Reihe Hochschulschriften
Band 9
Mario Kessler
On Anti-Semitism and Socialism
,
Selected Essays
,f"'í-
'l I
i Table of Contents
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Preface
I
Karl Marx: An Example of Anti-Semitism?
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Impressum
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Mario Kessler
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47
The Bund and the Labour and Socialist International
65
,,The Physical Extermination of the Jews": Leon Trotsky on Anti-Semitism and Zionism
79
Arthur Rosenberg: Heretic Between the Camps
91,
I ':
.1
.:
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The Russian Revolution and the Jewish Workers' Movement
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:
Selected EssaYs"
26-284-X
27
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,,On Anti-Semitism and Socialism'
ISBN 3-896
Friedrich Engels on Anti-Semitism
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trafo verlag dr. wolfgang weist, 2005 Finkenstraße 8, 1'2621 Berlin
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The Resistance of Small Socialist Groups Against German Fascism
1,1,7
The Soviet Style of Power: Some Notes on the SED
135
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Anti-Semitism Against a Non-Jew: The Case of Paul Merker,
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52-19 53
149
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Exile Experience in Scholarship and Politics i Re-immigration of Historians to East Germany
1,67
The Fall of the Berlin'Süall and the Radical Right in East Germany
183
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5
Can Marxist Historical Thought Survive?
References
The Author
1.95
Preface
205
207
This collection of twelve essay deals with problems of historical research on anti-Semitism and on the international socialist movement. It also includes a chapter on German refugee historians who returned io East Germany after 1945. The volume attempts primarily to investigate aspects of the changing relations between workers' emancipation and the strugglê against anti-Semitism from the time of the Communist '!Øall. This book, however, does not Manifesto to the fall of the Berlin contribute to the tremendous number of contemporary writings that celebrate the defeat of socialism, a Zeitgeist literature which still dom'lflestern countries. inates official culture and politics in the advanced Eight of the essays were originally written in English, while four were translated by colleagues, and I am greatly indebted to Dr. Axel FairSchulz, Mr. Ed Kovacs, and Mr. David Schrag for their help. Special thanks are due to Mr. Marcus Aurin for correcting the whole English text. This collection represents my ongoing attempt to continue a political tradition that has been largely ignored by both orthodox communists and orthodox anti-communists: i.e., an independent radical democratic view based on moral integrity and a spontaneous internationalism as an antipode to both nationalism and anti-Semitism. The uncompromising radical spirit of such communist 'heretic' intellectuals as Leon Trotsky and Arthur Rosenberg, for example, took shape within the context of the political struggles of the workers' movement. At the same time, the political errors committed by Trotsky and Rosenberg that 7
conrributed to the defeat of a more 'libertarian' variant of communism are also addressed in this volume. The defeat of alternative currents within the communist movement few privwas followed by the concenrrarion of power in the hands of a auileged members of the party bureaucracy that became increasingly of a state tonomous over time. This was accompanied by the expansion with absosecurity service that sought to replace voluntary submission lute obedience. Repressive measures were extended to those who reprecamsented the internationalist spirit of the past. The Soviet-initiated
Karl Marx: An Example of Anti-Semitism?
paigns against 'cosmopolitanism' affected Jews as well as non-Jewish
segre-immigrants from the west to a much larger extent than other ments of the population or party membership' quesCurrent political problems may have pushed some of these tions into the background. It is nevertheless helpful to place contemporary evenrs within a broader historical perspective. Sixty years after is on the organized annihilation of the Jews in Europe, anti-Semitism in the situation political the rise again in many parts of the world; the ever Middle East is unresolved; the number of refugees is greater than colThis emerge' to yet before; and viable socialist alternatives have problems' lection of essays does not claim to offet a solution for these begin should answers for Its aim, rather, is to point out that the search can that with reexamining the rich legacy of a workets' movement form finally be discussed on irs own terms, rather than in the distorted
of a repressive state
In the introduction to the new German edition of his early works, Herbert Marcuse wrote in 1,965, that all ,,wâs written prior to Auschwitz and is separated so deeply from the present. What used to be right has now not as much become wrong but dated."1 Referring to the early essay by Karl Marx'on the 'Jewish Question,' Isaac Deutscher noted a y.ear Iater that, To my mind, the tragic events of the Nazi era neither invalidate the ciassic
Marxist analysis of the Jewish question nor call for its revision. It goes without saying that classical Marxism made no allowance for anything like the Nazis' 'Final Solution', or for the grave complications of the problem
ideologY.
in the Stalinist and post-Stalinist period in the Soviet Union. Classical Marxism reckoned with a healthier and more normal development of our civilization in general, i.e. with a timeiy transformation of the capitalist
MythanksareduetothepublishersandeditorsofBerlinerDialog
Hefte, Discours social, Hwmaniora Publishers, International Politics, palgraue/st. Martin's Press, science ønd society, socialism and Democracy, and VSA.
into a socialist
society.2
Elsewhere, Deutscher wrote that even an undercurrent
Potsdam and Berlin, August 2005
Mario Kessler
'I 2
in early Marxist writings ,,there was
of certain hostility towards the Jews, not
as Jews,
Herbert Marcuse, Kultur und Gesellschaft l(Frankfurt-Main: Suhrkamp, 1965), p. 11. Deutscher, lsaac, ,,Who is a Jew? [1966]," ldem, The Non-Jewish Jew and OtherEssays (London: Merlin Press, 1981), p. 49.
9
but as a prominent and spectacular section undercurrent of
'Western
European bourgeoisie. "3 invectives against his opponents, Lassalle' Examples can be especially who were of Jewish background, found in Marx's correspondence, with his closest personal friend Engels, and less so in those arricles intended for publication. Friendly Indeed,
Marxt writings are full of
remarks about Jews' howeveÍ) ane rare' Not even the beginnings of Jewish Socialism are mentioned by Marx.
Marx as a ,,Jew" within the contest of opinions
All
these questions and issues have been treated
in an expansive
schol-
arly literature. In an early work Thomas Masaryk had noted Marx's with ,,anti-Semitism,,, afthough Marx was, in all likelihood, unfamiliar this concept.a The term 'anti-Semitism' was not introduced untll 1'879, a few years prior to Marx's death, by the German publicist \üilhelm Marr - at one time a left-winger himself.s ,Marx and the Jews' are heavily colored by the Most rrearments of authors' views toward Marxism.6 such approaches range from unreflective condemnation all the way to equally unreflective and uncritical justifications. One can dismiss, as too extreme' people such as Dagobert Runes, who saw in Marx's writings a ,,blood-drenched dream" of a Marx's ,,world without Jews."7 Similarly when Robert Misrahi reads essay Zur Judenfrage as a call for the annihilation of a people, it reveals less about Marx and more about Misrahi's own pathology.s
Nevertheless, Iess biased authors have also offered harsh critiques of Marx. Both chronologically and politically diverse writers (such as Camillo Bernerie, Maximilian Rubel10, Arnold Künzli11, Hans Lamm12,
or Léon Poliakovl3) have observed a certain Marxian anti-Semitism, that - according to the conventional explanation - is really a manifestation of Jewish self-hatred. Theodor Lessing, who coined the phrase, however, did not mention Marx within that context.la Marxists have also responded to the issue of Marx's anti-Semitism with a variety of approaches. Curiousl¡ the lost world of Soviet Marxism largely avoided the issue. Very rarely have genuine experts on Marx engaged this complex and potentially controversial subject matter. David Rjazanov argues, in his 1927 study on Marx and Engels (also published in English), that Marx delineated sharply between poor Jews, with whom he identified, and the wealthy representatives of the Finanziudentum or the Jewish financiers.15 In addition to the problematic notion of Finønzjudentum) Rjazanov, who was one of the Soviet Union's most distinguished biographers of Marx and was killed by Stalin, did not provide any sources for this interpretation, as the Israeli historian Edmund Silberner has noted critically.16 Silberner, a former Communist who died as an embittered anti-Marxist in 1985, nevertheless produced one of the most thorough, sourcesbased study and analysis of Marx's thinking on the Jews. Silberner's
I 10
Camillo Berneri
, Le
juif antisémife (Paris: Vita, 1935), pp. 62-78.
Maximilian Rubel, Karl Marx: Essai de biographie intellectuelle (Paris: Marcel Rivière, 1957),
o.88.
3 4
ldem, ,,The Russian Revolution and the Jewish Problem [1964]," ibid'' p' 65' Thomas G. Masaryk, Die philosophischen und sociologischen Grundlagen des Marxismus: Studien zur sociaten Frage (Vienna: C. Konegin, 1 899)' p' 454'
11
ArnoldKünzli, Karl Maa: EinePsychographie(Vienna: Europa-Verlag, 1966),pp.205ff.
'12
Hans Lamm, Karl Marx und das J ude ntu m (Munich : Max Uber Verlag,
to
Léon Poliakov Geschichte des Antisem¡tismus, Vol. Vl (Worms: Heintz, 1987),p.22a.
5
Oxford: See Moshe Zimmermann, Withelm Marr:The Patriarch of AnÙ-Semft'sm (NewYork and Oxford University Press, 1986)' (London and Boston: See Julius Carlebach, Karl Marx and the Radicat Critique of Judaism noutieOge & Kegan Paul, 1978); pp.438-99; Gérard Bensussan,,,Die Judenfrage ¡n den Mar:xismLn," Das Argument, No' 167 (1 988)' pp. 76-83'
14
Theodor Lessing, Der jüdische Selbsthaß119301, (Reprint: Munich: Matthes & Seitz, 1984).
67 8 10
Dagobert D. Runes, Karl Marx:AWorldWithoutJews(NewYork:
Ph¡losophical Library, 1960),
p.xl. Robert Mis rahi, Marx et ta question iuive (Paris: Gallimard, 19721' p' 62'
tc
1
969), pp. 30, 60
David Rjazanov, Karl Marx and Friedr¡ch Engels(NewYork: lnternational Publishers, 1927),
o.35. to
Edmund Silberner, ,,Was Man an Anti-Semite?," Historica Judaica, Vol. Xl (1949), No. 1 , p. 1 9. Cited hereafter as: Silberner, ,,Max." A German translation of this essay can be found in: ldem, Sozialisten zur Judenfrage (Berlin: Colloquium-Verlag, 1962), pp.107-42, and in: ldem, Kommunisten zur Judenfrage: Zur Geschichte von Theorie und Praxis des Kommunismus (Opladen:WestdeutscherVerlag, 1983), pp. 16-42.
1,1
work was, in any event, the first to provide a detailed documentation of Marx's comments on this subject. However, Silberner's conclusion that Marx occupies a key role in what amounted to the anti-Semitic undercurrent in modern socialism, was by no means shared by all nonMarxist Marx scholars. A case in point is Robert wistrich, who argued that ,,the Marxist, like the liberal, analysis of the Jewish question assumed that anti-Semitism was a temporary and secondary phenomenon: with its dissipation the lasr factor encouraging the 'illusory' national cohesion of the Jews would also fade."17 Wistrich thus interpreted Marx within a nineteenth-century setting. The historical approach was the preferred option for critical Marxisrs as well. Enzo Traverso engages views (akin to Karl Löwithl8 or Arnold Toynbeele ) that regards Marxist thought in terms of a socialist secularization of Jewish eschatology' He draws a structural homology between the Marxist vision of the role of the proletariat in capitalist society and the vision of the Jews as the elect people, indeed the subiect of salvation. Traverso even allows for similarities between the idea of a socialist revolution and the Hebrew notion of an apocalypse in order to bridge the gap between the historical present and the messianic future, i.e. the restoration of God's kingdom on earth' Yet' Traverso also emphasized that Marx never consciously drew on such structural simil"rities; he based his ideas on an analysis of the capitalist mode of production, not on the Jewish cultural and spiritual heritage.zo This perspective is supported by Marx's earliest scholarl¡ political, and public activities, where he, according to'Werner Blumenberg' advoprolecated with moral pathos rhe union between philosophy and the
17
19
20
emancipation from the Jewish religion. Marx's rhetorical strategies, uis-à-uis Bauer, show the conceptual innovations as well as the ultimate limitations that developed within the horizon of the Jewish revolutionary from the Rhine region.
Zur Judenfrage in the Intellectual Develooment of the Youns Marx 'Marx's father Heinrich, who was baptized at the latest in 1819, decided¡n7gZ+ to have his son baptized as well. Silberner observes that as a child Marx did not have any say in this process; yet, this ,,conversion" to Christianity was never reversed.23 Growing up in a milieu of recent converts, Marx's forrnative years were barren of any Jewish acculturation and were directly exposed to anti-Semitic undercurrents then typical of Central European Christianity. He frequently derided his political foes' and his friends' Jewish backgrounds, even when the specific context of the exchanges did not deal with Jewish issues. Thus, already by 1,842, Marx called Heinrich Heine, who was the Paris correspondent of the Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung, a ,,convert," drawing unnecessary âttention to the latter's Jewish origin, though Marx did not know him at that time.za Similarl¡ late as 1885, Friedrich Engels pub-
Rootsjfconffontatlon," Roberts.wistrich,,,MaxismandJewishNationalism:TheTheoretical io", (ed.), Ihe t"ft egãinìü zor: communism, tsrael, and the Middle East (London and Totowa: Frank Cass,
18
taÅat.z\ Gustav Mayer notes how Marx sought to justify his alleged superiority over the other Young Hegelians of his youth.22 Blumenberg regards Marx's methods here as inappropriate, given that the latter engaged in a polemic with Bruno Bauer. Bauer supported Jewish emancipation, while conceptualizing this emancipation only in terms of an
1
979), P. 1 .
Philosophy of Kart Löwith, Meaning in History:TheTheological tmptications of the cago: Univers¡ty of Chicago Press, 1949), p. 44.
Gustav Mayer,,,DerJude in Karl Max," Neue Judische Monatshefie, Val. ll (1918), pp.327-331; idem,,,Early German Socialism and Jewish Emancipation," Jewish Social Studies, Vol. I (1939),
History(cht'
pp.439_-40, as ArnoldToynbee,llhistoire: lJn essai d'interprétation (Paris Gallimard, 1951), á;riaverso, The Maxists and the Jewish Question: The History of a Debate, ieqs-tsaT( rÀ^nticHighlands, N.J: Humanities Press, 1994)' p' 13'
;;;i; ì;
Werner Blumenberg, Karl Maa m¡t Selbstzeugn¡ssen und Bilddokumenfen (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1 989), p. 57.
pp.409-22. 23
Silberner, ,,Max," pp. 1 3-14.
24
Karl Manr, ,,Der Kommunismus und die ,Augsburger Allgemeine Zeirung'," Maa-Engels-Werke (cited hereafteras MEW,Vol.1 (Berlin: Dietz, 1956), p. 106.
lbid."P:14.
13
licly referred to his and Marx's former comfade Stephan Born as Simon Buttermilch.25
young Marx thus gfew up in a climate where both the content and form of Jewish emancipation were hotly debated. In a letter to Arnold Ruge dated March 13,1'843, Marx declared his support of Jewish political emancipation, distancing himself from Bruno Bauer's intention to emancipare the Jews only after they had all become Atheists. Marx considered Bauer's views ,,too abstract" and supported the leader of the Jewish congregation in Cologne's petition to the Prussian Parliament for equal rights - in order to punch as many holes as possible in the Christian nature of the state. Yet, Marx could not help but emphasize how ,,repugnant" Jewish faith was to him.26 Despite the intensity of his feelings on the subject, Marx's only subsrantive contribution to the discussion on Jewish emancipation was his 1g43 essay Zur ludenfrage.It was published in the following year in the Deutsch-Französische lahrbücher, which incidentally appeared in only one double edition. contrary to Bruno Bauer, Marx argues that the implementation of bourgeois democratic rights demanded that neither Christians nor Jews give up their religious commitments. Marx wanted to reconfigure the parametefs of the discussion from the level of theolog¡ where Bauer's arguments are referred to, to a secular level dimensions. Marx therefore explicitly focused his discussion not on the Sabbathiuden (Jew of the Sabbath), but instead the Alltagsiwden (Jew of everyday life). Marx looked at Jewish culture and sensibility in terms of its ,,worldly ground", linking it with very tangible practical necessities and material interests. In doing so, Marx drew on the association of the ,,worldly God" with Scbacber (usury) and money. He concluded that emancipation from worldl¡ financial values and pressures, which he identified as the central features of practical and ,,real" Judaism, must be the frame of reference for any genuine emancipation.2T This
conclusion is based on the notion that it is supposedly a specific Jewish trait to equate one's own rights and interests with those of property. Marx, of course, realized that it was not just Jews who had internalized this capitalist ethos. Historical developments had led to a transfer of the exchange-value, capitalist mentality from Jews to Christians or, in fhe Hegelian terms of the young Marx, the ,,social emancipation of the Jew is the emøncipation of society from Judaism."?8 Several scholars, including critical Marxists, have pointed out that Marx did not fulfill his own objective of rigorously analyzing the Jew-
ish'question. He utilized the dialectical materialistic method ,,purely logically", but approached his topic disconnected from the historical and social conditions of Jewish life during his age.2e Marx's quest for the ,,practical, real" Judaism was indeed in keeping with his materialist analysis. Yet Marx's answer) which linked ,,true Judaism" with the "conditions and form of capitalism) was still caught within the framework of then-contemporary misconceptions and prejudices. It seems that Marx was captured by unique and very specific historical circumstances, which he generalized and applied erroneously to the situation of all Jews throughout capitalist Europe. The well established Íact that the majority of Jews, even in nineteenth-century German¡ were not engaged in money lending or any money accumulating activities was ignored by Marx.30 Marx used the terms 'Jew' and 'Judaism' as ,,social symbols" of a society based on private ownership of the means of production and capitalist competition3l; yet, such an approach was hardly appropriate or analytically useful in sharpening understanding of capitalist society.32 Marx saw in money and trade
28 29
lbid., p. 174. Blumenberg, Karl Marx, p. 58; Rosemarie Leuschen-Seppel, Sozialdemokratie und Antisemitismus im Kaiserreich: Die Auseinandersetzungen der Pañei m¡t den konservativen und völkischen Strömungen des Ant¡semit¡smus 1878-1914 (Bonn: Verlag Neue Gesellschaft, 1978),
o.24.
30
See e.g. Jacob Toury, Soziale und politische Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland 1847-1871
(Düsseldorf: Claassen, 1 977).
25
Friedrich Engels, ,,Preface" (to the 3rd edition of Max' ,Enthüllungen über den Kommunistenproze1zu Kéln), MElill, Vol.21 , p.219. Buttermilch was Born's former Jewish name.
31
Joachim Höppner, ,,lntroduction" to: Karl Marx and Arnold Ruge (eds.), Deufsch-französische Jahrbücher (Leipzig: Reclam, 1 981 ), p. 53.
26 27
Karl Max,,,Leüerto Arnold Ruge," 13 March 1843, MEW,Vol.27'p'418'
32
See Leuschen-Seppel, Sozialdemokratie,pp.20-21;Wolfgang Fr¡tz Haug,,,Antisemitismus in maxistischerSicht," HeôertA. Strauss and Nortert Kampe (eds.), Anflsemitismus:Von derJudenfeindschaft zum Holocausf (Bonn: Bundeszentrale für Polilische Bildung, 1 985), pp.234-55.
ldem,,,ZurJudenfrage," MEW, Vol. 1, p.372. English translation: Man<-Engels-collectedworks, vol. 3 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1 975), pp. 1 69-1 70.
15
the essence of Judaism which had crystallized in the nature of bourgeois society. Enzo Traverso considers this not only to be a distorted understanding of Jewish life but also the reflection of a ,,pre-Marxist conception of capitalism."33 Traverso continues by drawing attention to the underdeveloped status of Marx's economic categories - as manifest in his equating of Judaism, trade, and bourgeois society. A more appropriate, and thus maturely Marxist, understanding of capitalist society would focus not on exchange categories but instead emphasize production, linked with the proletariat as the subject of universal emancipation. The weaknesses of the young Marx's analysis results also from his underestimation of the political role of ethnic minorities that he shared with Engels, and which both took from Hegel. Jews had thus captured the attention of Marx and Engels even less than the Czechs and Southern Slavs. The obvious shortcomings of Marx's treatment in Zur ludenfrage makes the essay a poor example of Marxist analysis. That essa¡ already difficult to read and understand due to its diction, is further handicapped by the generic and unfocused use of the concepts 'Jews' and 'Judaism.' Given the stylistic and conceptual limitations of this piece, it is surprising that Marx produced, merely eight years later in 1851, hísThe 18'h Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, which is a true mas-
wit and analysis. Nothing would
have prepared early readers of Zur Judenfrage for Marx and Engel's 1848 publication of the Communist Manife.s/o, a classic text of socialist aspirations. Especially when
terpiece of
compared with the insights of those latter pieces, Marx's early call for the emancipation of society from Judaism seems grotesque. Yet despite all its shortcomings, this early work also foreshadows the axiom of socialist theory and politics - namely the insight that the emancipation of Jews requires humanity's emancipation from any society that legitimizes exploitation and repression. During Marx's life,
exploitation and repression - including the situation of Jewish people - seemed to be related to capitalist and pre-capitalist arrangements. He could not foresee that his call for a revolutionary transformation of all conditions that made possible such abuses might not be heeded by 8B
:,&ææsso, Marxrsfg p. 19.
future societies that deemed themselves heirs to his vision and orogram.
One and a half decades after the publication of Zur ludenfrage, Marx came to at least implicitly reject the notion that the cult of money was a specifically Jewish trait. He argues in a passage of hís Grundrisse, almost anticipating Max'!Øeber, that English Puritanism and Dutch Protestantism were culturally very conducive to the development of capitalism, given their focus on frugality and unproductive consumption.3a Marx thus realized that any further development of his thinking on the Jewish question excluded the mere continuation of his old views of 1.843. In fact, any genuine development of 'Marxist' analysis would require a break with those 'pre-Marxist' views. The urgent need for such a break came into sharp focus for the socialist movement in the years immediately following Marx's death, with the growth of antiSemitism as well as the Jewish working-class movement. The reception of Márx's essay on the Jwdenfrage remained a marginal issue in those debates and confrontations. Karl Kautsk¡ for example, did not mention this piece in his'1,91"4 brochure Rasse wnd ludentum, for he wanted to discourage any possible connection between Marxism and anti-Semitism - given that the latter had acquired a much more aggressive tone than the anti-Jewish sentiments during Marx's life.35 In addition, Kautsky did not want to criticize Marx in public if he could possibly avoid it. Most of all, the experiences of the seventy years that had passed since the appearance of Marx's early essay had convinced Kautsky that Jews were much more the pariahs than the agents of modern capitalism. 'Within institutional German Social Democracy the influence of Marx's essay remained limited as well, although excerpts and even the entire piece was re-printed in the newspapers Sozialdemoþrat (1881) and Berliner Volþsblatt (1890). HoweveE one key idea that linked Marxism and Liberalism was present in Marx's essay as well as in most publications of socialists all Karl Marx, Grundrisse der Kritik der politischen Okonomie: Rohentwurf (fEastl Berlin: Dierz, 1953), p.413.
American edition: Karl Kautsky, Are the Jews a Face? (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press,1972).
