys!ennoni,. Sotsi41-dtmoltrlltiill j Tn>olilltJiill, op. cit., 49.
III) Ibid.; Martov, .. Diktatura i demokratiia,. op. cit., 37. Italicl are mine.

434
to democracy;'" thus, they did not identify the twO, as did the Bol sheviks.'")
More than likely, an additional fa ctor that led the Majority Mensheviks to
revise their attitude towards the soviet type of political order was their
realization that the German revolution was not going to have the beneficial
impact upon the Bolsheviks that they had hoped for in 1918. Indeed, to their
way of thinking the revolution in Central Europe had taken a whole series
of unexpected and unwelcome turns. Socialism had not been established and
the Central European movements had not succeeded in reviving the Inter·
national as a revolutionary force. Even the European economies had not been
restored to the level of productivity attained in 1914. Still, the Majority
Mensheviks believed that the cause of social transformation was not yet lost.
They assumed that the proletariat, whose class consciousness had been inten·
sified by the Russian and German Revolutions, would be strong enough to
prevent the emergence of a stable state capitalism. In view of the enormous
destruction wrought by the war, it was bound to become increasingly apparent
that only socialization of the means of production could revitalize the economies
of Europe.
From these premises the Majority Mensheviks arrived at a conclusion that was
new for them: • We believe ... that Europe has entered a period of transforma-
tion and see no reason to assume that this process will be organic, peaceful and
harmonious, i. e. on the basis of a reconciliation between the interested social
forces. On the contrary, we think that Europe is facing a fairly long period of
grandiose, embittered and constantly sharpening social conflicts and convul-
sions ... Abramovidt, the author of these words, added that the Mensheviks
were not subscribing to any Communist illusions, nor were they deceiving
themselves about the course of these struggles or overestimating the tempo of
the movement towards socialism. But they were fully persuaded that a revolu·
donary period had begun and they were categorically opposed to aU proposals
for an . organic .. realization of socialism and for the formation of a new IBurg·
/rieden .• UI )
The Mensheviks officially adopted this position in their resolution of Marchi
April, 1920 when they denied that the proletarian revolution in the West could
be staged by peaceful means »within the framework of state institutions of
bourgeois society ... They were now convinced that the »ruling capitalist minor-
ity, in control of the military power of the state, will resist the legal transfer
of state power into the hands of the working class. Therefore the readiness and
ability of the powerless majority forcefully to overthrow the minority holding

18) Manov to Axelrod, January 23, 1920, Axelrod An:hive, A(8)31. IISH.
In) Abramovich to F. Adler, January 31, 1920, on deposit at the Friedrich Adler An:hive.
library of the Austrian Socialist Pany, Vienna.

435
the reins of power is a necessary condition for the social revolution ... In an
obvious allusion to the Russian experience, however, they made it clear that
even if in the course of a revolution power were to fall into the hands of an
-active minority of the working class« and that minority were then to .. stray-
into the path of -economic utopianism and political terror,- the -revolutionary
Marxist social democracy .. should still -unconditionally support that minority-
against the counter-revolution. But they continued to insist that the proletarian
dictatorship be directed only against exploiters and not against elements within
the laboring class, as was the case in Russia.1I:t)
Although the Majority Mensheviks abandoned their view that in Germany
the proletarian revolution should not be staged by a minority resorting to
violence, at the time of the Kapp putsdt they reiterated the hope that if the
Independents should manage to stage a revolution - even if it resembled the
one made by the Bolsheviks - the Germans would be able to help save Russia
and Europe from the excesses of Bolshevism. Before he knew of the outcome
of the crisis, Martov wrote that he and his colleagues were in a -feverish mood-
because even a partial triumph in Germany of the -Marxist linee (1. e., Indepen-
dent line) .could still save Europe from a triumph of the Bolshevik rot in the
future course of the revolutionary period. 411ft) Martov seemed to trust that rule
by a minority (i . e. by the Independents) in Germany would be more civilized
than that in Russia: It would be a temporary affair devoid of the terror and
ruthless application of doctrine characteristic of the Bolshevik regime. The key
point that Martov and the Majority Mensheviks seem not to have grasped is
that the Bolshevik policies they found so distasteful were largely the result of
the fact that when Lenin seized power he had only a small minority of the
population behind him. And if a party representing a minority had assumed
power in Germany, it, tOO, would in all likelihood have had to adopt terroristic
methods in order to retain the reins of government.
Three months later, Martov was still hopeful about the German situation. He
thought that the bourgeois bloc including -Stresemann and Co.- would greedily
seize power, attempt to rule in a -monarmical manner without a monarmy.
and pursue extremist policies against the proletariat. -In this case the chances
for a development of the proletariat and a revolution would turn out to be
favorable.c It would induce the center of gravity within the Majority Party
(Scheidemann's) to move to the le,A: and the Independents to shift to the right,
making possible a unification of the working class ... I consider this path the