17
assumption that Jewish the way up to Hitler's rise to power was the or the givíng up of a emancipation had to happen through assimilation between liberal and Marxist discernable Jewish ia.rrtìiy. The difference
amount of goods circulating cannot be increased through any modifications in their distribution, ,,just as a Jew cannot increase the amount of precious metal in any one country by selling a Farthing from the age of
currentsofthoughthereliesinthedestinationofthatassimilation. LiberalswantedJewstoassimilatefullyintobourgeoissociety,while
-
the general revolutionary Marxists advocated Jewish assimilation into a future socialist state and movement, which wáold eventually achieve as well' Marx's thereby quasi-automatically solve the 'Jewish Question' this hope and this illusion' ,ssuy Zw Judenfrage is part and parcel of Between Solidarity, Indifference' and Reiection: Marx and the Jews after 1844
after he It is no easy task to summarize Marx's opinions on the Jews confragmentaty and wrote Zur ludenfrage. ìHis comments are too his private uttertradictor¡ especially if one compares his public with tlt"' that the rare sequences that touch ances. On one hand, it
"t-' emPathy for the discrimiupon Jewish themes suggest at least partial texts that were not published nated-against Jewish po!"olutio"' Yet the to Engels reveal a strong during ilur"', life and especially his letters is Marx's seeming antip;hy toward Jewish f"opl"' Equalty disturbing working-class movement' indi?ference to the beginnings of the Jewish fact that Marx otherwise which is particularly L"ioo' in light of the socialist groups with noted the emergence of even the most obscure great interest' commenting on them extensively' WhenthefirstvolumeofDasKapitalappearedinl'867'Marxhad
the Jewish identity was a departed from his prejudices of L843 that values and behavior' FIe referred to them manifestation of
""piálist
onlysporadically.oneoftheserarebutnevefthelessdisturbingexamin the conpt., ."n be found in chapter four' wherein Marx mentions' that all capitalists text of the transformatiãn of money into capital, essence money and arc know that all exchange commòdities are "in despite their perhaps lesser thus in their true n",,'it circumcised Jews"' is Marx's metaphor that the appearance or smell.36 A similar example
Queen Ann as a Guinee."37 Thirteen years earlier, on
April 15, 1854, Marx wrote in the New Yoik Daily Tribune an article in which he lamented the misery of the population in Jerusalem.3s In May 1859, Marx condemned, in Jewish another essay for the New York Daily Tribune, anti-Jewish riots on the part of the Viennese mob, stating that these ,,primitive rufniks" would provide a taste of what one should expect through the way they had abused those,,unlucky Israelites."3e - " A very different set of views emerges out of Marx's unpublished texts. He charged his teacher Feuerbach, in the now famous Theses, of grasping praxis only in its ,,dirty Jewish appearance."a0 In his correspondence ivith qngels, Marx frequently referred to the Jewish background of third peÌsons in a derogatory fashion. Marx also did this in the case of fellow Marxists, such as Leo Fränkel or Eduard Bernstein. His particular antipathy toward his comrade and competitor Ferdinand Lasalle was expressed :n¡ith invectives such as Jüdcben, l'i,idel, Itzig, Iitzig, or Baron Itzig.4l All 'of these terms are ethnic slurs. The most offensive example of this streams i.fuom a letter to Engels on June 30, 1862.In it Marx sardonicaliy claimed at it is plain that Lassalle had descended from ,,Negroes," who had i¡, ited with Mosse's Flebrews on their way out of Egypt. Marx further ulated that perhaps Lassalle's mother or grandmother may have slept |',.@th a ,,Nigger." Marx links a Lassalle's ,,Jewishness and Germanness a negroid basic ingredient" that was ,,doomed to produce somestrange. The pushiness of thus guy [Lassalle] is truly nigger-like."a2 Karl Marx,,,Das Kapital," MEW,Vol. 23, p. 1 69. lbid., p.177. ldem, ,,Die Kr¡egserklärung: Zur Geschichte der orientalischen Frage," MEW,Yol.10, p. 176. ldem, ,,Hochbedeutendes aus Wien," MEW,Yol.13, pp. 335-36. ldem, ,,Thesen über Feuerbach ," MEW,Vol.3, p.5. See S¡lberner, Marx,
pp.43-44.
lGrl Max, Letterlo Friedrich Engels, June 30,1862, MEW,Vol.30, p.259:,,Es ist mir jetzt völlig klar, daß er [Lassalle], wie auch seine Kopfbildung und sein Haarwuchs beweisl, - von den
19
18
FriedrichEngels'statementsonLassallewereofsimilarquality.He true Jew from wrote to Marx on March 7,1'856 that Lassalle was "a for his prithe Slavic border" and ',always ready to exploit anybody The addiction to vate designs and pretending party-political obiectives' in appearance' only posh oneself into polite societ¡ de paruenir, even if sorts of makein order ro covef the scheming Jew from Breslau with all up and powder, was always disgusting'"43 It is unlikely that Engels would have phrased his critique of Lassalcould he not count le's real or supposed shortcomings in quite this way upon the agreement of his friend Marx' HasitbeentrulyoverstatedthatMarxwasembarrassedofhisJewnot want to be ish roots? In any event' it seems certain that he did
Charles Longuet, reminded of them. He reacted thus when his son-in-law Marx in 1881, mentioned that' prior to her
in the obituary of Jenny
given Marx's Jewish marriage, racial stereotypes had to be overcome' his daughter extraction. Marx responded, in a vetY angry letter to no racial prejudice that needed to be Jenny Longuet, that there was a big favor by not overcome and that ,,Mr. Longuet" would do him mentioning his name again in public'aa a are Referring to the parts of Marx's correspondence' which "often
'Süerner Blumenberg observed that Marx's anti-Jewish torture to read," of a highly affects can be read as the historically contingent reaction sensitiveperson'whohadinternallybrokenwithhisJewishidentity.as Thisreactionmustbeunderstoodwithinthelargerframeworkofmainand is itself a prodstream society's hostility toward all things Jewish that even uct of anti-Semitism; Blumenberg and other scholars noted could not overcome such a strong and flamboyant personâlity as Marx
Negernabstammt,dies¡chdemZugdesMosesausÀgyptenanschlos:9ify:l"nichtseine êinem nigger kreuzten. Nun, diese Mutter odef oror¡ruttãr-ulï;àt";i"h;; seire sich mTi mússen e¡n
Jro"nìim'rno e eimanentum mit der neqerhaften Grundsubstanz des Burschen ist auch niggerhaft sonderbares proorn Ëääitttg"". o¡ã 2roringlichke-it
Verbindung von
this during his life. Marx himself must indeed have experienced this as a personal weakness, which did not derive from his general philosophical outlook. How else could one otherwise explain the charged statements that he confined to his private correspondence, which he reason-ably expected would remain private. After all, his sardonic comments and racial slurs stood in stark contrast to his public internationalism, -"which was and is one of the main characteristics of Marxist sensibility. It stands to reason that Marx's reputation, in the working class movement of his age, would have been irreparably damaged had those distasleful comments been leaked. Marx may have sensed this and thus refrained from commenting on the emerging Jewish working-class movemçnt in London's East End or in the Russian Empire. He did not want to endanger his good standing in the international socialist movement. This is at least a somewhat plausible explanation for Marx's paradoxi?al silence concerning the Jewish labor movement, in contrast to his otherwise inclusive and extensive coverage of socialist developments and organizations. At times these developments happened directly at his doorstep, such as in his city of residence in 1875-1876. - Thus far, no one has managed to locate even the briefest comment by Marx on the beginnings of the Jewish socialist movement in Eastern Europe, although Russian-Jewish socialists were among the first to seriously read Marx's main work, Das KapitøL Marx's daughter Eleanor Aveting remarked to Max Beer that her father was uninterested in any Jewish issues and had no contact with the Jewish community in Lon.åon.46 She herself had a fundamentally different attitude and stated 'that she was happiest when surrounded by Jewish workers in London's ,East End. When, on November 1, 1890, Eleanor was invited by the ,'London Club of Jewish Socialists to speak at a protest rally against ranti-Semitic persecution in Russia, she responded favorably: ,,I shall be gery glad to speak at the meeting on November 1", the more glad, that qay Father was a Jew:'o' Marx himself would have deeply resented
"
43
See MEW, Vol.29, P' 31'
,t,,, MaxBeer, FiftyYearsof lnternational Socialism(London: Allen&Unwin, 1935.Reprint: Geneva: Minkoff, 1976), pp.69,72-73.
44
M EW, V ol. 35, PP. 241 - 42.
47
Blumenberg,KarlMarx,p.53;seealsoRobertS'Wistrich'RevotutionaryJewsfromMarxto Irotsky (Loñdon: Haf rap, 197 6), pp' 42- 43'
QuotedinWilliamJ.Fishman, EastEndJewishRadicalslSTS-1914(London: Duckworth, 1975), p. 1 97.
)1
LL
of Marxism as well. Marx's death in 1883 spared him from seeing these developments unfold with his own eyes or reconsidering his comments in the light of the dooming catastrophes of the twentieth-century.
such comments, and no one could have expected a similar reaction from him. He did not even protest against the large and unprecedented wave of pogroms (1881-1882) in Imperial Russia, despite his usual habit of condemning the persecution and exploitation of the weak. Can this be explained just in terms of an indifference to the Jewish situation? This is certainly part of it, but by itself it does not sufficiently explain his almost hostile silence. Marx's affects were such that he did
Conclusion and A Look Ahead
not want to be reminded of his Jewish heritage. His political opponents, of course, were aware of this. Michail Bakunin was one of them. Although he noted that one should not forget Marx's extraordinary efforts on behalf of socialism, Bakunin could hardly contain his personal distaste for Marx, utilizing aggressive anti-Semitic invectives. He portrayed the Jews as being innately exploiters and supporters of absolutism, feaction, capitalism, and state socialism. No distinction was made between rich and poor Jews; the concept of class interest was forgotten when Bakunin depicted the Jewish people. Bakunin's anti-Jewish (and anti-German) prejudices were strongly reinforced by his dealings with Marx. Jews were, according to Bakunin, 'rone exploiting sect, a bloodsucking people, a unique devouring parasite closely and intimately bound together not only across national boundaries, but also across all divergences of political opinion." Bakunin emphasized that the Jews had constituted an international conspiracy that included Marx and the Rothschild family.as Jews had, in Bakunin's mind,
a mercântile passion which constitutes one of the principle traits of their national characte.r. ,,Giant Jews", such as Marx and Lassalle, were pafticularly destructive forces within the international socialist movement, in comparison to ,,dwarf Jews", such as Moses Hess.ae Bakunin,s social Darwinist language is striking and already foreshadows the eliminatory elements of a new form of anti-Semitism, which was ro be developed and practiced not by the Left but the Right. These forces and traditions wanted not only the eradication of Jewish life but 4g
Michail Bakunin, ,,Persönliche Beziehungen zu Marx," ldem, Gott und der staat und anderc Schriften, ed. by Susanne Hillmann (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1969)' p. 180.
49
Quoted in Silberner, Sozialisten zur Judenfrage, pp.272-73.
¡
Ma.rx's numerous anti-Jewish invectives, voiced in his private correspondence, are of lesser significance than his ignorance of the importance of the Jewish question, as it came into focus during his life. It would be a distortion to claim that Marx established an ,,anti-Semitic tradition of modern Socialism"50; attempts to suggest this ultimately fatl to convince. Yet Marxism indeed underestimated the vitality of Jewish existence in ethnic-cultural, not to mention religious, rerms. Marx and Engels viewed any Jewish narional project as hopelessly fictitious and advocated full Jewish assimilation. Modern capitalism would, according to Marxist positions, make complete assimilation inevitable, disintegrating the foundations of Jewish particular and ,,caste" existence. This would lead to the disappearance of any separare Jewish life and culture, as the title of the Marxist book TJntergang des Judentums (Downfall of Judaism) by Otto Heller indicates.sl During the Weimar Republic Heller was a highly respected Communist authority on Jewish matters. He wrote, shortly before Hitler's rise to power, that ,,a genuine Jewish Question exists today only in Eastern and Southern Europe, in those areas with a backward societal development."s2 Heller, like millions of others, paid the ultimate price of his own life for his tragic error. His friend Bruno Frei wrote decades later that seldom has a historical misconception been so tragically refuted.s3 t^
ldem,,,Man<", p. 52.
51
Otto Heller, Der Untergang des Judentums: Die Judenfrage/thre Kritilúlhre Lösung durch den Sozialismus (Berlin and Vienna: Verlag f ür Literatur und Politik, 1 901 , 2nd ed. 1939). ldem, ,,Kommunismus und Judenfrage," Klàrung: 12 Autoren und Politiker über die Judenfrage (Berlin: Ullstein, 1932), p. 259.
53
Bruno Frei, ,,Maxist lnterpretations of the Jewish Question," Wiener Library Bul/efin, Nos.3536, 1975, p.4.
23
The modern barbarism of Fascism, culminating in the Nazi murder of European Jewr5 forced Marxists to reconsider their axiom affirming the discontinuous but, in the long run, inevitable progress in historical development. In his literary treatment of Rudolf Höß (commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp) the French Marxist writer Robert Merle arrived at a sobering conclusion, observing with grave resignation the seeming inescapability of humanity willingly enabling criminals - even on such a scale.sa This is, of course, also at the center of the debate around Daniel Goldhagen's work Hitler's Willing Execu-
we do... The fury of Nazism, which was bent on the unconditional exterm-
ination of every Jewish man, woman, and child within its reach, passes the comprehension of a historian, who tries to uncover the motives of human behaviour and to discern the interests behind the motives. ního can analvse the motives and the interests behind the enormities of Auschwitz?s7
Facing the Nazi monster that was Benjamin coined the image of the
angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Iü/here we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage
,10ners.
Many Marxists considered the systematic and well-planned annihilation of European Jewry a product of capitalism and noted with distress its irrational dimensions. Several East German scholars have thus inquired into an Oþonomie der Endlösung, an Economics of the Final
to swallow him up as well, Walter
. .- upon
'
wreckage and hurls
it in fronr of his feet. The
angel would like to
sta% awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a
storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings. This storm
Solution.5s The Holocaust survivor and Trotskyist Ernest Mandel pointed
irre_sistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while
to a tendency of reproducing Nazi-like conditions, which has led to unintentionally de-emphasizing the uniqueness of this bureaucratically
the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This srorm is what we call
and technologically organized genocide.56 As mentioned earlier, Isaac Deutscher has also argued, for some time, that the Marxist analysis of the Jewish Question has not been disproved by Auschwitz. At the end of his life ín 1967, Deutscher revised this judgement. In his papers one finds the following sentence: To a historian trying to comprehend the Jewish holocaust the greatest obstacle
will
be the absolute uniqueness of the catastrophe. This
will
be
progress
" 5s
The Marxist Walter Benjamin was compelled to radically revise Marx. Instead of playing the role of the ,,locomotive of history" rhe revolution had to function as an ,,emergency brake".se
Translated by Axel Fair-Schulz
not
just a matter of time and historical perspective. I doubt whether even in a thousand years people will understand Hitler, Auschwitz, Majdanek, and
Treblinka better than we do now. SØill they have a better historical perspective? On the contrary, posterity may understand it all even less than
J4
Robed Merle, La mort est mon métie r (P aris:. Gallimard, 1 952).
57
lsaac Deutscher,,,The Jewish Tragedy and the Historian," ldem, The Non-Jewish Jew,p.163.
33
For an early controversy between East German h¡storians (Eberhard Czichon, Dietrich Eichholtz, Kurt Gossweiler) and the British ManxistTim Mason see Mario Kessler, Die SED und die Juden - zwischen Repression und Toleranz: Politische Entwicklungen bis 1967 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1 995), pp. 1 28-29.
58
Walter Benjamin, ,,Theses on the Philosophy of History," ldem, Illuminations, ed. with an introduction by Hannah Arendt, translated by HanyZohn (NewYork: Schocken Books, 1969),
56
Ernest Mandel, Der Zweite Weltkr¡eg (Frankfurt-Main:
lSf
1991), p. 224.
pp.257-28.
ldem, ,,Anmerku ngen zu Über den Begriff der Gesch¡chte," ldem, Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. l/3 (Frankf urt-Main: Suhrkamp, 1 97 4), p. 1 232.
25
Friedrich Engels on Anti-Semitism
'S7hat
was the contribution of Friedrich Engels to the discussion about the causes and effects of the hostility toward Jews? Did Engels, position on Anti-Semitism reflect the then existing stage of the threat to the $ews? In Engels' lifetime the alternative was emancipation or segregation, not emancipation or annihilation, although, as will be indicated, yoices began tò appear that referred to 'the Jews' as simply racially inferior and unfit to live. Engels witnessed the appearance of the first a.pti-Semitic mass pagties, and he advised the socialist left to lead a systematic struggle against these parties. As yet to be determined is the following: How representative was Engels' position for the course of the international socialist discussion of this problem, and how did Engels-influence this discussion?1 Two clearly distinct periods in his position can be observed, where the polemic by Engels against Eugen Dühring forms the break between the two, even though his criticism of Dühring's anti-Semitism was rather incidental. To be noted is the fact that anti-Semitism and hostility towards Jews were not central themes either in the writings of Engels or in the workers' movement as a whole in the 19'h century.
A German version of this essay: ,,Friedrich Engels' Haltung zum Antisemitismus," was published
in:Theodor Bergmann et al. (eds.), Zwischen Utopie und Kritik: Friedrich Engets - ein'Ktassiker'nach 100 Jahren (Hamburg: VSA, 1996), pp. 103-17, and reprinted iñ: Mario Kessler, Heroische lllusion und Stal¡n-Terrcr: Be¡träge zur Kommunismus-Forschung (Hamburg: VSA, 1999), pp. 199-220.
)7
Engels' Perception of the Jews, 1848-1878
During the revolution of 1848-49, Engels frequentlS even if not systematically, dealt with the role of ethnic minorities in international politics, people that he designated as ,,nonhistorical."2 until that time developments in Germany and the other large sØestern European nations had absorbed his total attention and his remarks about Jews made in passing do not warrant the conclusion that he had aÍry great interest in their siruarion. In the spring of 1845 Engels edited A Fragment about Trade, by charles Fourier. There are numerous anti-Semitic assertions in Fourier's article, along the lines that ,,the Jews have only Jewish accountants, people that are the enemies of all nations"; Engels printed such remarks without comment.3 In an article written at the beginning of septembe r 1,846 for the Nortbern star about Government and opposition in France, he wrote without hesitation about the ,,exclusive role of Rothschild 8a Co."o In his numerous articles in the Neue Rheinische zeitung Engels occasionally mentioned the situation of the Jews in Eastern Europe. on attempted ,'to June 6, 1848 he wrote rhar the Germans and the Jews On August 9, gain mastery."5 make use of [Poland's] present situation to he noticed the ,,unexpected sympathy and recognition which Polish Jews
in Germany. Engels continued: ,,Maligned wherever the influence of the Leípzig Fair extends as the very incarnation of
have received lately
haggling, avarice and sordidness' they have suddenly become German brethren; with tears of joy the honest German presses them to his bosom, and Herr srenzel6 lays claim to them on behalf of the Germans who want to remain Germans."T in the see Roman Rosdolsky, Engets and the,,Nonhistoric" Peoptes:The National Question Revolution of 1848 (Glasgow: Critique Books' 1987)' Friedrich Engels, ,,Ein Fragment Fouriers über den Handel," Maa'Engels-Gesamtausgabe,vol'
lV,p.437. Éngels, collected ldem, ,,Government and opposltion in France," Karl Marx and Frederick Wárls'(tvtos"o*: Progress Þublishers), Vol.6, p.62 (quoted hereafter as Cl4r)'
o
Engels, ,,4 New Partition of Poland," CW,Yol.7, p'65' A hlstorian from Breslau and member of the Frankfurt Parl¡ament'
Engels' irony was aimed at the anti-Jewish prejudices of the German philistine, not against the Jews. Nevertheless one must concur with the critical appraisal of Roman Rosdolsk¡ who wrote of ,,the tasteless anti-Jewish dispatches of this paper" - the Newe Rheinìsche Zeitung. According to Rosdolsk¡ it was the polyphony of'popular opinion' that confronts us in these dispatches. This popular opinion for the most parr reflected the legitimate indignation
over the economic exploitation of the 'little man', but it simuitaneously èxpressed the hatred of the Christian petty bourgeois and manufacrurer for Jewish 'competition', the hatred of the prodrgal Junker fPrussian landlord] for his Jewish creditor and the hatred of the church of the impenitent heretic.
. '
Ignorant of the social context and narrow-mindedly religious and nationalistic, this anti-Semitic popular opinion was a most useful instrumenr for-the reactionâry parties, the clergy and the regimes.s
The latent or òvert anti-capitalism that inspired the anti-Semitic remarks \ry'as not at all progressive; instead of equal rights for Jews - an important heritage of German enlightenmenr - the paper called for their segregation.e This becomes quite clear in the contribution of Eduard von Müller-Tellering, the correspondent of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung in Vienna, all published as far as is known without objection by the responsible editor, Karl Marx.10 From among many, let us crte two examples: On November L7,1848 von Müller-Tellering writes:
' :'
TheJews have done good business on rhe conquest [ofVienna by Imperial troopsl. What the Croats robbed and stole has mostly been bought up dirt
Engels, ,,The Frankfurt Assembly Debates the Polish Question ," CW,Vol.7, p. 971 . Emphasis in original. Rosdotsky, Engels and the,,Nonhistoric" Peoples, p. 20O.
See Arno Herzig, ,,The Role of Anti-Semitism in the Early Years of the German Workers' Movement," Leo Baeck lnstitute Year Book XXtl/ (London: Secker & Warburg, 1981), pp. 24359. On Müller-Tellering see Ernst Hanisch, Der kranke Mann an der Donau: Mam und Engels ubet
Osterreich (Yienna: Europa-Verlag,
1
978), passim.
z9
cheap by Jewish democrats ." The military dictatorship has ordered all public buildings to be searched for individuals and weapon s; only the J eøish synagogues, in which they sa¡ the whole oÍ demoøatic Israel has fo'tnd asylum, have remained immune from the search.11
On the next day Müller-Tellering wrote: Everyone has noticed that not one single Jew has been called to account, although it was precisely the Jews who, in the interests of their moneybags,
sylvania, the Jews ),ate an exception and stubbornly retain an absurd nationality in the midst of a foreign land."ls He did not explain rvhar their real nationality was, rather than the ,,absurd" one. Engels did nor refrain, however, on April 29, 1.849, from designating polish Jewry as -,,the meanest of all races; neither by its jargon nor by its descent, but at
most only through its lust for profit, could [it] have any relation of kinship with the Frankfurt Jewish bourgeoisie.,,16 In a parody based on a poem by Ernst Moritz Arndt, Engels joked about the language of the Easrern Jews:
everywhere stood at the head of the movement, where it was safe to be, and although the black-and-yellow was always raging against them. But where one reflects that Rothschild in Penzing [a suburb of Vienna] is being solicited for a loan of some eighty million then the riddle may well appear
As the irony of history would have it, von Müller-Tellering changed over to the camp of the victorious reaction after the suppression of the revolution, and in 1850 he published an anti-communist diatribe with the title Foretaste of the Future German Dictatorship of Marx and Engels. In this tract he attacks his former editor-in-chief and party comrade with savage anti-Semitic insults. Marx was a ,,conceited Jew" who ,,perspired ... democratic garlic"; he had a ,,vengeful Jew heart shot through with vilest malice".13 Engels could hardly have overlooked these anti-Semitic provocations. His own remarks about Jews were of a different quality. Issued on June 2L, L848, Engels' admiration for the freedom struggle of the Poles - ,,a brave people of 20 million" - included, however, his criticism of the ,,German-Jewish haters of the Poles".1a On January 13, 1849 Engels wrote that, in Hungar¡ exâctly like the Saxons of Trans11
Quoted from: Rosdolsky, Engels and the,,Nonhistoric" Peoples,p.194. Emphasis in the original.
12
lbid. Emphasis in the original.
13
Quoted f rom: Edmund Silberner, Kommunisten zur Judenfrage: Zur Geschichte von Theorie und Praxis des Kommunismus (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1983)' p' 327.
14 30
Engels,,,ANew Policy in Posen," CW,Vol.7, p. 105'
so weit ein polnischer Jude Deutsch kauderwelscht, auf '!?ucher leiht. Münz .. .. und Gewicht verfälscht,l7
that far reaches the German fatherland. '' 'were these remarks by Engels more than just individual lapses, part of an infantile ,,disease of the workers' movement,,.1s as Roman Rosdolsky wrote' ór were they proof of an ,,anti-semitic tradition of modern socialism,'(1e as Edmund silberner maintained? Several treatises h-ave been written about this, and I will limit myself to the conclusion that in the history of socialism two components appeared soon enough: flirting with utterances inimical to Jews and determined struggle against ,,,¡tþe discrimination imposed upon Jews. The latter, however, took precei'l.denee as soon as it became clear that anti-semitism was a danger to fÀe workers' movement itself. ' This functional orientation (as we might call it today) was characteristic of evolving Marxism. It rested upon a certain premise of the i unders: Engels and Marx saw the Jews, above all those outside of '|.'Western Europe, as archaic elements of a backward way of life that ,grodern capitalism was beginning to overcome. Anti-semitic utteranc.\F
fE!
ldem,,,The Magyar Struggle," CW, Vol. B, p. 232. ldem, ,,Posen," lbid., p.060. ldem, ,,The Frankfurt Assembly", p. S71. Rosdolsky, Engels and the ,,Nonhistoric" peoptes, p.201
.
Silberner, ,,Was Marx an Anti-Semite Z " Historia Judaica, Vol. Xl (1949), No. Kommunisten zur Judenfrage, p. 42.
1
, p. 52; ldem,
31
from wherever they came appeared to them as a protest against the backward conditions of life in the ghettos that stubbornly opposed the 'course of history'. Neither Marx nor Engels made an effort to research the social causes of this backwardness. This was part of their general aversion to preserving the ethnic-cultural traditions of ethnic minorities whom they termed 'nonhistoric', precisely in Hegel's sense. In the revolution of 1848-1'849, the peoples of Eastern Europe, although not the Jews, appeared first of all in the form of national independence movements, an endeavor rejected by most German and Hungarian revolutionaries and also by Marx and Engels. According to Engels' British biographer Henderson, both saw
es
these unimportant principalities [such as Transsylvania] as remnants of a
past era and were of the opinion that they must be abolished so that national unity could be established. The Neue Rheiniscbe Zeitung advocated the formation of a [German or Hungarian] national state and rejected all proposals to establish a new federation.2o
Gustav Mayer correctly pointed out that Engels' sharp criticism of the independence movements of Eastern European peoples was strengthened by The fact that in the meantime the Slavic peoples of Austria had definitely joined the counter-revolution. The armies of Diebitsch and Paskiewitsch
were exclusively Slavic armies. l7indischgrätz used mainly Slavic troops against Prague and the armies of the Austrians that were most useful in the suppressions in Italy and whose brutalities were ascribed to the Germans were composed of Slavs.21
Although all that had nothing to do with the Jewish situation. Jews, like Slavs, were for Marx and Engels a 'people without history'. What is more, since the Jews stood on a lower social-cultural level than their
slavic neighbors, for the founders of Marxism it was only a question of their rapid assimilation into the surrounding milieu. The Jewish Marx and the non-Jewish Engels did not consider ques-
tions of an independent Jewish identity. Those Jews that could nor or would not deny their origins were frequently objects of ridicule or laugh, ter-in the correspondence between Marx and Engels, that is to say rn non-public remarks. The correspondence, for example, contains a number-of tasteless and derogarory remarks about Lassalle. Engels calls Lassalle variously ,,Jüdel Braunr" ,,Ephraim Gescheit,., ,,Itzig,, (,,Jew Brownr" ,,Smart Ephraim," ,,Izzy") and after Lassalle's tragic death ,,Itzig Selig" and ,,Baron Itzig" (,,Blessed lzzyr,, ,,Baron lzzy,,)3z In his public pronouncements he avoided such expressions. The few times that he mentioned the Jews before the mid-1870s, he communicated norhing of substance. ' rn a series of arricles wrirten by him in 1851-1852, but published in Marx'ô name, Engels wrote of the Eastern European Jews that ,,if they belonged to any narionality, (they) are in these countries certainly rather Germans than Slavonians," although their ,,mother tongue is a horribly corrupted German".23 Apart from this appraisal, Engels seems implicitly to have considered here the exisrence of an independent Jewish nationality. In the Brochure po and Rhine, first published in 1g59. (r Engels referred to the Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung,,,for all its haitred-of Jews and Turks," as a ,,Christian-Teutonic paper., that would orather see itself circumcised than the 'German' region oÍ Italy."z4 - On April 6, 1,866 Engels wrore concerning the atirude of the working class towards the Polish national movement: ,,poland has always åeen extremely liberal in religious maters; wirness the asylum the Jews ifound there while they were persecuted in all other parts of Europe.,.2i Sive years later, on November 11, 1871, in a contribution to the social-
rP '., ::,,
These and other remarks are cited and documented in Edmund Silberner,,,Friedrich Engels and the Jews," Jewish social studies, vol. xl (1949), No. i, p.330; ldem, Kommunisten zurJudenfrage, p. 47.
:
Engels,,,Revolution and Counler-Revolution in Germany,,, CW,Vol. 11, p. 44 20
William O. Hend erson, The Life of Friedrich Engels, Vol. l, (London: Frank Cass, 1976)' p. 146.
21
1975), p. 308.
Gustav Mayer, Friedrich Engets: Eine Biographie, vol. I (Frankfurt-Main: ullstein,
ldem, ,,Po and Rhine," Ct4l, Vol. 16, p. 216. ldem, ,,What Has the Working Class to do with poland,,, CW,Vol.20,p.16O. &
'74 JJ
ffi
democratic Volksstaat he wrote about the short bloom of the Founders
1871.-1874: ,,And if the recent practice of swindling people out of their money by setting up bogus companies got really into its stride in Germany and Austria, if princes and Jews, imperial chancellors and petty clerics all are in joint pursuit of the savings of the small people, we can only welcome this,"26 This meant that the working class would benefit from the exacerbation of the class struggle for which the Christian as well as the Jewish exploiters were responsible.
period
of
But it was above all the appearance of the Berlin economist Eugen Dühring and of his massive hostile artacks to the Jews that prompted Engels to refine his own views. In Engels' extensive polemic from the year 1,878, we read: ;.. even the hatred of Jews, exaggerated until it becomes ridicuious. which Herr Dühring parades at every opportunit¡ if it is not a specifically prussian,
is yet a specifically East Elbian quality. The same philosopher who sovereignly looks down on all prejudices and superstirions, is himself so "deeply immersed in personal whims, that he calls the popular prejudice
Engels' Polemic with Political Anti-Semitism After 1878
against the Jews, which has been handed down from the Middle Ages, a ,,natural judgement" resting on ,,natural reasons,,. and soars to the pyra_
Towards the end of the 1870s racially oriented political anti-Semitism increasingly replaced religiously motivated anti-Judaism. The term 'antisemirism, was probably used for the first time in 1.879 by wilhelm Marr, a former radical leftist who converted to the political right.z7 After the Grùnderþ.racå (Founders Crash) of 1.873 that brought about a long-lasting economic depression, as Engels had predicted, followed an intensification of social and political tensions. This was marked by a general decrease of liberalism, and precipitated the Kulturkampf (Struggle for Culture) against political Catholicism, the prohibition of Social Democrac¡ and the appearance of currents hostile to minorities. The Jews were hit especially hard by the deterioration of the politi cal atmosphere. At the end of the 1870s and the beginning of the 1880s, a number of anti-Semitic groups were formed, of which the Christian
midal assertion that ,,socialism is the sole power that can offer opposition to conditions of population with stronger Jewish inrermixrure " (conditions
Social Party led by the Berlin court-preacher Adolf Stoecker, became the most important. The anti-Semites remained a politically relevant factor in Germany until the 1890s, when their importance diminished with the dying down of the agrarian crisis and the long economic upswing.28
"
with Jewish intermixture! 'What natural language!). Enough.
Ðühring ,,cannot bring about his philosophy of reality without obtruding his repugnance 'against tobacco, cats and Jews, as a law having ¡rniversal force for the whole rest of mankind, Jews included..,2e In his preface to the republication of his work in 18g5, Engels wrore: ,:.-But what Herr Dühring has written concerning my attack I have not |Tead and will not do so without special cause. I am theoretically fin'ãshed with him."30 It is therefore improbable that Engels read the 1gB1 þamphlet by Dühring about The Jewish euestion as a Raciar, Moral 'ønd cubural Question. Here Dühring assembled all of the accusarions ¡directed at Jews and presented them as presumably unchange able ,,raãal characteristics." He demanded that Jews be singled our under emery laws to ourlaw their life among rhe German people. In a later Modern AntLsemit¡sm and the Bise of the Jews (cambridge and New york: cambrioge University Press, 1997), chapter g.
Engels, Herr Eugen Dühring's Revolution in science (chicago: charles H. Kerr, 193s), pp.112-
the Company Swindle in England," CliV' Vol.23' p.35.
26
ldem, ,,On
27
see Moshe Zimmerman, wilhelm Man:The Patriarch
Zg
Oxford University Press, 1986). See e.g. peter G .Z.Pulzer, The Rise of Potiticat Anti-Sem¡tism in Germany and Austria' 1867l9l4(ñewyorkJohnW¡tey&Sons, 1966),reprinted1988;AlbertS.Lindemann, Esau'sTears:
of Anfi'-sernlf,sm (NewYork and
oxford:
13.
lbid., p.6,
F_orthisandtheotherquotat¡onsseesilberner, KommunistenzurJudenfrage,p.50; alsoidem, Engels and the Jews,', p.332. "Friedrich
35
work, Tbe Value of Life. A Memorandum for a Heroic Philosophy, Dühring concluded that the Jewish Question can be solved ,,only by the killing and extermination" of the Jews; a call for mass murder that he repeated in 190L (in the 5'h edition of The Jewish Question)'3l Engels did not overlook the fact that German Social Democracy had ro settle accounts with anti-Semitism. Stoecker's Christian Social Party sought to create a mass base for itself among Berlin workers. At the srart of 1881 the Social Democrats organized a mass meeting in Berlin to settle ,,The Position of 'Workers on the Jewish Question". Eduard Bernstein wrote of the enthusiastic agreement of the workers with the speeches against ,,the lies and deceit spread by the anti-Semitic agitators." A subsequent resolution adopted by the assembly took a position ,,against any curtailment of the civil equality guaranteed constitutionally to Jews."32 In November 1882, in connection with another matter' Engels remarked ,,that the so-called 'anti-Semitic movement' has the Social Democrats as their staunchest enemies, and that in Germang especially in Berlin, ... it met its match in the attitude of the Social Democrats'"33 During that period Karl Kautsky wfote to Engels about the results of the anti-Semitic movement in Austria. On June 23, 1'884 Kautsky wrote to Engels about anti-Semitic tendencies in Austria, which ,,make themselves appear as oppositional and democratic, thus accommodating the instincts of the workers."3a Five months later, on November 22, he reported that anti-Semitism in Vienna ,,has assumed colossal dimensions ... and has recruited a good part of the petty bourgeois elements' even very 'radical' ones that used to be with us."35 Engels did not react immediately to Kautsky's apprehensions' But on April L9, L890, he wrote a much-quoted letter to a Viennese bank Eduard Bernstein, Geschichte der Bertiner Arbeiterbewegung: Eìn Kapitel zur Entstehung der deutschen Soziatdemokratie,Vd. 2 (Berlin: Buchhandlung Vorwärts' 1907)' p. 60. Engels, ,,was der Pindter flunkerl," Marx-Engets-werke (ciled hereafter as MEW¡,Vol.19, p. 31 3.
34
Benedikt Kautsky (ed.), Friedrich Engels' Briefwechsel mit Karl Kaulsky (Vienna: Danubia,
35
lbid., p. 159.
1955), p. 125.
employee and social Democrat, Isidor Ehrenfreund, that outlines summarily his position on anti-Semitism, which he took very seriously. Ehrenfreund had communicated by letter on March 21., that among the mem-
bers of the club of the functionaries of the vienna Bank and credit ''Institute, as well as among a cerrain part of the viennese population, anti-Semitism was very widespread and took the form of propaganda against 'Jewish capital'. Engels' exrensive reply was published in the Arbeiter-zeitung on May 9 with permission of author and addressee. At the beginning of the letter Engels warned the social Democrats noi to be seduced by the anti-capitalist rhetoric of the anti-Semites:
. " But whether you might not be doing more harm than good with your antisemitism is something I would ask you to consider. For anti-semitism betokens a retarded culture, which is why it is found only in prussia and '"' Austria, and in Russia roo. Anyone dabbling in anti-Semitism, either rn England or in America, would simply be ridiculed.
In Prussia it is the lesser nobilit¡ the Junkers with an income of 10,000
-, marks and outgoing of 20,000, and hence subject to usury' who indulge in anti-semitism, while both in Prussia and Austria a vociferous chorus rs provided by those whom competition from big capital has ruined the petty bourgeoisie, skilled craftsmen and small shop-keepers. But in as much as capital, whether Semitic or Aryan, circumcised or baptized, is destroying these classes of society which are reactionary through and through, ir is
only doing what pertains to its office, and doing ir well; it is helping to impel the present-dây level at which all the old social distincrions resolve themselves in the one great antithesis
-
capitalists and wage-laborers.
only
in places where this has not happened, where there is no strong capitalist class and hence no strong class of wage-laborers, where capital is not yet strong enough to gain control of national production as a whole, so that irs activities are mainly confined to the stock Exchange - in other words, where
production is still in the hands of farmers, landowners, craftsmen and suchlike classes surviving from the Middle Ages - there, and there alone, rs capital mainly Jewish, and there alone is anti-semitism rife.
37
Hence anti-semitism is merely rhe reaction of declining medieval social strata againsr a modern society consisting essentially of capitalists and wage-laborers, so that all it serves are reactionary ends under a purportedly socialist cloak; it is a degenerate form of feudal socialism and we can have nothing to do with that. The very fact of its existence in a region is proof that there is not yet enough capital there. capital and wage-labor afe today
indivisible. The stronger capital and hence the wage-earning class becomes, the closer will be the demise of capitalist domination. So what I would wish for us Germans, amongst whom I also count the viennese, is that the capitalist
economy should develop at a truly spanking pâce rather than slowly declining into stagnation. In addition, the anti-Semite presents the facts in an entirely false light. FIe doesn't even know the Jews he decries, otherwise to he would be aware that, thanks to ânri-semitism in eastern Europe, and inquisition in Turke¡36 there are here in England and in America thousands upon thousands of Jewish proletarians; and it is precisely these workers who are the worst exploited and the most poverty-strikrhe spanish
Jewish ken. In England during the past twelve months we have had three strikes by Jewish workers. Are we then expected ro engage in anti-semitism in our struggles against capital? Furrhermore, we are far too deeply indebted to the Jews. Leaving aside Heine and Börne. Marx was a full-blooded Jew. Lassalle was a Jew' Many of our best people are Jews. My friend victor Adler, who is now atoning in a Viennese prison for his devotion to the cause of the proletariat, Eduard Bernstein, editor of the London Soziøldemokraf, Paul Singer, one of our best men
in the Reichstag - people whom I am proud to call my friends, and all of them Jewish! After all, myself was dubbed a Jew by the Gørtenlaube anð, indeed, if given the choice, I'd as leave be a Jew as a ,,Herr von"!37
For the time, strong as well as weak poinfs are equally apparent Engels' argument. His exposition reduced causes' class content and
36
Engels referred to saloniki, then a part of the ottoman Empire, where an important classdivided Jewish community existed.
37
Ëngels,,,On Anti-semitism (from a private letter to Vienna),' CW,Vol'27 ' pp' 51-52'
ultimate goals of the then current anti-semitism ro a common denominator. with imposing emphasis he warned against any flirting with anti-semitism. Engels not only pointed to a precise social-theoretical model of explaining the continued effects of anti-Jewish prejudiced in the present of the then existing societ¡ but also located the main victims of the anti-semitic campaigns: rhe doubly (economicaily as well as politically) oppressed Jewish workers. The weaknesses of Engels' exposition are equally apparenr. Here we have to agree with Enzo Traverso, who noted that Engels did not at all-consider ,,the possibility of a modern anti-semitism, fed by rhe contradictions of an advanced capitalist society."38 Engels undertook with this letter a notable step in sensitizing the workers' movement to the dangers connected with the growth of the anti-Semitic movement. He úanted the socialists to make the struggle against anti-semitism rheir '1cwn struggle; yet Engels' statements inadvertently contributed to the illusioir that thanks ro the continued development of capitalism, anri' Semitism would disappear, so to speak, of its own accord. one can hardly reproach Engels for a lack of sensitivity ro the porentiality of crises contained within imperialist policies. on January 4, 1Bgg, in a very impressive passage Engels had described hypotheticaily the ramifications of the future geo-politics of Imperial Germany: Germany
will have allies but Germany will desert its allies and its allies
will Germany at the first opportunity. And finally no other war is possible - for Prussia-Germany but a world war) a war of previously unknown extent
" and intensity. Eight to ten million soldiers will throttle each other and strip . Europe bare as no locust swarm has ever done before. The ravages of the ' Thirty Years níar compressed into three to four years extending over the , whole continent; starvation, plagues, the brutalization of the armies as well - as the masses of the peoples brought about by the acute shortages; ; unsalvageable disarray of our elaborate activity in trade, indusrry and credit, ' terminating in general bankruptcy; collapse of the old states and their Enzo Traverso, The Marxists and the Jewish euestion:The H¡story of a Debate,
(Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1994), p.26.
¡
1
1g4s-l g4g
39
traditional statecraft, so that dozens of crowns will roll on the pavements of the streets and there will be no one to pick them up ...
Certainly never before and perhaps never since has a socialist writer anticipated in such a precise manner the barbarous consequences of imperial policies of hegemony and violence. For Engels the alternative socialism or barbarism - tertium non datur - was most urgent. How this immense conflict would finally end was not in question for Engels. One result of this world war was
Edouard Drumont, journalist and author of La France juive, published in 1886, was the founder of radical anti-semitism in France. In the 1880s the Blanquisr socialist Albert Régnard wrore quire favorably about Drumont in the Réuue sociøIiste.al The fact that especially socalled socialist opponents of Marxism in France resorted to anti-Semit-
' ic stereotypes in order to diminish Karl Mark
'!7e
conquered positions. But when they let loose the forces that they cannot later control, then whatever happens: at the end of this tragedy they will
'*
That the anticipated ,,brutalization of the armies and the masses of the peoples., so clearly foreseen by Engels could turn against defenseless minorities, including the Jews, did not enter his deliberations. The barbaric desire voiced by Eugen Dühring, and very soon by many others' to exterminate the Jews was for Engels hardly more than the sick imaginings of fantasizing pseudo-intellectuals. Engels was possibly not awafe, despite his warnings, of the dangerous extent to which the explosive mixture of racism and anti-capitalist demagogy had aheady spread by then. He noted the corresponding developments in France but considered them relatively harmless when he 'u/rote in the above-mentioned letter to Ehrenfreund that ,,Mr. Drumont's writings - wittier by far than those of the German anti-Semites - where those of a somewhat ineffectual flash in the pan."ao
39
40 '4e
Engels, ,,,lntroduction'to pamphlet by sigismund Borkheim, zur Erinnerung für die deutschen Mordspatrioten 1 806-1 807," CW,Vol. 21, pp. 35off.
ldem,,,OnAnti-Semitism,"p.50.
as
Proudhuon had already inroned:
.
inevitable.3e
es-
far-as the 1840s. Marx' and Engels' old comperiror pierre-Joseph
Absolutely cerrain: the general exhaustion and the establishment of conditions for the final victory of the working class ... The war may temporarily push us into the background, may deprive us of many alteady
be ruined and the victorv of the Þroletariat is either already won or
could hardly have
caped Engels' attention. This had a long tradition that reached back
'
must demand [the Jews'] expulsion from France, except for those married to French women; the religion must be proscribed because the Jew is the enemy of humanit¡ one must return this râce to Asia or exterminare it. Heine, [Alexandre] Weill and orhers are only spies; Rothschild, [Adolphe]
Crémieux, Marx, [Achille] Fould are evil, unpredictable, envious berngs who hate
us.a2
To many French socialists the enemy appeared to be increasingly a rDixture of Jew and bourgeoisie. The reprinting twice of the translated letter of Engels to Ehrenfreund on July 3, 1BB2 and on April g, 1,Bgg seems to have changed this very little.a3 This image of the enemy ar least partially explains the surprise and initial indifference, if not the malicious joy, of many French socialists regarding the Dreyfus affair after 1894. The eventual recognition by Jaurès that anti-semitism, antisocialism and enmity toward.the Third Republic coincided was exacrly like that of Engels, and Jaurès succeeded in mobilizing many of the French socialists for the defense of Dreyfus against the reacion.aa See Francois-Georges Dreyfus,,,Antisemitismus in der Dritten Französischen Republik,,,Bernd Martin and Ernst schulin (eds.), Dle Juden als M¡nderheit ¡n der Geschichte (Munich: dtv, 1981), p.235. Quoted from Zeev Sternhell, La droite révolutionnaire 1885-1914: Les origines francaises du fasclsme(Paris: Payot, 1978), p. 187. Edmund silberner, western European socialism and the Jewish problem (1g00-1914: A Selective Bibliography (Jerusalem: The Hebrew University, 19SS), p. gg, no. 331 .
see Harvey Goldberg, ,,Jean Jaurès and the Jewish euestion: The Evolution of a position,Jewish Social Sfudles, Vol. XX (19S8), No.2, pp.67-94.
41
Engels ignored anti-semitic attacks on Marx, possibly because of his aversion to conducting controversies on such a level. Like Marx, Engels ,,brushed [all this] aside as though it were cobwebs, ignoring it, answering only when exrreme necessity compelled him."a5 Thus Engels did not reply to the anti-Semitic attacks on Marx by Bakunin'aÉ Besides the activities of the anri-semitic parries and their pseudosocialist demagog¡ there was another important Íactot that kept Engels' attention attuned to anti-semitism and the situation of the Jews. This factor at the same time nourished his optimism about the continuing growth of the socialist movement: the activities of the Jewish proletarians in London, Engels' home city. Founded on March 20, 1'876 by Aron Liberman and Lazat Goldenberg, the Hebrew Socialist Union was the first Jewish socialist organization in London. Engels appears to have been acquainted with Liberman through Carl Hirsch, a mutual friend. He also kept himself informed about the organization by reading Pyotr Lavrov's paper Vperiod (Fot' ward).a7 Liberman's proclamation of July 1'876, To the lewish Youth, which appeared in a supplement to Vperiod, harmonized completely
with Engels' ideas: Everyone is preparing for battle, the proletariat is organizing to shake off the yoke of capital and of ryranny ... It is time for our proletarians to join this great endeavor, to win back what the exploiters of our own people have striped from them ... Human fraternization knows no division into peoples and tribes, it knows only about useful workers and exploiters that
spread misery.
It
is against these that working people must begin to
In the middle of the 1870s, through rwo orher Jewish acrivisrs, Grigory Guryevich and Maxim Romm, Engels had contact with a socialist group in Berlin, the lewish section. Engels referred to Guryevich in a letter to Lav.rovae and to Romm in letters to Friedrich Adolph Sorge.io Around 1890 Engels wrore an introduction for a yiddish edition of communist Manifeslo and senr it to New York. The mail was lost but-Abraham Cahan, the American writer, reports that Engels was very interested in the publication of the Manifesto in yiddish. Engels surprised Cahan when they mer in London with his knowledge of the yiddish language.sl Engels also wrore to his friend Sorge (who lived in the united States) for news about the Jewish socialist Joseph Barondess after the latter had suffered an accident in America.52 Engels was crir' ical of the negative artitude of English dockworkers concerning Jewish ."immigration.s3 In 1892 he wrote with satisfaction to Laura Lafargue ,'about"the May Day celebration of Jews in common with French. Russian, German, Austrian, Polish, Spanish and British workers.sa The fol, lowing year he sent'a number of books to the Russian-Jewish Free Lib-rary in London at their request.ss Engels was in contact with Jewish groups in Europe, including Russia.56 ,,N7hatever he wrote on the Jews after 1890 is only casual but nonetheless permeared with a new spirir," as Edmund silberner correctly concluded.sT Despite all this. there are '"the
49
Engels,,,Letter to Lavrov, Seplember 1 b, 1 876," CW, Vol. 45, Ð. 1 47
¡il,J
See MEfV(Berlin: Dietz, 1956ff.), Vols. 37, on the Jewish Question, Ð. 42.
tl
:a:..,
struggle.a8
46
Engels,,,Speech at Karl Marx' Funeral," CW, Vol' 24' p - 469. See Bruno Frei and Hans Adamo, Anarchist¡sche lJtopie -Terrorismus (FrankfurUMain: Marxistische Blàtter, 1978), p.94.