I") Sotsjlfl..Jemok,If,iiA j ,tf.loljl'uiu., op. cit., 27, J~Jt.

III) Manov to Stein, Mardt 26, 1920, Nicolaev$lr.y Collection, Hoover Inttitution on War,
Revolution, aDd Peace.

436
only one that can rectify the line of development of tne German revolution ...
Should the ~adventurous stream" of the reactionary movement gain the upper
hand and try to establish a more virulent counter-revolutionary regime, the
result would be a long civil war and a revival of Bolshevism to a degree far
more dangerous than ever before. lII ) Basically, Martov's analysis did not differ
from that of the Russian Communists: The worse the situation for the working
class, the greater the likelihood of a Bolshevik triumph.

VII
The Kapp putsm is a convenient point to close a study of Russian Marxism
and the German Revolution. In the first place, the putsch marked a decisive
moment in the history of the Weimar Republic. It demonstrated that t he
extreme right was as incapable of overthrowing the regime as the extreme left
had been. At least for the time being, the political forces of the broad center,
comprising the bourgeois democratic elements, the Center Party and the Major-
ity Socialists, were strong enough to maintain a modicum of stability. Second,
by the spring of 1920 it was quite clear that the Bolsheviks were the only
Marxists in Russia who could make their voices heard, and their voices were
becoming increasingly and monotonously monolithic. Not only had the Men-
sheviks been effectively muzzled, but as a result of government harrassment
and the stark reality of the durability of the Bolshevik regime, the Menshevik
organizations were in disarray. Moreover, within another year Manov and
Abramovidt were to go into exile in Western Europe and many of the other
most prominent ideologists and publicists were in prison. By 1922 another
group of Menshevik leaders fled to the West and it can be said that by that
time the movement in Russia was without its old - and most articulate - leader-
ship.
But the best reason for ending the study in 1920 is that by then the major
lines of interpretation of the German Revolution had been developed "nd did
not undergo any fundamental changes during the existence of the Weimar
Republic. Generally speaking, the record of Russian Marxists in assessing events
in Germany was not impressive. Although they al1 made predictions with a
certainty and abandon that might arouse the envy of political analysts,
the fact that nearly all the predictions turned out to be erroneous should be a
source of comfort to the more cautious and timid. Only the Right Mensheviks
consistently maintained that a socialist revolution in the traditional Marxist
sense was impossible, but they were a small group and even their reasoning
was tOO schematic.
The inability of most Russian Marxists accurately to perceive the course of

116) Marto.. 10 Siein, June 26, 1920, Nicolae'nlty Collection, Hoover Institution on War,
Revolution, and Peace.