47
See Jack Jacobs , Kautsky on the Jewish Question, Ph.D.Thesis (NewYork Columbia Univers¡ty,
4g
euote from John Bunzl, Klassenkampf in der Diaspora: Zur Geschichte der iüdischen Arbei teúa uegung (Vienna: Europa-Verlag, 1 975), p. 50'
43
1983), p.39.
51
p.
.
479, and BB, pp. 12, 32. See Also Jacobs, Kautsky
See lbid., p.43. See Engels about Cahanin: MEW,yol.38, p. 155, 464. Engels, ,,Letter to Sorge, October 24, 1891 ," MEW, Vol. 07, p. 182. See idem, ,,Letter to Sorge, August g, 1891 ,' MEW,Vol. 38, p. 143. ldem,,,Letterto Laura Lafargue, May 3, 'l892,,' MEW,Vol.Sg,gS2.
see Edmund silberner, ,,Friedrich Engels' Geschenk an eine jüdische. Bibliothek in London,walter Grab (ed.), Jahrbuch des lnstituts fiir deutsche Geschichfe, Vol. lX (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University,
1
980), pp. a93-96.
Jacobs, Kautsky on the Jewish Question, o. 46.
silberner, ,,Friedrich Engels and the Jews,"
p.52.
p. 336, and idem, Kommuniéten zur Judenfrage,
43
these glittering phrases and what melodies the violins
will play that hang in the anti-Semitic sky."62 Engels was still alive when, ar the Cologne Congress in October 1893, the SPD put a special point on the agenda about the struggle against anti-Semitism. The main speaker, August Bebel, declared that anti-Semitism comes from
in the remarks now and then in Engels' private correspondence' even socialists Iast years of his life, in which the Jewish extraction of certain is commented uPon ironicallY. who was Thus on December 22,'l'894 Engels wrote to Victor Adler, with himself Jewish, that Max Beer is "a very green youth in England remarked Galician-Talmudic spectacles."5s In December 1891 Engels that one must be careful of the great number of Jews that are coming over
the dissatisfaction of certain bourgeois layers who feel threarened by the capitalist development and are in part destined ro economic ruin by this
to socialism. He wrote:
development, but misunderstanding the real causes of their situation direct their struggle not against the capitalist economic system but against one of
and since the One knows that we are becoming a ,,Íactor" in the state "' the rest of the bourgeois, they notice it quicker Jews are more intelligent than are the first to - especially under the pressure of anti-Semitism - and they
.
join us. They can only be welcomed by us but because these folks afe smartrained in ter and because of century-long pressure had to rely and were
"
"
self-serving methods, one must be more careful'se
in 1890, still called the Polish Jews a caricature of year later he wrote to Paul Lafarguel.
Engels,
Jews6o
and
I see how am beginning to understand the French anti-Semitism when with Polish origins and with German names infiltrate these
Jews everywhere,takeeverythingandpushaheadeverywhereuntiltheycontrol Parisian is so the public opinion of the City of Light of which the simple
proudandwhichhethinksisthehighestpowerintheuniverse.6i 7894 This private remark is in contrast to his high public position: ín Newe the in tng.l, warned the French socialists about the anti-semites of Zeit: whoever follows them will find out soon enough "what comes
its aspects as it appears in this development that makes their competitive struggles more difficult; against the Jewish exploiters ... [The anti-Semitic movement] despite its reactionary character and against its own volition will end up having revolutionary effects in that the petty bourgeois and small farmers agitated by anti-Semitism against the Jewish capitalists must come to the recognition rhat their enemy is nor just the Jewish capitalist but the capitalist claès as a whole and that only the establishment of socialism can liberate them from their misery.63
a
I
.
rSocial Democrac¡ in other words, is against anti-semitism, but it will .not ,,split" its forces by fighting against a phenomenon ,,that will stand rand-fall with bourgeois society".6a Engels had been very much in accord with Bebel's endeavor to counter anti-Semitism even a year earlier;65 Bebel on his part emphasizedthat the letter by Engels to Ehrenfreund had reinforced his standpoint.66 The parry congress in Cologne reflected Engel's views.
ä2
æ
ldem,,,Die Bauernfrage in Frankreich und Deutschlan d," MEW,Vol. 22, p. 501. Protokoll über die Verhandlungen des Parteitages der Sozialdemokratischen Partei Deutschlands. Abgehalten zu Köln a. Rh. von 22. bis 29. Oktober 1893 (Berlin: Buchdruckerei Vorwàrts,
59
39' p' 353' Engels, ,,Letter to Victor Adler, December 22,1894," MEW'Vol' KautslE on the Jewish 228;Jacobs, ldem, ,,Letterto Bebel, December 1 , 1891 ,' MEW,Vol.g8,p' Question,P.48.
60 Ðå
412' Engels, ,,Letter to Paul Ernst, June 3, 1890," MEW,Vol'37 ' 4o3' MEW,Yol'38' 1892," 22, J uly Lafargue, ldem, ,,Letter to Paul
1893), p.223.
':,3r
lbid.
.tr
Engels, ,,Letter to Bebel, November 19, 1892,' MEW,Vol.38, p. 518ff.
,,,,
to Engels, July 9, 1892," werner Blumenberg (ed.), August Bebets Br¡efwechset mìt "Bebel Friedrich Engels (The Hague: Mouton, 1965), p. 562.
45
The then current bon mot âmong socialists calling anti-Semitism ,,the socialism of the dumb" resulted in an unintended downplaying of the real situation. Friedrich Engels played a decisive part in the mobilization of the socialist movement against anti-Semitism. FIe presented in his analyses the potential, barbaric consequences of imperialist national policies. But he also believed in the timely transformation of capitalist society into a socialist one. The grolvth of racist anti-Semitism under conditions of modern barbarism, and in the name of the continuation of the old order, could not be imagined by him - nor by any other socialist.6T
The Russian Revolution and the Jewish ìTorkers' Movement Among the Jeus of Eastern Euroþe the feeling tbat only the ouertbrou.t of Tsardom by øay of reuolution could relieue the
Translated by Ed Kouacs.
discrimination and oþþression to which they uere subjected, became almost uniuersal; and Jews played a uery prominent part
in the reuolutionary mouement. But when tbe reuolution did comè, the sudden transformation of society had also ø painful and disintegrating impact on a considerable segment of the Jewish þopulation...The Jeuts were simply not prepared for such a breaþ, ,::":* a deep profound change in their whole mode of existIsaac Deutscher (1,964\1
67
Michael Löwy speaks of the ,,attractive power of the paradigm of progress" in the context of a ,,concept of têmporality which is in the narrowest sense of lhe word quant¡tativé'and which determined the concepts of the socialists in the 1 9th century. ,The course of history is perceived as a cont¡nuum of uninterrupted amelioration and irreversible evolution." Michael Löwy' Rédemption et utopie: Le iudaisme liberta¡re en Europe centrale (Paris: P.U-F., 1988)' p. 255' Emphasis in the original. Engels appears to have stepped, at least partially, outs¡de this paradigm of progress with his prognosis about the future world war and the accompany¡ng barbaric phenomena, even while he saw the workers' movement aS the moior of historical progress towards the inevitable triumph of socialism.
The Russian revolutions of 1917 gave rise to a practical question: could the socialist transformation of Eastern European societies solve its Jewish problem? In Eastern Europe the question whether an erhnic-religious minority should assimilate or whether it needed irs own national territory was particularly complex. Since the turn of the century the idea of national-cultural auronomy as propounded by the Jewish '!lorkers' Bund of Russia, Poland and Lithuania, rhe most important Jewish
'l
lsaac Deut scher, The Non-Jewish Jew and other Essays (London: Merlin press, 1981), pp. 68.
67-
47
Socialist organizatíon, had gained considerable support. However, the Bolsheviks and most of the Jewish Socialists in the two Polish worker's parties2 dismissed this way of solving the Jewish question. Nevertheless, from the turn of the century onwards all Socialist parties had to turn their attention to Socialist-Zionist organizations which were presenting them with stiff competition.3
rhe Borshev'*
:î,1JïJä.','#i:iiJ;i*
in soviet
Russia
Many Russian Jews greeted the overthrow of Czarism in March 1,91,7 as a great victory that marked the end of their suffering and the opening of a new en of liberation. One of the very first measures adopted by the Provisional Government was the suppression of the anti-Semitic legislation in force under the old regime: a total of 650 laws limiting the civic rights of the Jewish population were abolished.a On the other hand, Jews at first remained somewhat mistrustful of the October Revolution. The Soviet decree that distributed land to the peasants had little interest for a largely urbanized group disconnected from agriculture. In June 1918, elections to the Jewish community organizations confirmed the relative dominance of the various Zíonist parties and of the Jewish'S7orkers' Bund, which at its eighth National Conference in December 1.91.7 had expressed its opposition to the October Revolution.s The January 5, 19L8 dissolution of the Constituent Assembly by
These were the Pol¡sh Socialist Parly (slnce 1906 the PPS Left) and the Social Democratic Party of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania. A German version of this essay: ,,Die Russische Revolution und die jüdische Arbeiterbewegung,l'was published in:Theodor Bergmann et al.(eds.), DerWiderschein der Russischen Re' volution: Ein kritischer Rückblick auf 1917 und die Folgen (Hamburg:VSA, 1997), pp. 9S-106, and was reprinted in: Mario Kessler, Heroische lllusion und Stal¡n-Terror: Beiträge zur Komm u n i s m u s- Fo rsc h u n g (Hamburg : VSA, 1 999), pp. 221 -35.
4
SeeLeoTrolzki,Geschichtederrussischen
Revolution,Vol.2 (Frankfurt-Main: Fischer, 1982),
p.723. Fbrthe attitude of the Bund towards the October Revolution see Aryeh Gelbard, Der iüdische im Flevolutionsjahr 1917 (Viennai Europa-Verlag, 1 982).
M¡fu¡nd
o#.* T-t:*i"''
'i
ln'tii*it*'i
i
;ii:ilivld I
'the Bolsheviks had created an irrevocable breach between them and the
other socialist parties which were supported by the majority of Jews. - The preponderance of Jews in the early Bolshevik leadership 'Trotsk¡ Yoffe, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Sverdlov, Uritsky and others - should .¡lot be confused with the minor role of the Communists within the Iewlish-labor movement at that time. The Jewish political scene in 1.91.71918 was dominated by three main tendencies: (1) various Zionist parries; whose 'bourgeois' mainstream was more or less closely linked with the Constitutional Democrats; (2) a Social Democratic tendency which was dominated by the Mensheviks (left wing Zionist parties as €.9. the Poalei Zion and also the Bundists, despite their sharp opposilron to all forms of political Zionism); (3) non-Zionist groups of Orthodox or Territorialist orientation, i.e. parties who saw the future of the Jèws inside Russia and favored a program of national or cultural auionomy without a strict socialist orientation. ,,The Bolshevik party", Salomon Schwarz later wrote, ,,as such did not figure at all upon the Jewish scene, nor did it have among its leaders any men familiar with or active in Jewish life."6 - 'SØell aware of this fact, the newly established People's Commissariat of National Affairs, presided over by Stalin, established a Jewish section, headed by Simon Dimanstein. To make up for the lack of Communists with a background in the Jewish Socialist movement, he asked for help from Samuil Agursk¡ a Bolshevik who had returned to Russia from the United States. The publication of a Yiddish newspaper, Der Emes (the Truth) raised numerous problems because of the lack of native Yiddish speakers among the Bolsheviks. The Communist Party established special branches for its Jewish members, the Jewish Sections (Yeusektsia. i.e. singular form of Jewish Sections of the Communist Party).7
Solomon M. Schwaz, The Jews in the Soviet Union (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1951), p.92. For the history of the Yevsektsia see Zvi Y Gitelman, Jewish Nationality and Soviet Politics:The
Jewish Sections of the CPSU (Princeton, NJ: Princelon University Press, 1972).
49
The October Revolution did in fact initially improve conditions considerably for the Jews. The new government not only granted them and all other national minorities - Soviet Russian Jews counted as a separate nation - the legal equality ensured by the February Revolution. It also required all state organs to oppose anti-Semitism. In an announcement published in Izuestia on July 27 (August 9), 1,91.8, the Council of People's Commissars declared that the anti-Semitic movement and pogroms against the Jews are fatal to the interests of the workers' and peasants'revolution and calls upon the
toiling people of Socialist Russia to fight this evil with all means at their disposal. National hostility weakens the ranks of our revolutionaries, disrupts
the united front of the toilers without distinctions of nationality and helps
only our enemies. The Council of People's Commissars instructs all Soviet deputies to take uncompromising measures to tear the anti-Semitic movements
out by the roots. Pogromists and pogrom-agitators are to be placed outside the laws
Lenin took the anti-Semitic menace so seriously that in order to reinforce that declaration at the end of March 1.91.9 he issued an appeal which was recorded on gramophone. He underlined that the Iandowners and capitalists tried to divert the hatred of the workers and peasants who were tortured by want against the Jews... Hatred toward the Jews persists only in those countries where slavery to the landowners
and capitalists has created abysmal ignorance among the workers and peasants. Only the most ignorant and downtrodden people can believe the
opened. It is not the Jews who are the enemies of the working people. The enemies of the workers are the capitalists of all countries. Among the Jews there are working people, and they form the majority. They are our brothers,
who, like us, are oppressed by capital; they are our comrades in the struggle
for socialism.e
: bnring the Civil
'Wrangel
the armies of Denikin and tried to use ' anti-Semitism as a weapon in their struggle against the Soviet Regime. It is estimated that the Ukraine was the battleground of about 2,000 po$roms. The direct loss of Jewish lives was enormous, easily exceeding 50,000. Together with those who died later from wounds the number of victims may well have reached 150,000, i.e. ten percenr of the ' whole Jewish population.l0 It was the greatest anti-Semitic massacre bèfor. Auschwitz. In this desperate situarion, the Jews saw in the Red 'r'%.rmy_their sole hope for salvation, although Red Army soldiers were 'also responsible for about 7.4 percent of the pogroms.llDuring the ,, Civil rüfar a considerable part of the Russian and Ukrainian Jews theregradually fore moved from open hostility to the October Revolution ;, ,,a¡d the Bolshevik regime to loyalty and even substantial support. This ' shift initiated the transformation of Jewish Socialism, which led to the demise of an independent Jewish labor movement outside the Bolshevik ) party. . The top priority for the Bolsheviks was to split the Bund at several , stages. Since the break between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks in 1.903, 'the Bund and its demand for Jewish national-cultural autonomy was , regarded as nationalist and counter-revolutionar¡ as Lenin often (and, ,, i¡ could be argued, mistakenly) pointed out.12 S7ar,
lies and slander that are spread about the Jews. This is a survival of ancient feudal times, when the priests burned heretics at the stake, when the peasants
lived in slaver¡ and when the people were crushed and inarticulate. This ancient, feudal ignorance is passing away; the eyes of the people are being
J
10
lbid., p. 135.
SeeGitelman, JewishNationality,pp. 16G-63; SaloWBaron, TheRussianJewsunderTsars and Soviets,2nd ed. (NewYork: Schocken Books, 1987), pp. 181-87. See John Bunzl, Klassenkampf in der Diaspora: Zur Gesch¡chte der jüdischen Aibeiterbewe-
gung (Yienna: Europa-Verlag, 1 975), p. 1 37.
DekrcU sovetskoi v/ast; Vol. 3 (Moscow: Gosizdat, 1964), p. 93. English translation in: Hyman Lumer(ed.), V.l.LeninontheJewishQuestion (NewYork: lnternational Publishers, 1974),pp.
14142-
For Lenin's attitude towards the Bund see Mario Kessler, Antisemitismus, Zionismus und Sozialismus: Arbeiterbewegung und jüdische Frage im 20. Jahrhundert (Mainz: Decaton, 1993),
pp.102-15. j,
51
-*-_----^-"-----n
The Civil War and the Allied Intervention facilitated the splitting of the Bund, the fighting isolated the Ukrainian part of the Bund from the rest of the organization. At the beginning of 1'91'9, the majority of the Ukrainian Bund re-org anized itself under Moissei Rafes and Alexander Chemerisky as the Communist Bund (Kombund). Simultaneousl¡ the majority wing of another Jewish Socialist group' the United Jewish Socialist 'Worker's Part¡ converted itself into the United Jewish Communist Party. In }y'r;ay 1'91'9 these two organizations combined as the Komfarband (Communist Alliance), which was accepted into the Communist Party of Russia in August of the same year. Developments were much the same in Belorussia. A Jewish Communist Party had been founded there as early as January 1'91.9, calling attention in a declaration to specific activities in the Jewish milieu which could best be carried out if they arc organized within the Communist Party. This party would be closely connected with the Russian Communist Party but not identical with it. However, this group, which was probably dominated by former Bundists, lasted only two months. As the Kornførband of Belorussia and Lithuania it, too, served as an intermediate stage before integration into the Russian Communist Par-
ty." AII
these voluntary initiatives were inspired by the Bolshevik's un-
compromising fight against anti-Semitism, which was particularly rife in the Ukraine. In contrast, the negotiations in Russia were less amicable. OriginalIy, after an internal shift to the left, the Bund had wanted relatively autonomous association with the Russian CR in much the same way that the Communist organizations of the Ukraine, Belorussia and Georgia were associated with the Russian party. At Minsk in 1'920 the congress of the Bund passed a resolution to this effect' A strong minority, however, opposed any association with the Russian CP and the Comintern. The minority's spokesman, Rafail Abramcvjch. warned that such a move would sound the Bund's death knell, .
ft..,..ÊeeÃ4osseilRafes, Ocherki poistoriiBunda(Moscow: Moskovskij rabochij, 1923)'pp.284ffiq&ìrd[Àgurski, Evreiski rabochiivkommunisticheskomdvìzhenii 1917-1921 gg.(Mosã&*ovskij rabochij, 1 926), pp. 98-1 07.
w
since the communist Party was not prepared
to accept any independent Jewish proletarian political organization. The Bund's attitude to the national question, which he had supported for more than twenty years, was diametrically opposed to that of the Communisrs: As carriers of the banner of the Bund, your days are numbered. In the future you will appear under the banner of the Russian Communist party. [You] will soon meft into the Russian communist P arty andwill lose on the way all that is dear to every Bundist.la
Though it had some effec, the majority unforrunarely disregarded this w4rning. Before entering into negotiations to join the Russian Communist Part¡ the Bund insisted on setting up a commission to safeguard its member's interests. This consisted of three Bundists,íÒne comrntern '?epresentative and three Yevsektsia officials. The commission arrived ''' at a majority decision that the Bund should be disbanded within three months. Dissolution, however, needed the agreement of the Bund, which v/as to be obtained at a conference in February 1921.The Russian part oJ the Bund voted 47 to 29 to disband itself.1s Smaller groups of Bundists did not srop insisting on narional and cultural autonomy under socialist conditions, and continued ro resisr the victorious regime. As a result, in February 1921 the Bund's Moscow clubrooms were searched twice, its leading members arrested, and all material found was confiscated. In the same month there were mass ariests of Bundists in Kiev, Kharkov, Rostov on the Don, Odessa and vitebsk. By the end of March all the Bund's existing organizarions and groups in Russia were banned or disbanded. The history of the Jewish 'Worker's Bund in Russia effectively came to an end.16 Most former : members lost on the way to the Russian Communist party ,,all that was dear to every Bundist".
.
14 15 16
Quoted ¡n Bernard K. Johnpoll, The Politics of Futil¡ty: The General Jewish Worker's Bund Po I an d, 1 I 1 7-1 943 (lhhaca, NY: Cornelt Un¡versity press, 1 967), p. 1 02. See ibid., p. 103.
of
See ibid.
53
--l The Bund continued ro exisr as an independent organization in the new Republic of Poland, where it had considerable influence on the left wing of the Socialist movement. Its criticism of soviet policies became increasingly sevefe, although the Polish Bundists, like many other leftwing socialists, were well aware of the fact that, in Isaac Deutscher's words, the October Revolution created the most advanced forms of social organization fot the most backward of economies: it set up frameworks of social ownership and planning around underdeveloped and archaic productive forces, and partly
around a vacuum. The theoretical Marxist conception of the revolution was thereby turned upside down. The new'productive relations' being above the existing productive forces were also above the understanding of the great maiority of the people; and so the revolutionary government defended and developed them against the will of the maiority. Bureaucratic despotism
took place of Soviet democracy. The State, far from withering awa¡ assumed unprecedented, ferocious power'17
But during the first ten or eleven years of the soviet regime, the Bolsheviks adopted to a considerable extent the projects of national autonomy thar the Austro-Marxisrs and the Bund had elaborated at the beginning of the century and that Lenin had supported aftet 1,9'1.7.18 ,,The \Wistrich wrote' ,,showed proof of early Bolshevik leaders", Robert greater rolerance (or perhaps indifference) and did not decisively clamp down on zionist organizations before t924... In certain respects the Bolsheviks in the 1920s rook over the former Bundist policy of culturalnarional autonomy while outlawing the Bund and other Jewish Socialist well as bourgeois] parties as obsolete remnants of the ancient refas
17
19
Vallentine, Mitchell, 1979), pp.273-74. For a detailed discussion see Matthias Vetter, Antisemiten und Bolschewiki: Zum Verháltnis von Sowjetsystem und Judenfeindschaft 1917-1 939 (Berlin: Metropol, 1 995).
oxford lsaac Deutscher, The Prophet outcastTrotsky, 1g2g-1940 (NewYork and oxford: University Press, 1980), P.514.
18
One temporary consequence of this policy was a flourishing SociaSist Jewish culture. This meant an improvement of the status of the Yiddish language, the mother rongue of over 70 percent of Soviet Jews, the establishment of a nerwork of Yiddish schools, scientific instirutes, - publishing houses, newspapers and theatres. Yiddish gained the srarus of an official language in the Ukraine and in Belorussia. At the begin-ning of the 1930s, there were 339 Yiddish schools in Belorussia and 831 in the Ukraine. In Kiev, a Jewish university institute was created. yiddish literary production began to flourish: 238 titles were published in 1928, rising to 668 in 1933, with a total run of 2,5 million copies for a Jewish population in the U. S. S. R. of about 3 million.2o . It is important to note that Soviet opposition to Zionism in the 1920s was on the whole untainted with anti-Semitism. Propaganda against the Jewish state was largely left in the hands of Yevsektsia functionar"ies. In favor of promoring Yiddish, the Yevsektsia was often responsible for closing down Hebrew schools and publications. By repressing religion and building a ,,socialist Jewish nation", Jewish tradition and history would largely be removed from the public sphere. But plans to cJeate a territorial base for Jewish national existence on an enclosed areain the crimea or in Biro-Bidzhan in the Far East ignored the social aspirations and spontaneous feelings of Soviet Jewry.21 The cultural life of Soviet Jews was directed ,,wirh merhods that resembled those of an enlightened despotism rather than Soviet democracy", as Enzo Traverso summarized this process.22 A detailed survey of the Jewish policy of the stalinized Communist party of the Soviet Union lies outside the rank of this brief study. It should be noted, however, that Sralin's policy did not officially break with the early Soviet hostility towards anti-Semitism.
one of the very few soviet publications of the 1980s which can be regarded as scholarly'
praktiki social-sion¡zma impl¡citly ac¡nowledged this iact. See L.Ya. Dadiani, Kritika ¡deotog¡¡ ¡ (Moscow: Mysl, 1986) p. 99, and pass¡rn. Black Hundreds," ldem Robert s.wistrich, ,,Anti-Zionism in the ussR: From Lenin to the soviet the Middte Easf (London and Totowa, NJ: and tsrael Zio,n: communism, against rn" ten é1.1,
20
see Enzo Trave rso, The Marxists and the Jewish euestion:The History of a Debate, 1g4s1943 (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press,
1
994), p. 1SS.
2'l
Seee.g.AllanL.Kagedan, TheFormat¡onof JewishTerritoriat tJnits, l924-19S7,ph.D.Thesis (NewYork: Columbia University, 1985); Vetter, Antisem¡ten und Bolschewiki, pp.140-44.
22
Traverso, Maq¡sts, p. 155.
55
The fractional struggles within the CPSU of the yeats 1'926-1'927, when Stalin employed anti-Semitic undertones against Trotsk¡ Kamenev and Zinoviev, marked the beginning of a process in which the Jews, like other national minorities in the Soviet Union, became victims of a policy which finally led to a Great Russian chauvinism with a pseudoSocialist face. The re-emergence of anti-Semitic sentiments within Soviet society in the 1920s had different and complex reasons. With the beginning of the New Economic Policy (NEP) in 1'921', Jews were able to expand into all areas of Soviet life and many of them excelled in economic, political and cultural activities. But they were faced with anti-Semitic prejudices created by decades of propaganda from Czarist officials and the Orthodox Church which still ran rampant among the population. Russian and Ukrainian peasants viewed with undisguised distrust the Jewish small traders, who availed themselves of the opportunities offered by the NEP. Both open and secret opponents of the October Revolution came to think that it had done little more than upset evefything for the sake of the Jews. The symbolic figure was Leon Trotsky' At the same time non-Jewish Bolsheviks reacted skeptical, since many Jews had not left the Mensheviks, the Social Revolutionaries, the Bund or the Poalei Zion untll after L91'7 ' Since those Jewish Bolsheviks, organized in the Yevsektsia' had mounted a particularly intensive and intolerant campaign against Zionism, religion and Hebrew culture, they soon enjoyed a reputation as intolerant careerists. At the same time taking up such avant-guard forms as Futurism, Jewish intellectuals caused ill-feeling among those Russian colleagues who clung to cultural traditions 'grown on Russian soil.' Specific disagreements between Jewish and non-Jewish Communists were mixed with general issues. The distrust of every 'alien' was, after all, only a reflex of that Russian self-centefedness which inspired Stalin's slogan of 'socialism in a single country' in the fractional struggles against Trotsk¡ Kamenev and Zinoviev. ,,The Bolsheviks of Jewish origin were least of all inclined to idealíze rural Russia in her primitivism and barbarity and to drag along at a 'snail's pace' the native peasant caÍt", as Isaac Deutscher wrote.23
56
stalin's vague appeal to nationalistic sentiments fell on fertile ground, especially with the young workers. They became convinced that Jews, who were temporarily employed in factories, used their position as a stepping stone to admission into institutions of higher learning. yuri Larin mentioned this argument in his book Eurei i antisemitizm z sssR, by far the best analysis of the grounds of anti-Semitism in the Soviet -Union during the 1920s.2a A February 1929 survey of anti-Semitism among trade union members concluded: Anti-Semitic feeling among workers is spreading mainly in the backward part of the working class that has close ties with the countryside, and among .
' *
woman.2s... Many facts reveal the presence of Youth organization and party members among the anti-Semites... Anti-Semitism somerimes takes the form
of shouted curses, threats and pogrom-like instigation, as well as anonymous inscriptions and threatening letters... There are cases in which Jews who had-been abused kept silent about
it and made no appeal to any organization, apparently from fear ofpersecution or because they did not expect to receive much attention.26
Unfortunately Larin's book appeared only in Russian and was, therefore, hardly accessible for the vast majority of 'Western readers. A few years later the Austrian communist otto Heller wrote Der (Jntergang 'des ludentums, which was marred by the author's unconditional allegiance to stalinism. Because this book was translated into French and Polish, it influenced 'Wesrern opinion to a greater exrent. The Jewish question had been solved once and for all in the Soviet Union, Heller wrote. Next year in Jerusalem? This question was answe¡ed by history long ago. The Jewish proletarians and the stârving artisans of Eastern Europe pose a
,l
n
lsaacDeutscher,TheProphetunarmed:Trotsky, 1921-1929(Newyorkandoxford: oxford
24
Yu. O.
25
lbid., p.238.
:¿8
lbid., p.239.
University Press, 1980), p. 259.
Larin, Evrei i antisemitizm
v SSSB (Moscow and Leningrad:
Gosizdat, 1929), p. i 33_
57
i
very different question: next Year in a Socialist society!
\ÙØhat is
Jerusalem
to the Jewish proletarian? Next Year in Jerusalem? Next year in the Crimea! Next year in Biro-Bidzhan!27
But in 1,930 the Yevsektsia was disbanded and its relatively autonomous activities were suppressed. The ideology of 'socialism in a single country' no longer had any need of the support of culturally independent, revolutionary Jews. However, only some eight thousands Jews decided to live permanently in Biro-Bidzhan. The local administration as well as former functionaries of the Yevsektsia and other Jewish organizations were made responsible for this failure to build a Jewish national homeland. Many of them disappeared in the 'purges' of. L9371.938.28 Hence, the revolutionary government did not fulfil many of the promises of the October Revolution for the majority of Soviet Jews.
'*'I;ir,Í,'äi:äri;:ilïï"*
and in Belorussia, perperrated by the 'SØhites, changed the situation fundamentally.'when counter-revolutionaries launched anti-semitic pogroms, the Bolsheviks came to look like saviors of the Jews. The leading Poalei zionist Nahman syrkin echoed this shift of sentiment .towards the revolution:
'
¡ülho will help us? Jews all over the world are beginning to realize with greatü force that the destruction of the capitalist sysrem carries with it their civil and national redemption... Even Jewish capitalists prefer Lenin
to Kolchak. Lenin may deprive them of their property but Kolchak will split their heads open.3o
The October Revolution and the Civil '$Øar in Russia led to a divergènce of political orientarion between the bourgeois General Zionists 'ãnd the majority of the Zionist-Socialist parties, among whom the pZ was the most important force. one purpose of the Balfour Declaration of November 2, 1917, was to weaken the Marxist elements among the Russian Jews by srrengthening Zionist rendencies. Christopher Sykes al:gues,
The October Revolution caused a marked shift to the left 'Slorld-'llide vant sections of the Socialist Zionists, organized in the Alliance Workers of Zion, founded tn 1907 ('Wehfarband Poalei Zion; PZ). tJntll then the Alliance following the precepts of its theoretician Ber Borokhov (1881-19L7), who supported the idea of promoting revolution in the countries where Jewish workers were living, but simultaneously encouraging them to emigrate to Palestine and found a Socialist Jewish state. The attitude of the PZ to the events in Soviet Russia reflected at first the negative statements of Menshevism, of which the PZ was an integral part.ze Soon afterwards the massacres of the Jews in the Ukraine among rele-
27
Otto Heller, Der lJntergang des Judentums: Die Judenfrage/lhre KritiUlhre Lösung durch den Sozialismus (Berlin and Vienna: Verlag für Literatur und Politik, 1931), pp' 173-74-
28
See Mario Kessler, Antisemitismus, pp. 1 16-32.
29
Forthehistoryof thePoaleZionbeforel9lTseeDavidVital, Zionism:TheFomativeYears (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press,
'l
982).
in the last phase, before November 1,9t7, it was believed that open British support for Zionism would detach Russian Jews from the Bolshevik party and so ensure that the revolution would remain not only moderare but the belligerent ally of France and Britain.3l
David Lloyd George, Great Britain's Prime Minister, testified in his memoirs that, besides British aspirations in the Middle East, anorher reason for the adoption of the Balfour Declaration was the belief
30
Quoted in: Anita shapira, ,,Black Night, white snow: Att¡tudes of the palestinian Labor Movement to the Russian Revolution, 1917-i9,. yonathan Frankel (ed.), Studies in contemporaryJewry. An Annual,vol. lV (NewYork and oxford: oxford univeisity press, 19gg), o.146.
31
Christopher Sykes, Crossroads to Israel (London: Cassell, j 965), p. 22.
59
that if Great Britain declared for the fulfillment oÍ Zionist aspirations in Palestine under her own pledge, one effect would be to bring Russian [pro-
German] Jewry to the cause of the Entente.32
Since its foundation in March 1.91.9, the Communist International saw the Zionist movement as the creation of the Jewish petit bourgeoisie and of misguided intellectuals. The Comintern criticized the illusion
that Palestine was an unpopulated countr¡ only waiting for Jewish immigration, and anticipated bloody conflicts with the Arabs. It characterized Zionism as a tool of British colonialism and saw Poalei Zionism as a petit-bourgeois political movement under a Socialist disguise.33 As a result of these conflicting pressures the Poalei Zionist Party of 'SØorld-'SØide Association, began Russia, the most important part of the to split 1.91.9.The 'right'wing under Zeev Abramovich, which included with Abrahmam Revutsky and Salomon Goldelman two former members of the anti-Bolshevik government of the Ukraine, continued to defend the idea of Jewish settlement in Palestine as the only territory where a Socialist Jewish state could be established. The left wing under Alexander Khashin emphasized the necessity of Jewish participation in the construction of a Socialist society in Soviet Russia as the primary aim of the PZ, although it acknowledged the right of Jewish workers to
an organízed migration to Palestine.3a In light of these new developments, this dichotomy led to a deep division within the PZ on the international level. At its first post-war congress of August 1,920 in Vienna, the organization, which until then had belonged to the Second International, split over the possibility of joining the Third International. Though some of those who opposed this move left the conference, they did not re-join the Second International, which the PZ had just abandoned. Instead they joined the Vienna International and, in 1.923, ended up with its non-revolutionary wing in the
32
David Lloyd George, Memoirs of the Peace Conference, Vol. 2 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1939), p.726.
33
See Mario Kessler, Zionismus und internationale Arbeiterbewegung 1897-1933(Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1 994), pp. 1 1 4-23.
60
Labour and Socialist International (LSI). The remaining left-wing ma-
jority converted the \7orld-Wide Alliance PZ into the Jewish Communist IØorld-'SØide Alliance PZ and commissioned Michael Kohn-Eber to negotiate with the Comintern with a view ro joining it. But the Comintern refused to recognize Kohn-Eber as delegate of a world-wide alliance, since it dealt only with territorially constituted bodies. Therefore, Kohn-Eber was accepted only as the representative of a afflliated organizatíon, the Alliance's Palestinian regional section.3s He was granted a consultative function at the Second Comintern Conin Moscow during the Summer of 1920. Kohn-Eber's rousing speech at the congress, which defined Zionist s€ttlements in Palestine as a part of the ,process to productivize the Jewish masses" and called upon the Comintern to support the ,,possibility of free emigration to Palestine",36 provoked loud objections. Some 'Helegates of Jewish origin also criticized Kohn-Eber's skepticism concerning the revolutionary potential of the Palestinian Arab national movement and his reluctance to agree that the Jewish quesrion could only be gress, which took place
solved
-
in Soviet
Russia.37
The Comintern not only disagreed, but also declared: A glaring example of the deception pracriced on the wo¡king classes of an oppressed nation by the combined efforts of Enrenre imperialism and the bourgeoisie of the same nation is offered by the Zionists Palestine venrure (and by Zionism as a whole, which under the pretense of creating a Jewish State in Palestine in fact surrenders the Arab working people of Palestine, where Jewish workers form only a small
minorit¡ to exploitation by Eng-
land).38
See Mario Offenberg, Kommunismus in Palästina: Nation und Klasse in der antikoloniaten Revolution (Meisenheim: Anton Hain, 1975), p. 95. Kohn-Eber survived the Holocaust. After 1945 he was active in the Austrian Communist Party. Kohn-Eber's speech is printed in: Der Zweite Kongress der Kommunistischen lnternationate: Protokoll derVethandlungen vom 19. Juli in Petrograd und vom 23. Juli bis Z. August 1920 in Moskau (Hamburg: Hoym, 1 921 ), pp. 209-1 4. See ibid., pp. 198, 204-08. lbid., p. 231 . English text in:Jane Degras (ed.), The Connunist lnternational, 1919-1945,yo1. 1 (London: Frank Cass, 1 960), p. 1 44.
61,
The American-Israeli Marxist Joel Beinin emphasized that ,,this basis for condemning Zionism leaves open the question of the correct relationship of the Communists to the Jewish proletariat [in Palestine] which was overwhelmingly loyal to Zionísm."3e The left-wing PZ, therefore, hoped to persuade the Comintern to change its attitude. Just before the Third Comintern Congress a memorandum from the left-wing PZ AIIíance emphasizing its position was delivered to the Executive Committee of the Comintern, the ECCI. Karl Radek, in his position as chairman of the commission for examining the congress mandates, explained to the PZ representatives that the Comintern could not accept their demand to be affiliated with the organization as a Jewish extra-territoial party.ao On July 1'3,1'92'J', the day after the Third Comintern Congress ended, the ECCI reiterated that the PZ could not join the International as a separate body. Indivídua| PZ members were given six months to join Comintern sections in their respective counrries. They should abandon Zionism and the idea of Socialist colonization of Palestine and should accept the famous 21 conditions of admittance to the Comintern.al Referring to the specific historical conditions of Jewish life in Eastern Europe, the ECCI demanded that each regional PZ branch should ioin the Communist party as its Jewish section, without disputing that party's organizational cohesion.a2 In a circular letter the PZ leadership misinterpreted this as a fecognition of its own position.a3 However, a minority within the left-wing PZ wanted to accept the ECCI's demands unconditionally. The Comintern's president Zínovíev welcomed this move in an address directed to the minority's
spokesman Hersch Nagler.aa Because the PZ's ECCI representative, Isidore Saar, had used his position as a Consulrative Member ro supporr the PZ majority insread of the Cominrern, he lost this position.as This incident showed how irreconcilable the positions of the Comin-
tern and the Left-\Wing PZ Alliance were. Contacts were broken off when, at a Danzig conference in June 1922, the majority of the Alliance iejected the comintern's condirions for admission. After that decision the.comintern issued a proclamation requiring all communist parties to support the PZ minority which had accepted the demands of the Comintern unconditionally. In the future, the PZ would be considered as a part of the class-enemy.a6 Only in Palestine, a case which cannot be discussed here, a substantial part of Left-wing Poalei Zionists joined, after years of internal conflicts, the Communist side. Most of these Communists remained in Palestine and formed the Palestine Commuhist Party. Another part decided ro go to the Soviet Union and to parricipate in what was known as the 'Building-up of Socialism.' Unforrunately, only very few of those migrants survived the Stalinist terror of the 1930s.a7 - The main reason why it was impossible to reconcile Communism with Left-wing Zionism was a fundamenral clash of values. \While Communists were concerned with international causes, Left-wing Zionists gave primacy to national aspirations. However, at the beginning of the 1.920s, it was axiomatic for Communists ro believe that the approaching Socialist revolution would also solve the Jewish question, since the
44 39
Joel Beinin, ,,The Palestine Communist Party 1919-1948,' MERIP Reorts, No. 55 (March 1977),
40
See Allweltlicher Jüdischer Kommunistischer Verband Poale Zion (ed.), Dokumente zur
p.5. Anschtussaktion an die Kommun¡st¡sche lnternat¡onale (Vienna: FreieTribüne, 1921), pp.5455 (hereafter qu oled as Dokumente)i Protokotl des lll. Kongresses der Kommunistischen In' ternationate(Moskau, 22. Juni bis 12. Juli 1921), (Hamburg: Hoym, 1921)' pp. 146' 325-26'
I,
p. 1 86'
+l
See Die Kommun¡st¡sche lnternationale,l 921 , No.
42
See Dre Tát¡gkeit der Exekutive und des Präsidiums des E.K. der Kommunistischen lnterna' tionale vom 1s. Jut¡ t gzt bis 1 . Februar 1922 (Pelrograd: Verlag der Kommunistischen lnter nalionale, 1922), pp.53, 147-48.
43
Dokumente,pp.ST-92.
1
See Bericht über die Tätigkeit des Präsidiums und der Exekutive der Kommunistischen lnter-
nationale für die Zeit vom 6. März bis 11. Juni 1922 (Hamburg: Hoym, 1922), p. 12; Hersch Nagler, ,,Die Kommunist¡sche lnternationale und die jüdische Arbeiterbewegu ng," tnternationale Pressekorrespondenzllnprekorrl, 1922, No. 1 05, pp. 735-36. 45
See Bericht íiber die Tätigkeit, pp. 1 1-'t2.
46
See lnprekorr, 1 922, No. 148, p. 954.
47
This was the case with those activists who formed lhe Labor Brigade in order to work in Jewish settlements at the Crimea ¡n the 1920s. See Anita Shapira, ,,The Left in the Gdud Ha'avoda (Labor Brigade) and the Palestine Communist Party," Daniel Carpi and Gedaliáyogev (eds.), Zionism: studies in the H¡stoty of the z¡on¡st Movement and of the Jew¡sh communists in Palestine,Vol.l (Tel Aviv:Tef AvivUniversityPress, 1975), pp. l27-SS.Asmall pZgroupwas allowed to exist in the soviet union until 1928. see Guido G. Goldman, Zionism under soviet Rule, 1917-1928 (NewYork: Heizl Press, 1960), pp.92-97.
63
removal of exploitation would remove the causes of anti-Semitism. But the rise of Stalinism only a decade later led to the political disarming and physical defeat of those Communists who were sensitive to the demands of a new policy which could help European Jews in face of the growing danger of Nazism.
The Bund and the Labour and Socialist International
The Labour and Socialist International (LSI), founded in May 1923, the international organization of the Social Democratic parties until tire Second'!Øorld !Var. From the very beginning the LSI was confronted with numerous problems. The problem of Jewish emancipation had been one of the main issues addressed by the international labor movement since the late-nineteenth century. As a radical revolutionary part¡ the General Jewish'SØorker's Bund of Poland had no choice but to join the LSI, since the Bund's conception of national emancipation of the Jews was incompatible with the 'assimilationist' perspective of the Contmunist International. 'ùüithin the LSI, the Bund was also confronted with the activities of left-wing Zionists. All these constellations led to debates and conflicts.
'ivas
The Bund and the LSI: Proletarian Emancipation and National Emancipation From the time of its founding în 1897 the Bund (at this time operating in the territories of Russia, Russian Poland, and Lithuania) was concerned with the future of the Jews in the countries where they lived, i. e. in Eastern and East Central Europe. Jewish workers, the Bund insisted, should fight against anti-Semitism together with their non-Jewish com-
65
rades. The leading Bundists saw thefu pafty as the rcpresentative of the Jewish workers within the general labor movement. In the course of the revolutionary struggles against Czarism before 1.91.4,the Bund no longer remained only a worker's party, ít had also become a national party. Its strength lay in the search for a dialectical synthesis between proletarian internationalism and the defense of an oppressed national culture.
,,The Bund's militants," as Enzo Traverso summed up, ,,placed their internationalism in a Jewish national tradition; they considered it possible and necessary to struggle for the liberation of the Russian [and Polish] Jews within the perspective of a world socialist revolution."l Unlike the Zionists, the Bund made no demand for a Jewish territory, nor did it support assimilation. The Bundists fought for full civic equality of the Jewish people and for their right to develop their historical and cultural identity through their own language and institutions. They sought acceptance instead of tolerance, and equality for ordinary people. 'S7ithin the labor movement in Czarist Russia, later in independent Poland, and in the International, the Bund worked for unity between Jewish and non-Jewish workers, but emphasizing its right to represent the interests of Jewish workers within the movement as a single body. As is well-known, this attitude brought the Bund into sharp opposition with the Bolsheviks and their concept of unity and amalgamation, which precluded a separate revolutionary panty for Jewish workers. Therefore, the Bund left the Second congress of the Russian Social Democratic'Søorker's Party (RSDÏüP) in 1903, when its minimal conditions for adherence to the party were rejected.
The Bund and the International: The Beginning of the Debate Before 1914
At the Paris congress of the Second International in 1900, the Bund formed the largest single bloc within the Russian
delegates of delegation.z
Enzo Traverso, The Marxists and the Jewish Question:The History of a Debate, 1843-1943
(Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1994), p. 100.
Four years later, at the Amsterdam congress of the International, the RSDWR the Social Revolutionaries and the Bund sent their own delegations to the congress. Each party demanded to be given one of the two votes accorded to the Russian section. The Bund refused Chaim Zhitlovsky's proposal to establish an independent Jewish secrion, as ir did not define itself as a represenrative of a world-wide Jewish narion, but rather as a Russian Jewish parry, deserving of a vore within the Russian section. Therefore, it requested the International Socialist Bureau (ISB) to grant a third vote to the Russian section. 'This request was denied by the ISB, and the Bund therefore claimed the seat within the Russian section which had also been claimed by the Social Revolutionaries. A minority of the ISB members, like Victor Adler, supported the Bund's demand. Even after the Bund's merger with the RSDWP in 1906, the Bund made a further atempr ro gain represenra'tion in the International as an autonomous bod¡ but failed agaín. ,,The rebuffs to the Bund in 1904 and 1906 notwirhsranding," as Jack Jacobs wiites, ,,the Jewish parry was respected by many of the other parties represented in the International, and had some impact on matters of direct concern to it, such as the debates within the International on emigration and immigration. Respecr for the Bund, and the long standing ties it had already established with other socialist parties in the International by 1,907, also played a role ... when rhe International was confronted with requests for admission from other Jewish socialist parties i. e. the Zionist Socialist nØorker's Party ... , the Jewish Socialist'\ùØorkers Party, and the Poalei Zion."3 ln 1.907, the three Zionist and 'terrirorialist' parties mentioned by Jacobs called for the establishment of a Jewish secrion, a demand which
See Ezra Mendelsohn, ,,The Jewish Socialist Movement and the Second lnternational:The Struggle for Recognition," Jewish Social Studies, Vol. XXVI (1964), No. g, pp. 131-4b; Mario Kessler, Zionismus und internationale Arbeiterbewegung 1894 b¡s 1933 (Bertin: Akademie Verlag, 1994), pp. 85-100;Jack Jacobs, ,,Die Sozialistische lnternationale, der Antisemitismus und die jüdisch-sozialislischen Parteien des Russischen Reiches", Wladislaw Hedeler/Mario Kessler/Gert Schäfer (eds.), Ausblicke auf das vergangene Jahrhundert: Die potitik der
internationalen Arbeiterbewegung von 1900 b¡s 2000. Festschrift für Theodor Bergmann (Hamburg: VSA, 1 996), pp. 1 56-68. Jacobs, Sozialistische lnternationale, p. 160 (quoted from the English manuscript).
67
followed from their claims that the Jewish Proletariat was entitled to the same rights as proletarians of other nationalities. The Bund reacting negativel¡ argued that such a section was impossible as well as undesirable. Its spokesmen, Vladimir Medem and Vladimir Kossovsky, pointed out that the International was a political organization, concerned only with ,,political" issues, disregarding national interests. No extraterritorial peoples could be admitted.a On the eve of the Stuttgart congress of the International in 1,907, the Jewish Socialist 'Worker's Party became a sub-section of the Social Revolutionaries and thereby gained a consultative vote for the congress.s During the same congress the ISB decided to give a consultative vote to the Zionist-Socialists, a decision which the Bureau overturned a year late# The struggle to establish a Jewish section within the International lasted until 1911. Ãgainst the strict opposition of the Bund, the Poalei Zion led this struggle and directed several memoranda to the International, demanding national representation for the Jewish proletariat within the framework of an independent section. FinallS in 1911, the Poalei Zion and the two other parties, the Zionist-Socialists and the 'SØorker's Part¡ addressed a joint appeal to the ISB Jewish Socialist that emphasized the national character of the Jewish people, and its historical and psychological unity. The appeal was not successful because of the position taken by the Bund and because of the ongoing refusal of the International to accept extraterritorial parties.T
See W. Medem, ,,Ein national¡siischer Vorschlag," Die Neue Zeit,Vol. XXVlll/2 (1910), pp. 51.