437
events in Germany was, obviously, not the result of any lack of intelligence,
nor was it simply a consequence of ignorance of the actual state of affairs.
It must be emphasized that in its failure to conform to the Marxist prescription
the revolution in Germany placed the Russians in a dilemma. Claiming to be
purists in matters of theory, they either should have abandoned power or
explicitly and fundamentally modified their ideology, twO alternatives they
considered equally unacceptable. They tried to escape from this predicament
by reconciling their power political interests with their ideological commitment.
Not surprisingly, they accorded priority to the former. Thus, whenever they
passed judgment on events in Germany they were guided, first of all, by their
view of the kind of political development in Central Europe that would best
buttress the program they believed to be most appropriate for Russia. In other
words, desperate for help from abroad, the Russian Marxists were influenced
in their assessments far more by what they thought ought to happen than by
what actually transpired. At the same time, they formulated their judgments
in sum a way as to fit them into their rigid doctrinal conception of the historical
process. Superficially at least, this approam did not appear to entail a retreat
from orthodoxy. By the same token, however, it was not conducive to
dispassionate, distinterested and, above all, sound assessments of the situation
in Germany.
The Majority Mensheviks were as mum trapped by their predilections as the
Bolsheviks. As long as they played a major role in the Provisional Government
of 1917, these Mensheviks argued that vigorous pursuit of the policies they
advocated, especially continuation of the war, would stimulate the revolution
in Germany, whim they thought was a likely occurrence in the near future.
From November, 1917 until November, 1918, when they contended that the
Bolshevik regime was doomed to collapse, they denied the imminence of an
upheaval in Central Europe. Once the revolution did break out, they hailed
it but to a large extent because they saw in it the likelihood of a powerful
counterweight against Bolshevism. And when this expectation failed to mate-
rialize, they came to believe in Bolshevization as an inevitable phase through
whim even Western Europe would have to pass, though they still clung to the
hope that a successful revolution in Germany would help bring about a speedy
purge of the excesses of Communism. History did not fulfil any of their confi-
dent expectations; indeed, in their failure to comprehend that the historical
process was far more complex than their doctrines suggested may lie the
ultimate reason for the demise of Menshevism as a political movement in Russia.

The Bolsheviks, too, changed their line on Germany to fit their domestic program.
During the first weeks of the Revolution in 1917 they were not very far apart in
their assessment from the Menshevik Centrists. But as soon as Lenin returned
to Russia and persuaded his party to press for an overthrow of the Provisional

438
Government, the Bolsheviks claimed that Germany was on the verge of revo-
lution and could therefore be expected to provide enormous help to a socialist
regime. After seizing power, the Bolsheviks became all the more vehement in
predicting such a development. By then that prediction also served as a propa-
gandistic device to mobilize enthusiasm in Russia for the new order. To be sure,
there were always some responsible leaders among the Russian Communists who
cautioned against excessive optimism about Germany, but it is significant that
at every critical point, such as the Kapp putsch, caution was forgotten.
By early 1919 the Bolsheviks were moved to make their exaggerated claims
and predictions not only by their dogmatic approach to the analysis of historical
events and by their desire to inspire the people to greater sacrifices, but also
by their fierce hatred of the Social Democrats, a sentiment usually reserved
for former comrades in the Marxist movement accused of the most blatant
treason. In addition to thei r refusal to stage a "genuinec revolution, the Social
Democrats had spurned the -fraternalc help offered by the Bolsheviks. As a
consequence, the Russians came to lose faith in the German movement as a
pathfinder for international sociali sm and, instead, held up the Soviet experi-
ment as the model for all states aspiring to a socialist order. In a sense, Marxism
was now turned on its head : A backward nation led the way and the advanced,
industrialized countries were to follow. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that
the Bolsheviks' experience during the German Revolution in the years from
191 8 to 1920 deeply affected and molded their future thinking about
Germany. Even though it was relatively easy for Russian Communists to be-
come better acquainted with conditions in Germany during the 1920's their
judgments can hardly be said to have improved. Several times they g:we their
blessing to armed rebellions by Gennan Communists, all of which failed miser-
ably. And even in 1932-33 the Russians argued that the conflict between
Nazism and the democratic forces was of no concern to the proletariat and
that, in any case, a Nazi triumph would only speed the victory of Commu-
nism. nl ) They had learned amazingly little in the thirteen years since 1920.

til) See G. W. Millikan, .The Science of Soviet Politics: ,Pn.vda' on Hitler in 19)),c Fortign
AjJlliT$, XXXI (April, 195), 472-485.

439