Opposition to Zionism and to Bolshevism: The Bund and the International Social Democratic Movement Between the'Sflorld'ìlars
The Bund belonged to those segments of the International which opposed the war in 1,91,4. lt continued to oppose Zionist representation within the ISB to which the Poalei Zion was admitted in 1.91.6.8In December 1.91.7, the British Labour Party formulated the final draft of its 'War Aims Memorandum. which contained a clause stating that: The British Labour movement demands for the Jews in all countries the residence and trade and " same elementary rights of tolerance, freedom of equal citizenship that ought to be extended to all the inhabitants of every
'
nation. It furthermore expresses the opinion that Palestine should be set free from the harsh and oppressive government of the Turk, in order that this country may form a Free State, under international guarantee to which such of the Jewish people as desire to do so may return, and may work out
their salvation free from interference by those of alien race or religion.e
The statement, as vague as it was with regard to the right of the Jews to 'return' to Palestine and to the character of the 'Free State' which it endorsed, was essentially favorable to Zionism and constituted the first official support of Zionist aspirations given by a British political party. The Bund reacted promptly. Its spokesman, Henryk Erlich, protested sharply during a meeting with British Labour politicians against this passage of the so-called Henderson-'Webb Declaration. He underlined the Bund's demand for equal rights for the Jews and emphasized that the party ought to add guarantee of national-cultural autonomy. The establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, as Erlich pointed out, would
748-
See A. Tartakower, ,,Zur Geschichte des ¡údischen Sozialismus," Der Jude,Vol.Vlll (1924), No.
7^eO7
See Mendelsohn, Jewish Socialist Movement, pp. 141-421- Nathan Weinstock, Le pain de misère: thistoire du mouvement ouvrier juif en Europe, Vol. 1 (Paris: Maspéro, 1984), pp.22930.
See Mendelsohn,,,Jewish Socialist Movement," p. 144.
I
See Tartakower, ,,Geschichte," No.
o
Quoted from Gideon Shimoni, ,,Poalei Zion: A Zionist Transplant in Britain (1 905*1 945)," PererY. Medding (ed.), Sfudles rn Contemporary Jewry,Vol.ll (Bloomington: University of lndiana Press, 1986),p.232.
1 1
, p. 642.
69
---------
1
l i
mean that the Arab majority there would fall under the domination of a
handful of Jewish chauvinists. The statement of the Labour Part¡ Erlich pointed out, had an imperialistic odor. Moreover, a Jewish state in the Middle East would endanger the Jewish struggle for equal civil rights in Europe. Vladimir Kossovsky characterized the Zionist attempt to establish a Jewish state in Palestine as ridiculous, insofar as the Arabs were and would remain an absolute majority of that country's population. The British Labour Part¡ Kossovsky charged, was unable to break with bourgeois ideology; its leaders remained ,,opportunists" and were unable to understand what Marxism and Socialism really meant.10
The Bund's rejection of the plan to re-establish the Second International after the First'Víorld rùlar did not surprise anyone. The bulk of those Bundists who remained outside the Soviet Republic after 1'91'7 eventually opposed even more strongly the Bolshevik project of establishing a Third, Communist International. Inside Russia, the majority of the Bundists declared a boycott of the elections for the Second Soviet Congress and declared their opposition to the new regime at the 8'h Bund congress in December 1'91.7. During the Civil !Øar with its murderous pogroms, many Russian and Ukrainian Jews saw in the Red Army their sole hope of salvation, and began therefore gradually to move from open hostility to the October Revolution and the Bolshevik regime to substantial loyalty and even support. This shift initiated the transformation of Jewish Socialism, which eventually led to the destruction of an independent Jewish labor movement outside the Bolshe-
vik party.
-Süithin
the Soviet Union, Bolsheviks concerned with Jewish affairs made splitting up the Bund a top priority and were eventually successful.11 The Bund in Poland also split. The pro-Soviet minority constituted itself as the Kornbund (Communist Bund) and, together with the pro-
AryehGelbard, DerjüdischeArbeiterbundBußlandsimRevolutionsiahrl9lT(Vienna: ropa-Verlag, 1 982), pp.65-66.
Eu-
See the essay,,The Russian Revolution and the Eastern European Jewish Workels Movement" in this volume.
70
Communist offspring of the PoaleiZíon, joined the Comintern between 1921 and1923. The Jewish llorker's Bund of Poland decided not ro join the LSI which was founded in May 1.923 in Hamburg as a successor ro the Second International. Thus, unlike most of the forces, which until then were united in the Vienna Union (the so-called Second-and-a-half-International), the Bund remained independent of both of the two major camps in the international labor movement in the 1920s: the Communist and the Social Democratic Internationals. Very few other worke¡'s parties, of which the Norwegian \Øorker's Party was the most influential, adopted a parallel stance. Nevertheless, the Bundist leaders commented critically on the policy of the LSI.
The two central issues on the LSI agenda which we¡e of concern ro the Bund were the attitude of the international labor movemenr ro'ivards Zionism and the prospects of the Jews in Palestine. As in the years tefore 1.91.4, the Bund was in strict opposition to Zionism in general and to the Poalei Zion in particular. This attitude was clearly summed up in a letter by Henryk Erlich to Friedrich Adler, rhe secretary of the LSI, dated September 24, 1929. Erlich reminded Adler of the ,,pro-Zionist statements and actions of certain European labour leaders," particularly Emile Vandervelde, the Belgian Socialist, and the Frenchman Léon Blum.12 Vandervelde was a member of a delegation of prominent LSI representatives who tried to inform the International about the situation of Polish workers under the Pilsudski regime. Erlich criticized Vandervelde, ,,who held the mandate of the International as a whole," for having thought ,,it possible to set himself in blunt opposition to the Jewish working class of Poland," and for acting against the expressed will of the Polish secrion of the International. the PPS.
'12
All quotat¡ons from Erlich's letter to Adler, dated September 24, 1929, are from: Archiwum Lewicy Polskiej (ALP), Warsaw, ll Miedzynarodówka, Sygn. 150/lV-25 h, pp. 169-72. The German version of this letter can be found in: lnternationaal lnstituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis (llSG), Amsterdam, LSI Archives, No.356, pp.3-7.
71,
bourgeois politicians, and
Knowing that Vandervelde had expressed his support for Zionism in general and for labor Zionism in Palestine in particular,l3 Erlich, accompanied by Mieczyslaw Niedzalkowski, said to Vandervelde right after his arrival in Warsaw: It
is very
In July and August 1,929 the 1,6'6 Zioníst Congress, which founded the Jewish Agenc¡ took place in Zurich. One of the prominent Social-ists who was engaged in forming the Jewish Agency was Léon Blum. Erlich criticized harshly Blum's ,,disgraceful speech in which [he] ass,rred that the Rabbis and the Jewish money-bags that they could fully count upon the support of the Socialist International ... A greâter insult to the Jewish working class is absolutely unthinkable." 'Erlich's bitter letter had just been written when the terrible news of bloody fights in Palestine arrived. The events of August 1929 in Palestine, during which Arab and Jewish militants clashed head-on, cost hundreds of peoples their lives; several hundred more were wounded on both sides, and the atmosphere between Arabs and Jews was poisoned
far from my intention to question your personal freedom of opinion
in the matter of Zionism. If you should find the time during your stay in to have a friendly discussion with us in a closed meeting we are
'Warsaw
always ready to take up the discussion on this subject and we shall be glad to be able to make clear to you our anti-Zionist point of view. But will you please consider the situation in which you
will place yourself and
us with
your pro-Zionist demonstration. In Poland there is no other Jewish Socialism than the 'Bund'. \7e represent the great majority of the Jewish working class of Poland. Anything in the ranks of the Jewish workers means antiZionist. The so-called'Jewish Socialists' (Poale Zion), who are affiliated to
ïor
'llho is to blame for all of
to Adler, insisted to Vandervelde:
-
these tragic events?
asked:
It is certain that
British
Imperialism which has exclusively followed its own interests in Palestine, is playing an
Zionism in Poland is a clerical, chauvinist, reactionary Jewish bourgeoisie, which is an integral partoÍ the general Polish reaction, and is in a constant and most dour struggle with Jewish and Polish Socialism. You cannot be the guest of the Jewish working class and of the Zionists in Poland at the
ye-ars.
In an appendix to the above-mentioned letter, Erlich
the Socialist International are an absolute cipher in Poland.
as he had reported
to announce publicly his enthusiasm for Zi-
onism."
unworthy,
a
hypocritical game with the Zionists and with the
Arabs. British Imperialism has known how to squeeze the full use out of its mandate and of the Balfour declaration. It has calmly left the Zionists to
,
revel in their exaggerated hopes, and has prepared for itself in the Jewish colonization in Palestine a scapegoat, a lightning conductor for the anger
1ü7hat
same time. would you say if a prominent member of the International were to come to Brussels and take part there in a demonstration in favour of the Liberal or the Catholic oartv?
of the Arabs.
He concluded:
At the time the Bund and the PPS had formed a bloc for the local elections in Tarnow. ,,It was precisely at this time," Erlich continued, ,,that Comrade Vandervelde thought it reasonable, in spite of the Polish Socialist Party and the 'Bund', to give in effect an invitation to the Jewish
13
Emile Vandervelde expressed his viewpoint e.g. in: ,,Die jüdischen Siedlungen in Palästina," Die Gesellschalt, Vol. V (1928), No. 2, pp. 163-71 ; idem, Le pays d'lsrael: Un marxiste en Palestine (Paris: Rieder, 1929), German ed.: Schaffendes Palástina(Dresden: Carl Reissner
Verlag,1930).
'S7e
must make clear that not only British Imperialism, not only Arab fanaticism, but also Zionism share the responsibility for this. May the Zionists in the International at Ieast learn something from the recent events.
M"y they cease supporting the pernicious work of Zioniim, because the Jewish working masses are the only ones who will pay for this.la
14
ALP, 150/lV-25
h,p.172.
73
This characterization of the August events was quite similar to the first statements made on this issue by the Palestinian Communist Party. The outbreak of the disturbances came as a complete surprise to the leadership of the PCP. On the eve of the first bloody outbreaks the party had issued a \eaflet which was pacifist in tone.1s A leaflet issued right after the beginning of the riots characterized the troubles as an imperialist provocation, and indicated that Britain, afraid of the possible unity of Arab and Jewish workers, was instigating racial hatred to divide the two communities, and, to this end, was aided by Zionist leaders and by Arab effendls. The leaflet of the PCP called on Arab and Jewish workers to stop the fratricide.16 Joseph Berger-Barzilai, the deputy secretary of the PCP, characterized the events both as a ,,pogrom" and a ,,generaI Arab uprising."lTBut only the latter dimension was considered in the statement on the events of 1,929 issued by the Political Secretariat of the ECCI.l8 Unlike the Comintern, the LSI did not issue an official resolution about the Palestine events,- but Friedrich Adler made his negative attitude to Zionism very clear on other occasions.le He wrote to Erlich: But your letter has made me conscious again of the fact that the 'Bund' still holds aloof from the mass organisation of the international proletariat which
finds expression in the LSI. It is a pity not only for the Labour movement in Poland but for the whole International. It should be your own special task
to represent in the LSI the interests of the great
masses
of the Jewish
15
"Do not change the Wailing Wall to a wall of hatred between you," Hebrew leaflel of the CC/ PCB qouted in: Musa Budeiri, The Palestine Communist Party, 1919-1 948: Arab and Jew in the Struggle for lnternat¡onalísm (London: lthaca Press, 1979), p. 18.
6
See Mario Kessler, ,,Die Augustereignisse 1929 in Palästina, die KP Palästinas und die Kommun¡st¡sche lnternationale," asien-afrika-lateinamerika, Vol. XIX (1991), No.3, pp.517-29; idem, ,,Der arabisch-iüdische Konflikt 1929: Der erste Bürgerkrieg in Palästina," Sozialismus, Vol.30 (2004) Nos.7-8, pp.58-62, reprinted in: ldem, Eln Funken Hoffnung:Verwicklungen - Antisemit¡smus, Nahost, Stalinismus (Hamburg: VSA, 2004), pp. 64-7 4.
17
J.B., ,,Das Blutbad im 'Heiligen Land'," lnternationale Pressekorrespondenzllnprekorrl,1929,
18
See,,Resolution des Politsekretar¡als des EKKI zur Aufstandsbewegung in Arabistan," /nprekorr,1930, No. 1 1, pp.258-61.
1
19
proletariat outside Palestine, and you should not be surprised if misunderstandings come out, as you do not help to give the non-Zionist part of the Jewish working class the represenrarion due to them in the LSI.20
Adler reminded Erlich of an LSI executive declaration of August 1928, stressed ,,the importance of winning over also the Jewish Bund -_which for close co-operation with the other socialist parties of Poland" and instructed the LSI secretariat ,,in case of necessity to offer its services towards this end at the appropriate moment." Adler expresses his ,,view" to the Bundists that they ,,cannot expecr the whole LSI to agree with your [the Bund's] opinion." However, they ,,would in no way be isolated. in the LSI." In contrast, the Bund's entering into the International ,,would strengthen precisely those parties whose views closely approximate to your [the Bund's] own." Adler certainly had in mind his own þarty, the Austrian Social Democraric ÏØorker's Party (SDAPö¡.zr Erlich responded to Adler on November B. He informed him that Adler's letter arrived just when the Bund's Party Committee was meeting. The meeting's agenda included a proposal to call an extraordinary p.afty conference to decide upon the affiliation of the Bund to the LSI. During this discussion, Erlich informed the Committee of the contenrs of the letters between the two politicians, and a resolution was passed, which stated: ,,The Central Committee is instructed to place the quesItion-of affiliation to the LSI before the Party in the near future."22 Nineteen committee members voted for the proposal, and seventeen agâinst, while one abstained from voting. . The small minority held by the pro-LSI fraction within rhe Bund's leadership demonstrated that it still had to convince significant portions of the party membership that afÍlliation with the LSI was desirable. One reason for skeptical attitudes toward the LSI within the Bund ' 'ñ/as the long-standing tension between the Bund and the PPS, which , had been an LSI member since the founding of the new International.
No. 86, p.2092.
See Adler's letter to Marc Jarblum, January 30, 1930, in: ALB 150/lV-26, pp. l0-1 Archives, No.355, pp. 32-33.
1
;
llSG, LSI
20
Adler to Erl¡ch, October 15, 1929, ALB 150/lV-25 h, p. 13; llSG, LSI Archives, No.356, p.8.
21
tbid.
22
ALB 150/lV-26, p. 174; llSG, LSI Archives, No.356, pp.8-9.
75
Another reason for skepticism was an undercurrent of hope for an international worker's organization which both opposed Social Democracy and Communism while endorsing a left-wing socialist perspective.23
The relationship between the Bund and the PPS improved considerably when the PPS sent the editor of its daily paper Robotniþ. as its delegate to the Bund convention held in March 1,929 în'Warsaw The PPS now helped the Bund to join the International by calling for close cooperation between the two organizations and by backing the Bund's demand that Jewish workers be granted job guarantees. In June 1,930 a special convention of the Bund was held in Lodz to discuss and to decide the question of affiliation with the LSI. By a margin of 60 to 43 the Bund voted in favor of affiliation. The minority, it was reported, was embittered and refused to accept minority representation on the presidium.2a The Bund's resolution on affiliation stated that the Comintern ,,is ideologically bankrupt and plays a deleterious role in the labour movement; the International Socialist Bureau [of left-wing parties outside the Comintern, seated in Paris] has failed, after seven years, to become a center for revolutionary Socialist parties, and the [Labour and] Socialist International has grown because of a growing desire among the non-Communist Socialist parties for unity."25 The minority proposed an alternative resolution, which declared opposition to reformism and Communism. Erlich, speaking for the majorit¡ declared that an LSI membership would not mean ideological capitulation ,,'Vle remain as much opposed to reformism as to Communism."26 With the exception of only one delegate the minority temporarily left the conference, but came back soon to prevent a split of the
organization. Erlich repeated that the supporters of affiliation would ,,make no effort to create any illusions about the [Labour and] Socialist International ... we see all of its errors."27 The Bund confirmed this attitude during the following years. Its political program, the Ideological Declaration of February 1.4, 1935, criticized sharply the policy of the Soviet Union but expressed the hope that the Soviet regime would change and that it would become a pafiner'in the struggle for Socialism. The Bund accepted the dictatorship of the proletariat as a temporary stage after the revolution, insofar as its organs could be controlled by the masses.28 It opposed the popular front policy inaugurated by the Comintern and emphasized the unity of all socialist forces. The Bund protested openly and clearly against the Moscow show trials which annihilated the elite of the Bolshevik leadership. It demasked the '!Øorld Congress of Jewish Culture held in Paris *1937 as a Stalinist manoeuvre and a ,,mish-mash" which even included some clerical rabbis.2e Through this radical criticism the Bund became one of the more leftist parties within the LSI. The revolutionary socialism of the Bund lay o-utside the social-democratic mainstream of the late 1930s. The Bund had obviously much more in common with those radical socialist and communist tendencies outside the two Internationals, the German exile groups KPDO (Kommunistischen Partei Deutschlands-Opposition) and " SAPD (Sozialistische Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands), or the Polish Bolshevik-Leninists, who were strongly influenced by Leon Trotsky and other Marxist dissidents. All of the parties, segments and fractions of the Jewish labor movement in Poland were finally exterminated by the most horrible enemy of Socialism and of humankind: by German Nazism which ' brought the history of the Jewish'Worker's Bund in Poland to a bloody end.
23
See Peretz Merchav, Linkssozialismus in Europa zwischen den Weltkriegen (Yienna: Europa-Verlag, 1 979).
24
See Bernard K. Johnpoll, The Politics of Futility: The GeneralJewish Worker's Bund of Poland, 1917-1943(llhaca, NY: SUNY Press, 1967), pp. 185-87; Henri Minczeles, Histoire générale du Bund: Un mouvement révolutionnaire jurï(Paris: Payot, 1995), pp. 363-64.
z5
Der veker, lX, June 28, 1 930, pp. 1 0-1 1 , quoied in: Johnpoll, Polítics, p.187
¿o
Quoted ibid., p. 188 (from the same source).
.
27
Nayerfolkstsaßung June 6, 1930, quoted in: lbid., p. 189.
28
See Werner Kowalski et al.. Geschichte der Sozialistischen Arbeiterlnternationale 1923-1940
([East] Berlin: DeutscherVerlag derWissenschaften, 1985), p. 318. ALP,
1
50/lV-50, p. I 6.
-f-7
,,The Physical Extermination of the Jews": Leon Trotsky on Anti-Semitism
and Zionism
You consider yourself, I suppose, either a Russian or a Jew? No, Trotsky responded, you are wrong. I am a Social Democrat and
only that.1
Anti-Semitism, Zionism and the Jewish question did not constitute a central part of the written work of Leon Trotsky.z His ideas on these problems are, however, still relevant with respect to various positions within the left and to Trotsky's concern with the national question in general.3
Trotsky's attitude towards the Jewish Question was the same as that of the majority of the ,,assimilated" Jewish revolutionaries of Russia at the turn of the twentieth century. At that time the dominant position was that a worldwide transformation from capitalism to socialism (seen as likely in the predictable future) could eliminate in RusTrotsky to Vladimir Medem, quoted in Robert S. Wistrich, Revolutionary Jews from Marx to Irotsky(London: Harrap, 1 976), p. 1 89. See also my essays:,,Trotzki über Antisemitismus, Zionismus und die Perspekt¡ven der jüdischen Frage,"Theodor Bergmann and Gert Schäfer (eds.), LeoTrotzki: Kritiker und Verteidiger der Sowjetgesellschaft(Mainz: Decaton, 1993), pp.307-12, and ,,Leon Trotsky's Position on Anti-Sem¡tism, Zionism and on the Perspectives of the Jewish Question," New lnterventions, Vol. V (1 994), No. 2, pp. 34*38.
79
sia, as well as in other lands of the Jewish 'diaspora', all the social barriers that had separated Jews from non-Jews. The global process of assimilation imposed by capitalism would reach a higher level under socialism. No nation would be excluded. Consequentl¡ Lenin regarded the most thorough integration of Jews into the ranks of the socialist movement as a prerequisite for a successful revolutionary solution of the Jewish Question. The General Jewish'Workers' Bund of Russia, Poland and Lithuania regarded Lenin's position as 'assimilationist', a chatacterization the Bolshevik leader never denied. Founded in 1.897, the Bund reiected the notion of integrating Jews through a process of assimilation. The Bund felt that both within and outside the workers' movement the only practical solution was the development of Jews along national lines. This was in spite of the fact that the Jews of Eastern Europe (the only Jews to whom the Bund referred) lacked a coherent territory of their own' However, the Bundists always stressed that their position was that Jews should remain in Eastern Europe, as they should wherever else they were located, and fight there for the right to determine alone their own national identity. From this standpoint the Bund sharply opposed Zionism, even more so than did the Social Democrats. However, it should be noted that it was not the Bund's national conception in and of itself that was the source of conflict with the Bolsheviks and particularly with Lenin, but their separatist attitude with regard to the question of party organiza' tion.a These differing viewpoints were all based, however, on the concept that the Jewish Question could and would be resolved in those Leon Trolsky's general attitude towards the Jewish quest¡on has been d¡scussed by Joseph Nevada, Trotsky and the Jews (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America,1972)i Yech¡el Harari, ,,Le parcours de Trotsky," Les nouveaux cahrers, No. 36, printemps 1974' pp. 43-61; Baruch Knei-Paz, The Social and Political Thought of Leon lrotsky (New York and London: Oxford University Press, 1978); Edmund Silberner, Kommunisten zurJudenfrage:Zur Geschichte vonTheorie und Praxis des Kommunismus (Opladen:WestdeutscherVerlag, 1983); Enzo Traverso, The Marxists and the Jewish Question: The History of a Debate (1843-1943) (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1994). For a discussion of the fundamental differences between Lenin and the Bund with regard to pariy structure see Henry J.Tobias, ,,The Bund and Lenin until 1903," Russlan Æev¡ew,Vol.20 (1 961 ), No. 4, pp. 344-57; idem , The Jewish Bund in Russia: From ¡ts Or¡g¡ns to 1905 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1972).
countries where Jews were presently living and nor in Palestine. Thus the emigration proposed by the Zionists could not be a substitute for the struggle for Jewish emancipation within their respecrive counrries.
The Young Trotsky and Political Zionism From the point of view of all its socialist critics in 1903, the fundamental differences within the Zionist movemenr would soon provoke a decisive crisis. At the time of the Sixth Zionist congress in Basle there were sharp contradictions between the majorit¡ who saw Palestine as
f'
the only territory that could bring about a ¡esolution to the Jewish Question, and a minorit¡ who saw alternatives in British East Africa oi in Argentina. Although Trotsky was never a Bundist he agreed with the latter in prophesying the ultimate defeat of Zionism. On January L, 1904 he wrote in the party organ, IsÞra (The Spark), that the Zionist ,,shibboleth" of a fatherland had been exposed for what it was: the reactionary dream, here referring to Theodor Herzl as of a ,,shameless adventurer." Trotsky'wrote: ,,IHerzl promised Palestine but he could not deliver it fto the Zionists]." The effect of the proposal at rhe Zíonist congress would plunge the movement into a crisis from which it could not recover. ,,It is impossible," Trotsky pointed out, ,,to keep Zionism alive by this kind of trickery. Zionism has exhausred its miserable contents ... Tens of intriguers and hundreds of simpletons may yet continue to support Herzl's adventures, but Zionism as a movement is already doomed to losing all rights ro existence in the future." For Trotsky this was ,,as clear as midday."s However, a Zionist left, Trotsky predicted, would inevitably find its way into the revolutionary movement. For the rest of Zionism the Bund would become its political home. Trotsky felt that the Bund, although anti-Zionist in direction. would become more and more like the Zion-
5
Leon Trolsky, ,,Razlozhenie sionizma i ego vozmozhnye preemniki", Iskra, January 1,1904, quoted from: Knei-Paz, The Social and PoliticalThought of Leon Trotsky, p.540.
81
ists in their stressing of all matters Jewish. In this manner it would be quite possible that the Bund would inherit Zionist ideas. One hundred years later, we know how wrong this prediction was. The Bund remained an ardent critic of Zionism. Trotsky could not foresee the factthat a future Zionist left, specifically the Poale Zion, would challenge the Bund's position of anti-Zionism and 'Diaspora nationalism.'
tional affairs of the new regime.e At the beginning of 1.9L8, Trotsky began
to create the Red Army. As army commander in the wake of the revolution he suppressed pogromist activities during the Civil 'War.10 But he only concerned himself with the administrative aspects of the Jewish question. Trotsky saw that Jews were conspicuous as local Commissars and secret policemen. He favored a greatü number of them at the battle front to counter chauvinist agitation within the Red Army: I
Blind Allevs and the Consequences
suggest that the Jewish battalions enter those regiments where there are
also battalions of other nationalities. In this way we can avoid the chauvin-
Three decades later Trotsky was to pay similar atrention to Zionism. Until that time he was only occasionally involved in specifically Jewish problems: as during the revolution of 1905,6 during the anti-Semitic riots in Rumania in 1.91"3,7 and with the Beilis affair (in which a Jewish
handyman wâs accused of ritual murder in Kiev) in the same year. Trotsky depicted the affair as being reminiscent of a medieval trial court presided over by monarchist reactionaries in an atmosphere of pogromist nationalism. The atavistic prejudices and medieval superstitions revealed to him the immediate fall of the Czarist regime.s As architect of the October insurrection Trotsky paid little attention to anti-Semitism and Jewish matters. However, the question arose when Lenin offered him the post of Commissar for Home Affairs in the first Soviet government. Trotsky declined on the grounds that this would play into the hands of the anti-Semitic counter-revolutionaries. Lenin's angry reply, as recorded by Trotsk¡ was to say: ,,Iüe are having a great international revolution; of what importance are such trifles?" But he backed down and accepted the idea that Trotsky should head the inrerna-
. ism which results from the estrangement of the different nationalities, and which unfortunately arises when entirely independent national military units
Trotsky always opposed the remnants of the old and any emergence of a new anti-Semitism in Soviet Russia.l2 He was shattered, therefore, when in 1.926 the first intimations reached him that his Jewish origin had not remained unimportant, particularly in the party struggles. Part of Stalin's methods for defeating the United Opposition was by making conspicuous the fact that its leading figures were Jews.13 In a letter to Bukharin on March 4, 1,926, Trotsky protested against the ãnti-Jewish undertones of the whispering campaign. He asked him ,,whether it is possible that in our party, in Moscow, in a worþers' cell, propaganda is being conducted with impunity which is vile and slander-
9
See idem [Leo Trotzki], Mein Leben: Versuch einer Autobiographie (Frankfurt-Main: Fischer, 1 981 ), p. 295.
10 1 12
SeeSilberner, Kommunisten zurJudenfrage,pp. 103-4.
13
,,Jews were in fact conspicuous among the Opposition although they were lhere together with
1
6
For Trotsky's impressive description of the pogroms see his , Rußland in der Revolution'
(Dresden, 1905), pp. 111ff.; 2nd ed.: Die russische Revolution 1905 (znd ed. Bertin: Verlag der Kommunist¡schen lnternat¡onale, 1923), p. 106ff.
See Leo lrolzki, Die Balkankriege 1912-13 (Essen: Arbeiterpresse, 1996), pp.455-65 (articles of August 17, 20, and 21, 1913). See idem [L. Trotzky], ,,Die Beilis-Affäre," Die Neue Zeif, Vol. XXX|t/1 (1919), pp, 310-20.
82
Quoled in: Wistrich, Revolutionary Jews, p. 199. See Leo Trotzki, Fragen des Alltagslebens (Hamburg: Hoym, 1 923). Reprinted Berlin: Droege, '1997, pp.65ff.
the flower of the non-Jewish intelligentsia and workers. Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Sokolnikoq Radek, were allJews." lsaac Deutscher, The Prophet Unarmed:Trotsl
83
ous, on the one hand, and anti-Semitic, on the other ... ?"1a Bukharin, although deeply astonished, did not reply.1s
In 1.927 the Jews in the anti-Stalin opposition led by Trotsky, Zínoviev and Kamenev were calumniated as agitating against Leninism. Stalin's servants portrayed them as 'rootless cosmopolitans', as people who, not being 'native sons of Mother Russia', naturally did not care for socialism in one country, i.e. Russia. ,,This hypocrisy was such that the word Jew was never uttered, but the point in those denunciations of 'rootless cosmopolitans' was well taken."16 Trotsky openly challenged this campaign. During the anniversary demonstrations on November 7, 1,927 oppositionists were jumped and beaten. In a letter to the Politburo of the Communist Party Trotsky demanded an immediate and rigorous investigation of the ,,nLrmerous irregularities, brutalities and pogromist actions" committed during the demonstrations.lT ,,Most often such attacks were accompanied by Black Hundretist shouts, more specifically, shouts of an anti-Semitic nature regardless of the nationality of the person being beaten. In a point-bypoint repetition of what was seen in JuIy L9L7, when Bolsheviks were beaten on the streets of Leningrad,ls the most energetic and determined behavior was shown by the most Black Hundretist elements."le It was in defeat and exile that Trotsky was confronted with the rising tide of anti-Semitism on a world-scale. Following the riots of August 1929 in Palestine and then, particularly after the establishment of Fascism in Germany and the new wave of Jewish immigration to
Palestine, the ,,Jewish Question" took on new dimensions. Trotsky was forced to face these as well as the various proposals, including Zionism, put forward as a solution. In a February 1934 interview in the American Trotskyist paper The Class Struggle, Trotsky was asked whether the Palestine riots, in which theie were head-on clashes between Arab and Jewish militants, represented an uprising of the oppressed Arabs. Trotsky replied that he did not'know enough about the situation to determine to what extent ,,elements such as national liberationists (anti-imperialists)" were present and to what degree ,,reactionary Mohammedans and anti-Semitic pogromists" were involved. Trotsky was also asked as to what extent the anti-Semitism of German Fascism should compel a different approach
to the Jewish Question on the part of Communists. Trotsky's response was that German fascism, as well as the Arab-Jewish conflict illustrat"êd a new and very clear proof of the principle that the Jewish question could not be solved within the framework of capitalism: I do not know whether Jewry will be built up again
,.
as a
nation. However,
there can be no doubt that the material conditions for the existence of Jewry as an independent nation could be brought about only by the proìetarian
revolution. There is no such thing on our planet as the idea that one has more claim to land than another. The establishment of a territorial base for
Jèwry in Palestine or any other country is conceivable only with the migration of large human masses. Only a triumphant socialism can take upon itself such a task.
14
The letter is translated ¡n Leon Trolsky, The Challenge ot the Left Opposit¡on, 1926-27, ed.by Naomi Allen and George Saunders (NewYork: Pathfinder Press, 1980), p, a6. Emphasis in the
Trotsky emphasized:
original. t3
See Stephen F. Cohen, Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution: A Political Biography, 18881938 (New York: Vintage Books, 1975), pp. 239-40. Bukharin's general criticism of antiSemitism is not mentioned in a more recent biography, see Wladislaw Hedeler and Ruth Stoljarowa, Nikolai Buchar¡n: Leben und Werk(Mainz: Decalon, 1993).
to
lsaac Deutscher, ,,The Russian Revolution and the Jewish Problem," ldem, The Non-Jewish Jew and Other Essays (London: Merlin Press, 1 981 ), p. 75.
17
Quoted in Allen (ed.), The Challenge of the Left Oppos¡tion, p.467.
18
Then Petrograd.
19
Quoted in Allen (ed.), The Challenge of the Left Opposition, p.469.
84
The blind alley in which German Jewry find itself as well as the blind alley in which Zionism find itself is inseparably bound up with the blind alley of
world capitalism, as a whole. Only when the Jewish workers clearly see this relationship will they be forewarned against pessimism and despair."20
20
LeonTrotslry, OntheJewishQuesfr'on(NewYork: PathfinderPress, 1970),p. 18:,,OntheJewish Problem."
85
Hitler's ,,zooIogicaI anti-Semitism" was for Trotsky ,,a chemically pure distillation of the culture of imperialism."2l After his arrival in Mexico in January 1,937, Trotsky made a number of statements on Zionism, the Palestine question and Jewish affairs under conditions of the worldwide growth of anti-semitism. In an inrerview with various Jewish newspaper correspondents he said that During my youth I rather leaned toward the prognosis that the Jews of different countries would be assimilated and that the Jewish question would thus disappear in a quasi-automatic fashion. The historical development of the last quarter of a century has not confirmed this perspective.22
Trotsky added that no nation could normally exist without a common territory. Zionism would spring from this very idea. But the facts of every passing day would demonstrate that Zionism is incapable of resolving the Jewish Question: The conflict between the Jews and Arabs in Palestine acquires a more and more tragic and more and more menacing character. I do not at all believe
the Jews, and has actually renounced its promise to help them found their 'own home' in a foreign land. The future development of military events may well transform Palestine into a bloody trap for several hundred thousand Jews. Never was it so clear as it is today that the salvation of the Jewish people is bound inseparably with the overthrow of the capitalist system.24
Trotsky's hopes for a just solution of the Jewish Question, at least in the USSR vanished during the heyday of the Stalinist terror in 1'937. In his essa¡ Tbermidor and anti-Semitism, he pointed out that the burea:uc:racy) as the most regressive and reactionary social force' would profit and benefit from the darkest prejudices, including anti-Semitism.
In searching for a scapegoat the bureaucracy would follow the way of the Czarist Black Hundreds. Regarding the show trials and campaigns of repression in which the Jewish names of numerous victims had been èmpha-sized, Trotsky asked: ,,'What other motíve could Stalin have had to make known the 'real' names of his victims, except to play with antiSemitic moods?"25 He wrote:
"
that the Jewish question can be resolved within the framework of rotting capitalism and under the control of British imperialism.23
The slogan, Beat tbe Opposition, often took on the complexion of the old slogan beøt the Jews and søue Russia... If such methods are practiced at
In July 1,940, one month before his assassination, Trotsky noticed that, despite the growing anti-Zionist policy of the British administration in
the very top where the personal responsibility of Stalin is absolutely unquestionable, then it is not hard to imagine what transpires in the ranks, át the factories, and especially at the kolkhozes. And how it can be otherwise? The physical extermination of the older generation of the
Palestine:
Bolsheviks is, for every person who can think, an incontrovertible expression
of Thermidorian reaction, and in its most advanced stage at that. History has never yet seen an example when the reaction following the revolutionary
The attempt to solve the Jewish question through the migration of Jews to Palestine can be seen for what it is, a tragic mockery of the Jewish people.
upsurge was not accompanied by the most unbridled chauvinistic passions,
anti-Semitism among them.26
Interested in winning the sympathy of the Arabs who are more numerous than the Jews, the British government has sharply altered its policy rowards
2'l 22 23
86
ldem [Leo Trotzki], ,,lmperialismus und Antisemitismus [1940]," lr¡ng Fetscher (ed.), Marxisten gegen Antisem¡t¡smus (Hamburg: Hotfmann & Campe, 1974), pp. 189-90.
24
lbid., p. 12: ,,Fragment."
lrolsky, On the Jewish Question, p.20: ,,lnterview with Jewish Correspondents."
25
lbid., p. 27 :,,Thermidor and Anti-Semilism."
tbid.
¿0
lbid.,p.26-27.
87
This essay remained unpublished in Trotsky's lifetime - mosr likely to deprive the Nazis of an opportunity for a triumphant propaganda barrage.
Trotsky's Prediction of the Holocaust
Much earlier and much more clearly than any other socialist, with the possible exception of August Thalheimer and Fritz Sternberg,2T Trotsky saw the class nature and deadly destructiveness of Hitler fascism.2s After the so-called Kristallnacht he noted in a remarkable and moving passage in a letter to American friends on December 22, 1938:
It
is possible to imagine without difficulty what awaits the Jews at the mere outbreak of the future world war. But even without war the nexr
development of world reaction signifies with certainty the physical extermination of the lews.2e
No one saw as clearly as Trotsky the horrible possibilities of the Holocaust. By this time Trotsky favored the migration of the Jews from Europe, from a continent more and more falling under the shadow of
a socialist federation, however, as he wrote in Thermidor and AntiSemitism, a Jewish migration could be possible.32 At the time the prospects for assimilation remained open to question for Trotsky. His dark perspective regarding the Jewish condition in capitalist societies, and -also under Stalin's regime, was, it seems to this writer, based on his , _wolld-revolutionary perspective and on what he felt was the coming oyerthrow of ,,decaying capitalism". However, the capitalist system did not break down in the aftermath 'World \War II. Despite its inherent antagonisms it remained powerof ful, more powerful than its opponents could ever have predicted. The new state of Israel became an example of expanding and growing capitalism in the Middle East, with the Kibbutz experiment as a ,,socialist 'Within the context of micro-cosmos in a capitalist macro-cosmos."33 the Arab-Jewish conflict, Israel ceased to be an attempt to resolve the lewish Question and became, instead, a part of it. Present historians should evaluate the degree to which Trotsky's explications, in modified form, remain relevant for Jews and Arabs, for socialists and non-socialists, for those who oppose any form of anti-Semitism and ethnic discrimination and for the world at large at the beginning of the twenty-first century.
the bloody swastika. Even then he criticized as utopian and reactionary the Zionist program for resolving the Jewish Question although he had slightly modified his arguments. By now he considered there to exisr a ,,Jewish nation" which still lacked a territorial base.30 Palestine appeared to him, however, ,,a tragic mirâge", Birobidjan [the Soviet 'Jewish Autonomous Region' in the Far East] ,,a bureaucratic farce."3l 'llithin See Jürgen Kaestner, D¡e pol¡tischeTheorie AugustThalheimers(Frankfurt-Main and New York: Campus, 1982); Gert Schäfer, ,,E¡nle¡tung" (lntroduction) to the reprint of Fritz Sternberg, Der Faschismus an der Macht (Amsterdam: Contact, 1935. Reprint Hildeshe¡m: Gerstenbero. 1
Trolsky, On the Jewish Question, p. 29: ,,Letter to American Jews menaced by Fascism and ant¡Semitism." Emphasis in the orioinal.
30 88
lbid., p. 29: ,,Appeal to American Jews," and ibid., pp. 18-19: ,,Reply lo a Question About Birobidian."
981 ).
See ErnestMandel, LeonTrotsl
lbid., p.29: ,,lnterview w¡th Jewish Correspondents."
п
lbid., pp. 28-29: ,Thermidor and Anti-Semitism."
oö
Theodor Bergmann, ,,The Replicabil¡ty of the Kibbutz-Experience," Klaus Bartölke, Theodor Bergmann, and Ludwig Liegle (eds,), Integrcted Cooperat¡ves in the Industrial Soc¡ety:The Example of the Kibbufz (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1980), p.227.
89
Arthur Rosenberg: Heretic between the Camps
Throughout a rather short life, Arthur Rosenberg (1889-1943) achieved Jame in a remarkable variety of intellectual roles: Born and raised in - imperial Berlin, he gained an early reputation as a prolific historian of the ancient world, mainly writing on early Roman history.l In the 1920s, after a radical break with his erstwhile social environment, he became a leading communist politician. He left the communist movement in 7'927, and then became famous as a tireless writer. His books on the 'Weimar rise and decline of the Republic, on the history of Bolshevism, and on Democracy and Socialism were translated into several languag- es. Jhe radical break in his life circumstances, when he had to leave Germany right after Hitler came to power, changed neither his political views nor his erudite, compassionate style of writing, which he managed to combine with the historian's distance from the subjects he was writing about. The following biographical sketch tries to give insight into various facets of Arthur Rosenberg's life.'z Originally an admirer of imperial (1 889-1943): Geschichie und Politik zwischen Berlin und NewYork," was published in: Sachor, Vol. Xl (2001), pp.79-97, and was reprinted in: Klaus Kinner and Mario Kessler (eds.), Zwischen den Lagern: Linkssozialisten in Deutschland, 1918-1933 (Leipzig: Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung Sachsen, 2003), pp.127-53.
A German version version of this essay: ,,Arthur Rosenberg
There are several works on Rosenberg, see Helmut Schachenmeyer, Arthur Rosenberg als Vertreter des Historischen Materialismus (Wiesbaden: Harassowilz, 1964) (a pioneering study); Helmut Berding, ,,Arthur Rosenberg," Hans-Ulrich Wehler (ed.), Deutsche Historiker, Vol. lV (Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 1971), pp. 81-96; Hans-Ulrich Wehler, ,,Einleitung,"
91.
Germany, Rosenberg became one of the few historians who,,focussed on the role of social and economic processes in molding the authoritarian character of German Þolitics."3
An Intellectual Life in Imperial Berlin Arthur Rosenberg was born on December 19, 1,889 into a Jewish middle-class family. His father Georg Henr¡ a salesman, and his mother Helene, both came from the Austrian region of Rosenberg (now Ru.omberok, Slovakia). Both were assimilated, and Arthur and his sister Jenny were baptized and raised as Lutherans. Rosenberg's father was not successful in business. A fellowship from the Gustav Levinstein Foundation enabled Arthur to attend High School.a In 1.907, he graduated from the Askanisches Gymnasium, one of Berlin's elite schools, with top marks. From 1907 to 1.91.L, he studied ancient history and philology at Berlin's Friedrich-rü(/ilhelms University, then the most prestigious institution of higher learning in Germany and Central Europe.5 Rosenberg became a close associate of his teacher Eduard Meyer, an internationally respected authority on the social history of the ancient world.6 Under Meyer and Otto Hirschfeld he wrote his doctoral Arthur Rosenberg, Demokratie und Klassenkampf: Ausgewählte Studien, ed. by H.-U. Wehler (Frankfurt-Main: Ullste¡n, 1974), pp. 5-1 6 (a selection of Rosenberg's essays); Rudolf Wolfgang Müller and Gert Schäfer (eds.), Arfhur Rosenberg zwischen alter Geschichte und Zeitgeschichte, Politik und politischer Bildung (Göttingen and Zürich: Musterschmidt, 1986); Gert Schaefer,
dissertation on U ntersuch ungen zur r ömis cb en Zenturienu erfas sung (Investigations into the Roman Centuriate Constitution). In its expanded version, the thesis was awarded the prize of the Gustav Droysen Foundation and enabled Rosenberg to continue his academic career.T
He had a vocational training at the Frankfurter Zeitung, one of _Germany's leading daily newspapers, and helped to publish the multivolume Ullsteins Wehgeschichte. At the same time he traveled to Ital¡ where he collected numerous primary sources for his Habilitation work. In 1.91.4, at the age of only 24, he submitted his Habilitation Thesis on Der Staat der alten ltaliþ.er: Verfassung der Latiner, Osþer und Etrusþer (The State of the Old Italici: Constitution of the Latini, Osci, and Etrusci), in which he investigated the forms of government, that prevailed in pre-Roman times in the different Italian communities. Rosenberg had just been appointed Priuatdozent (university lecturer) ì¡¡hen the First'World War broke out. An unrestrained German patriot, he volunteered for the imperial army in 1,91,5 and was most of the time in the'War Press Department in France, but he also served on the'Western front.s He found time for publishing a new edition of Droysen's History of Alexander the Great, for which he wrote an introduction.e Like many Germans, Rosenberg became disillusioned with the old social order, which had culminated in four years of mutual killing on the European battlefields and in the trenches. And like many of his generation, he turned from German nationalism to socialist internationalism.
7
,,Arthur Rosenberg: Verfechter revolutionärer Realpolitik," Theodor Bergmann and Mario Kessler (eds.), Ketzer im Kommunismus: 23 biographische Essays (2nd ed., Hamburg: VSA, 2000), pp. 101-12; Lorenzo Rìberi, Arthur Rosenberg: Democrazía e socialismo tra stot¡a e politica (Milano: Franco Angeli, 2000).; Mario Kessler, Arthur Rosenberg: Ein Historiker im Zeitalter der Katastophen (1 889-1943) (Cologne etc.: Böhlau, 2003).
3 4 5
Georg G. lggers, The German Conception of H¡story:The NationalTraditíon of Histor¡calThought from Herdertothe Present(Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1983), p.273.
8
Some biographers stated that Rosenberg joined the extreme right-wing Vaterlandspartei in 1917, to remain a member until the end of the war. See e.g. Francis L. Carslen, ,,Arthur Rosenberg: Ancient Historian into Leading Communist," quoted from idem, Essays in German H¡stoty (London: Secker & Warburg, 1985), p.296. Rosenberg, however, emphasized, that,,up to November 10, 1918, I belonged to no political party or organization." Arthur Rosenberg, /mperialGermany:The Biríh of the German Republic, 1871-1918(Boston: Beacon Press, 1964),
9
Johann Gustav Droysen, Geschichte Alexanders des Großen, introduct¡on by Dr. Arthur Rosenberg, with a preface by Sven Hedin (Berlin: R. v. Decker's Verlag, 1917).
The materials of the Guslav Levinstein Foundation are located in the Askanische Oberschule Archives. See Humboldt-Univers¡tät zu Berlin, Universitätsarchiv, Akten der Johann-Gustav-DroysenStiftung, and Personalakte des nichtbeamteten a. o. Universitätsprofessors Dr. Arthur Rosen-
o.Vll.
Derg.
6
92
Rosenberg's letters to Eduard Meyer are located in Meyer's papers at the Archives of the BerlinBrandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin.
For Rosenberg's work on ancient history see Volker Losemann, Nationalsozialismus und Antike: Studien zur Entvvicklung des Faches Alte Geschichte 1933-1945(Hamburg: Hoffmann & Campe, 1977);Carl Christ, Bömlsche Geschichte und deutsche Geschichtswissenschaft (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1982); and Luciano Canfora, Politische Philologie: Altertumswissenschaften und moderne Staats¡deolog¡en (Stuttgart: KletlOotta, 1995). See also idem, // comunista senza partito. Seguito da'Democrazia e Iotta di classe nell' antichità' (Palermo: Sellerio, 1984).
93
Rosenberq's Years
in Communist
Politics
In November 1.91.8, Rosenberg joined the cause of, as he wrote later, those ,,workmen and workmen's sons who had become revolutionary Socialists, [who were] not satisfied with a democratic republic and wished to proceed immediately to the abolition of private property."10 Consequentl¡ Rosenberg became a member of the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD). Two years later, the party split. Its left wing, including Rosenberg, joined the German Communist Party (KPD). His speech at the conference, which marked the unification of the left wing of the USPD with the KPD, was full of revolutionary enthusiasm. He exclaimed:,,Comrades! The world-revolutionary situation today is such that the wave is reaching Central Europe. Italy and Germany are becoming ripe for the decisive battle, a decisive battle that will have to be waged by us with similar tactics in both countries."11 He stated that the Italian government had not dared to attack the factories occupied by the workers because they were well armed. He suggested that similar methods should be adopted in Germany. Rosenberg, who also worked at the City School for Extramural Studies and wrote on problems of workers' education, became, as early as 1921, one of the elected communist city councilors of Berlin.12 He gained prominence through his speeches at communist party conferences. In August 1,922, he envisaged ,,great periods of fierce class struggles" which would lead to ,,heavy clashes with the state authorities."l3 He ignored the fact that these tactics had just been tried in the ill-fated
10 1
1
ArthurRosenberg,TheHistoryof theGermanRepublic(NewYork: Russell &Russell, 1965), pp.4-5. BerichtüberdieVerhandlungen desVereinigungsparte¡tagesder USPD (Linke) undder KPD (Spartakusbund¡ (Leipzig and Berlin:Frankes, 1921), pp. 14344. For this part of his activities see his ,,Die Reform des Geschichtsunterrichts," Die neue Erzie'17, pp.405-10. See also Mario Kessler, ,,Polit¡sche Bildung als'Weg-
hung,Vol.ll (1920), No.
weiser der Menschheitskultur': Arthur Rosenberg zwischen Universität und Arbeiterbildung (1919-1923),"ManfredWeissbecker(ed.), Rot-roteGespensterinThüringen:Demokratischsozialistische Reformpolitik einst und heute (Jena: Quer-Verlag,2004), pp.61-77. Bericht über d¡e Verhandlungen des 2. Parteitages der Kommunistischen Pañe¡ Deußchlands,
22-26 Aug ust /921 (Berlin : V|VA, 1 922), p. 346.
94
March Action of 1921 and had led to a catastrophe for the German communists, who were largely isolated from the majority of the working people in Germany thereafter. Even the subsequent defeat of the German communists in the fall of 1923 could not shake his opinion that Germany was ready for a communist revolution. Thus, he was among ,those who constituted the left opposition around Ruth Fischer and Arkadij Maslow against the more pragmatic policy of Heinrich Brandler, the-party leader, and August Thalheimer, the main theoretician of the KPD.
After the takeover of the party by the left opposition, Rosenberg became one of the leading figures within the KPD. In 1924, he was elected to the party directorate of the large Berlin-Brandenburg district. In the same year, he became a member of the Central Committee at the party conference held in Frankfurt-Main. In May 1924, he be-
'Lame
a deputy of the Reichstag, the German parliament, which he remained until the election of 1928.In July 1924, at the fifth congress of the Communist International (Comintern), Rosenberg was elected a deputy member of its Executive Committee (ECCI) and of its presidium. He published extensively in the communist press on problems of
international relations. 'SØithin the part¡ Rosenberg was, together with Ruth Fischer and -SØerner Scholem, one of the main speakers of the ultra-left faction. In secret sessions at Rosenberg's home the ultra-leftists reported on the workers' situation in Russia. They asked the Berlin organization to cóntinue to fight with all its energy against state regimentation, the state party, and the degeneration of Communism, and to build up its left wing as independently as possible. Ruth Fischer reported much Iater that ,,the underground organization had certainly delivered ample reports to the Russian Politburo."la In a speech to the Chemnitz branch of the KPD, Rosenberg declared that it was of no importance whether the party lost one or two votes in the,,parliam e\tary monkey game" (" im þ arlamentaris ch en Affenth eat er" ).
14
Ruth Fischer, Statin and German Communism: A Study in the Origins of the State Party (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press., 1948), p. 182.
95
The only task was the preservation of the revolutionary spirit and the revolutionary organization.15 In }l4ay 1,925, Rosenberg, Iwan Katz and 'SØerner Scholem even criticized Fischer and Maslow who saw, in line with the Comintern leadership, a ,,relative stabilization" of the capitalist world order.16 Rosenberg held his ultra-left position until the f.all of 1.925. From that point, he became gradually more moderate. In the climate of stabilization during the mid-1,920s, he realized that there was no room for revolutionary adventures. Some years later, Rosenberg stated that the rank-and-file of the KPD embodied in these relatively calm years a ,,curious mixture of pacifism and enthusiasm for the Soviet ideaI,"17 but by no means a Bolshevik revolution in present-day Germany. In November 1,925, Rosenberg published an article in which he clearly stated that the KPD could exercise influence upon only a minority of proletarians; the majority would follow the social democrats, the Catholics, and even the nationalists. In a non-revolutionary situation, the SPD would represent the workers' interests better and more effectively than the KPD. For this situation, Rosenberg wrote, the KPD had not developed an appropriate political strategy. The malority of the working people would consider the party ,,a herd... of rowdies and putschists. " 18
15
Rosa Meyer-Levine, lnside German Communism: Memoirs of Party Life in the Weimar Republic (London: Pluto Press, 1977),p.74.
6
The critique of Rosenberg, Katz and Scholem of May 3, 1 925 can be found in the Foundation forlhe Archives of the Parties and Mass Organizations of the German Democratic Republic under the Federal Archives of Germany, Befin (SAPMO-BArch), RY 111213165, pp. 5-€. Forthe context see Siegfried Bahne, ,,Zw¡schen 'Luxemburgismus' und 'Stalinismus': Die'ultralinke'Opposition in der KPD," Vierfeljahreshefte fitr Zeiþeschichte, Vol. lX (1 961), No. 4, p.362; Hermann Weber, Die Wandlung des deutschen Kommunismus: Die Stalinisierung der KPD, Vol. 1 (FranKurt-Main: Europäische Verlagsanstalt, 1969), p. 107; Klaus Michael Mallmann, Kommunisten in der Weimarer Republik: Sozialgeschichte e¡ner revolutionären Bewegung (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1996); Andreas Wirsching, Vom Weltkrieg zum Bürgerkr¡eg? Politischer Ertremismus in Deutschland und Frankreich. Berlin und Paris imVergleich(Munich:. Oldenbourg, 1999); Klaus Kinner, Der deutsche Kommunismus: Selbstverständnis und Reali tät, VoL 1 : Die Weimarer Zeit (Berlin: Dietz, 1 999); Ben Fowkes, Communism in Germany under the Weimar Republic (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1984), pp. 129-31 .
1
17 18
Rosenberg, The History of the German Republic, p.260.
This kind of criticism and self-criticism brought Rosenberg in contact with the faction led by Ernst Thälm ann) a transport worker from Hamburg and one-time supporter of the ultra-left, who now seemed to represent a more pragmatic current within the KPD membership. Rosenberg, who became critical of internal Soviet developments, also hoped _ -that a party leadership under Thälmann would pursue an independent line from the Soviet party leadership, which increasingly dominated the"Comintern with very negative results. In the meantime, Rosenberg was very active in Reichstag politics. He spoke on a variety of subjects. On some occasions, he could make use of his historical knowledge. In an attack on the German tax system he defended the Roman system of taxes, because it had distributed bread free to the poorest. He offered his adversaries in the debate a tutorial on ancient histor¡ when one of them pointed out that the Emþeror,A.ugustus had introduced the turnover tax.1e Rosenberg's most significant parliamentary activity was his participation in the work of the committee appointed by the Reichstag to investigate the causes of Germany's 1918 defeat. Membership in the eommittee of Investigation, the fourth committee charged with this task, gave Rosenberg access to a wealth of primary documentation and sparked his interest in contemporary history. _ As an expert reporter to that committee, Rosenberg spoke on December 2, 1925 on the causes for the collapse of the German army. He refuted the allegations, which were put forward by naval officers, that the Independent Social Democrats had undermined the navy by their anti-war agitation in 1,91,7-1,8 and had instigated the outbreak of the naval mutiny which led to the revolution and thereby to the collapse of the German front. Rosenberg demonstrated that the USPD was far from being the revolutionary party depicted in the conservâtive press, but was rather a mixture of radical and moderate elements. The Spartakus Group, the radical wing, had no influence on the outbreak of the revolution and was even unknown to the mutinous sailors. 95 per cent of the soldiers' councils supported the SPD. In sharp contrast to the stab-in-
ldem, ,,Ein¡ge Bemerkungen zur Parteidiskussion," Die lnternationale,Vol.S, No. 11, Novem-
ber| , I 925, pp. 693-96. See Rosenberg's circular to the Politburo of December 29, 1925 in: SAPMO-BArch, RY 142/31170, pp. 181-86.
1
9
Verhandlungen des Reichstags, Stenographische Berichte,Vol.387, August 3, 1 925, p. 3906.
97
the-back theory of the political right, national resistance was no longer possible in November 1,91,8, for the people were exhausted and the front lacked reserves. No government could have changed this state of affairs.2o Some time later, the conservative archivist Erich Otto Volkmann, Rosenberg's counterpart on the committee, claimed that in Berlin a revolutionary committee had been formed in October 1918. Rosenberg countered that this committee had been unable to act due to its internal differences and had been overtaken by events, on which it had not been able to exercise any influence. He again pointed out that it was not the revolutionary upheaval that had caused Germany's breakdown, because the war had aheady been lost at that time.z1 On April 26, 1,927, Rosenberg left the KPD. In a formal letter, addressed to the party leadership and published in the SPD press one day later, he made the Communist defeat in China and the subordination of the various communist parties under the tutelage of Moscow responsible for his break.22 He remained an independent deputy of the Reicbstøg. Rosenberg now criticized German communists for their ,,romantic phraseolog¡ which does not constitute the slightest real threat to the existing political order... Through this romanticism millions of workers are prevented from pursuing their interests in a realistic and factual way. The fight against romanticism causes the other tendencies and groups of the working class movement to squander their energies to an
extraordinary extent. " 23 Rosenberg's critique of communist politics was a part of his general attitude until the end of his life. Soon after his retreat from the KPD, he wrote in the preface to his Entstebung der dewtschen Republik: ,,The peculiar nâture of the political development in Germany has caused empty political claptrap, illusions, and improvisations to play a much greatü part here than with other nations. If I am able to help my readers
20 21 22
98
I
shall have achieved all that
I
set
Historical and Political Writing at the 'SØeimar End of the Republic After the Reichstag elections of 1928, Rosenberg lost his mandate. To take care of his famil¡ his wife Ella and the children Liselott and 1ü/olfgang, he became a high school teacher at the Köllnisches Gymnasium. This school was influenced by the progressive school reforms undertaken. by the SPD government of the State of Prussia and by the city council of Berlin.25 At the same time he also continued to teach as Priuatdozent at Berlin University. Among his students were '$Øalter Markov, hrkadij Gurland, and Arthur Lehning.26 Besides his teaching, Rosenberg established himself as a writer of contemporary historical works. Up to this time, he was known as an expert in ancient Roman history. After the war and before he became engaged in politics, hê wrote a popular history of the Roman republic and a Marxist-influenced pamphlet on democracy and class struggle in ancient times. He also published a textbook on Roman history.2T However, he gained international recognition with his books on the birth of the German republic and on the history of Bolshevism, which he published in 1.928 and in 1.932.
24 Rosenberg, Imperial Germany, p.Vll-Vlll. 25 The school and Rosenberg's teaching are vividly described in Theodor Bergmann, lm Jahrhundert der Katastrophen: Autobiographie eines kritischen Kommunisten (Hamburg: VSA, 2000), pp. 1 1-12.
26
See Walter Markov, Zwiesprache mit dem Jahrhundert. Dokumentiert von Thomas Grimm ([East] Berlin andWeimar: Böhlau, 1989), pp.35-37; RüdigerZimmermann,,,Arkadij Gurland (1 904-1979): MarxistischerTheoretiker und Publizist," Jürgen Schlimper (ed.), ,,Natürlich - die Tauchaer Straße!": Be¡träge zur Geschichte der ,,Leipziger Volksze¡tung"(Leipzig: Rosa-Luxemburg-StiftungSachsen, I997),p.300;BertAlena,,,Nachruf:ArthurLehriing(1899-2OO0),1999,
27
Arthur Rosenberg, Geschichte der römischen Republik (Leipzig and Berlin: B. G. Teubner, '1921); idem, Demokratie und Klassenkampf im Altertum (Bielefeld and Leipzig: Velhagen & Klasing, 1921 . Reprint Freiburg: Ahriman, 1997); idem, Einle¡tung und Quellenkunde zur römischen Geschichte (Betlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1 921 ).
lbid., Vol. V pp. 215 ff.
No.1,2000, pp.220-24.
Seehis,,Austrittserklärung,"Vorwärts,April2T,l92T,Thenote,,RosenbergsAbgang,"DieRote Fahne, April28, l927, and the commentary,,Der'parteilose Sozialist'Rosenberg," ibid., April Verhandlungen des Re¡chstags. Stenographische Beilchte, Vol.393, p.
these fantasies
out to accomplish in this book."2a
See Dre Ursachen des deutschen Zusammenbruchs im Jahre 1919,Zweite Abteilung, Vol. lV (Berlin: Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft für Politik und Geschichte, 1928), pp. 91 ff.
29,1927.
23
in their battle with
1 1
81.
99
.:..;|
r,l
,':l
:|t ::.,7
of the 'SØeimar Republic was very largely an outcome of his work in the Committee of Investigation of Germany's 1,91,8 defeat He rejected the conventional wisdom of both the right and the left and attempted to develop his own understanding of historical phenomena. For example, he developed a unique theory of two ,,revolutions" that took place during the war. He argued that the first was the establishment of the Hindenburg-Ludendorff de facto military dictatorship in 1916. This rule left both the Kaiser and the Reicbstag âs mere symbols. The second was in October 1918 when the Supreme Military Command collapsed, leaving power to the non-revolutionary German middle-class which sought to abolish the monarchy. But it was the actions of the 'Slorkers' and Soldiers' Councils that opened the way for the birth of the German republic. A majority within these councils wanted to combine parliamentary democracy with socialism. Rosenberg's book on the origins
It could hardly have surprised Rosenberg that his book was fiercely condemned by a majority of his colleagues. His former supporter Eduard Meyer, who had turned into an ardent enemy since Rosenberg's turn to the left, was primarily responsible for blocking Rosenberg's promotion to a full professorship at Berlin University. With the notable of Friedrich Meinecke, Hermann Oncken, Fritz Hartung, and Hans Delbrück, the historical faculty was outspokenly hostile to the unconventional outsider. Delbrück and Rosenberg had established quite a good relationship since their cooperation in the parliamentary Committee of Investigation, and in 1,929 Rosenberg wrote a remarkable obituary for Delbrück, whose books on military history he considered ,,an important treasure for socialist proletarian research."28 After several vain attempts, the social democratic Prussian minister of education succeeded in 1930 in promoting Arthur Rosenberg to an extraordinary professorship at the universit¡ against the opposition of the vast majority of the historians.2e exceptions
Rosenberg's History of Bolsheuism, the first serious academic treatment of the subject, was based on his political experience as a leading German communist. Nevertheless, he made it clear that he had ,,not written this book to please any Party or group," and that he was ,,not conscious of any desire to make 'revelations' or to 'settle accounts'. Those whó hope to find in this book anecdotes about Stalin and the 'torture chambers' of the GPU will be bitterly disappointed."3o Rosenberg saw the socialism of Marx and Engels as essentially the attempt to achieve the values of liberalism - guaranteed freedom for each member of the society - through the political action of the masses. The mâsses wanted to share the fruits of freedom and equality, which had been promised by the Liberals. ,,They wanted democracy; the self-government of the masses; and the abolition of all the privileges of the newly aggrandized middle class no less than that of the old Teudal nobles."31 Democratic ideas were at first purely political, but socialism added the demand for economic reform, created a theor¡ and prompted the organization of mass parties. Under the social conditions of Russia, however, the masses would be unable to take revolutionary action without a party of professional revolutionaries. Rosenberg considered the Bolsheviks' doctrine and actions to be progressive for Czarist Russia. But what was progressive for Russia was reactionary for the SØest, where the bourgeois revolution had been completed, and where a well-trained industrial proletariat and an educated middle class constituted the majority of the population. The heroic deeds of the Russian workmen fuom 191.7 to 1,920 temporarily
threw a veil over Bolshevik backwardness and awoke the feeling that Bolshevism was the predestined form of the universal proletarian revolution.
Important sections of the European proletariat were at that time anxrous
to ally themselves with the Bolsheviks in an attempt to seize the reins of government. In the course of time, however, the impossibiliry of entrusting
28
ldem, ,,Hans Delbrúck, der Kritiker der Kriegsgeschichle," Dre Gesellschaft,Vol.Y l/2 (September, 1929),p.252,reprintedin: ldem, DemokratieundKlassenkampf,pp. 193-20'..
29
See the well-researched study of Andreas Wirsching, ,,Politik und Zeitgeschichte: Arthur Rosenberg und die Berliner Philosophische Fakultät 1 914-1933," Historische Zeitschrift,Vol. 269
100
(1
999), No. 3, pp. 561 -602, esp. pp. 582 ff.
30
Arthur Rosenberg, A History of Bolshev¡sm: Ftom Marx to the First Five-Years'Plan (NewYork: Doubleday, 1 965), p. Vlll.
31
lbid., p.8.
10L
the leadership of the world proletariat to the Government of the agrarran Russian State became more and more evident. The Russian State and the
international working class once more parted company, and Stalin's theory of 'Socialism in a single land' is only the verbal expression of an accomplished fact,32
lØhile the KPD press denounced Rosenberg as a would-be ,,objective historian," armed with ,,counterrevolutionary" aruows, a Russian émigré historian saw the book as a propaganda work filled with ,,positive judgements of the Bolsheviks about themselves."33 Rosenberg was aware that the Soviet leadership, despite its revolutionary rhetoric, was sacrificing the cause of the European proletariat for the state interest of the USSR. He nonetheless regarded Stalin as a ,,well-educated Marxist," as the American visitor Sidney Hook wrote in his memoirs.3a The rising tide of hatred against Jews in the early 1930s, not least at German universities, led Rosenberg to explain the historical roots of anti-Semitism in Germany. ,,The enmity toward the Jews, which was aheady characteristic of a large section of German academics before the war, was part of the aristocratic ideal of life which these men were searching for. The nobility by birth felt at heart much more secure. It did not need such an ideological buttress."35 Rosenberg ignored the f.act that a relevant part of the German Jwnkers had favored and sponsored the Nazi party since the 1.920s, before it became a politically decisive factor in German politics.36
32 33 34
lbid., p p.267-68. Kurt Sauerland, ,,Geschichtsfälscher am Werk," Der Rote Aufbau, Vol. V (1932), pp. 829-35; l[wan] lljin, ,,Review of Arthur Rosenberg, Geschichte des Bolschewismus," Deutsche L¡teraturzeitung, Vol. 54 (1 933), pp. 583-93. Sidney Hook, Out of Step: An Unqu¡et L¡fe ¡n the 20th Century(NewYork: Harper & Row, 1987),
p.110.
35
Arthur Rosenberg, ,,Treitschke und die Juden," Die Gesellschaft, reprinted in: ldem, Demokratie und Klassenkampf, p. 191.
36
See Francis L. Catslen, Gesch¡chte der preußischen Junker(Frankfurt-Main: Suhrkamp,
pp.174-78.
1,02
Vol.
Vll/2 (July, 1930), 1
Heinrich von Treitschke, the most influential historian in imperial German¡ attacked the Jews because he saw in them the embodiment of materialism and liberalism. Rosenberg contended that significant elements of the German bourgeoisie, and especially the academic elite, became Nazis in order to combat such so-called Jewish inventions as _materialism, socialism, and democracy out of a romantic longing to rqgain an innocent world.37 But he was well aware of the fact that anti-Semitism and anti-socialism would come together to intoxicate German societ¡ making it ripe to fall into the hands of the Nazis. On the eve of the Nazis' seizure of power Rosenberg wrote concerning the demand by a Jewish professor at the University of Breslau that Leon Trotsky be granted asylum. Rosenberg supported this case, writing that ,,the same forces that want to liquidate academic freedom in Germany today, demonstrated last year in all clarity fby introducing emergency laws] what they intend to do with all the other rights of the German people, especially of German working people."38 Just before these lines were published, Hitler became German chancellor. Rosenberg was among the first who was forced to escape from the country of his birth.
-
,,The History of the German Republic": Rosenberq's Main'$üork in Exile
As a Jew and a well-known Marxist, Rosenberg had to leave Hitler's Germany very soon. On March 30,1,933 he left Berlin with his family. Traveling via Konstanz, where his wife's relatives lived, he went to Zuich. During his short stay there, Rosenberg wrote a pamphlet on Fascism as a Mass Mouement which came out in the social democratic Graphia Publishing House in Karlsbad, Czechoslovakia. Rosenberg distinguished three kinds of German Fascists: the Nazis, the old German nationalists and, surprisingly, the Volkskonseruatiuen
p. 82,
988),
37 38
Rosenberg,,,TreitschkeunddieJuden,"p.33;
idem, DemokratieundKlassenkampf,pp.l9l.
ldem, ,,Trotzki, Cohn und Breslau," Die Weltbühne, Vol. XXIX
(1
933), No. 1 , pp. 1 3-14.
103
or Brüning group around the former chancellor. He even regarded the 1,923 government of chancellor Cuno as ,,the victory of legal fascism." In Rosenberg's words, Fascism represented the,,counter-revolutionary capitalist, the born foe of the class-conscious working class. Fascism is nothing but a modern, popularly masked form of bourgeois capitalist counter-revolution. " 3e Only a little later, Rosenberg corrected many of his judgments. In hís History of the German Republic he classified the cabinet led by chancellor'SØilhelm Cuno ,, as a capitalist government... It could not in fairness be expected of Cuno that he should pursue a Socialist poli-
revolutionary storm. True democrac¡ however, does not consist in casting votes on any particular question, but in the active self-government of the masses. The abolition of the bureaucracy was thus a question of life and
death for German democracy.al
Thè \üorkers' and Soldiers' Councils which spread spontaneously all over Germany in November 1918, hoped to introduce a true democracy to the masses along with important economic reforms. Rosenberg wrote, the enthusiasm for Socialism wâs not the cause but a result of rhe Novem-
oo
cY."
of the German Republic was one of the best books of any German historian in exile. He emphasized the lack of a
. ber Revolution,. . It is true that there was considerable difference of opinron
democratic tradition as the main reason why the 1918 revolution did
every one wâs agreed: that any form of planned or communal economy
Rosenberg's History
not
succeed:
as
'
to what was to be understood by socialization. On one point, however,
could only be successful if it mobilized the productive masses for active cooperation. And the organizations by which planned or communal economy
Hitherto Germany had not known the meaning of a living democrac¡ a real self-government of the masses. The State controlled public life. Even the so-called local autonomy offered no counterbalance. The great plan devised by Baron von Stein for setting up a middle-class state in Prussia had been curtailed and altered after his retirement. Not merely were the local authorities restricted in all they did by the state government, but, worst of all, the important posts in the local administrations were occupied by long-term officials. The men who filled honorary and unpaid posts in the German communal administration up to '1.91.8 played a very small part
in comparison with the professional civil servants
was to be put into force were the Councils.az
But the Majority Socialist officials did not rcalize that Councils and Bolshevism were in no sense identical. They felt threatened and disturbed by the activity of the Councils among the workers. The Independent Socialists, however, recognized the significance of the Councils. They wished to establish some form of connection between the Councils and the National Assembly. They would have been content to move carefully towards socialization, beginning with the nationalization of the mines. Rosenberg paid particular attention to Kurt Eisner, Independent Socialist and head of the short-lived Bavarian Republic.
Thus the masses of the German people were totally lacking in practical experience of managing their own affairs in a responsible manner'
He would have preferred to abolish the old style parliament, bur ar rhe same
time did not desire speedy nationalization, and refused absolutely ro have anything to do with any methods of dictatorship on rhe Bolshevist model.ar
Bureaucratic control of public affairs rested upon a tradition of centuries.
It
appeared hardly conceivable that
it should
be vanquished by
a
41
tbid.,p.22.
o.75.
42
lbid., p.24.
Rosenberg, The History of the Weimar Republìc, p.178.
+0
lbid., p.28.
Historikus [i.e. Rosenberg], Der Faschismus als Massenbewegung(Karlsbad:
Graphia, 1934),
105
The militant wing of the German workers' movement, the Spartakus Group, was largely isolated even within the movement. The Spartakus leaders, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, had no illusions about the character of the revolution. Unlike most of their adherents they realized that the great majority of the German people 'ü/as satisfied for the time being with a parliamentary republic. The death of Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg was a very heavy loss to the Socialist Labour movement. Both were upholders of a deliberately reasoned
and scientific Socialism that took into account actual conditions. If they had lived longer they would certainly have brought about the separation of their own party from the Utopians, and they would have been the most
suitable leaders of a truly Socialist mass movement of the German proletariat. Above all, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht as leaders of the KPD would never have permitted themselves to be used as the tools of
On the contrary, it was a terrible blow to the Government of the Republic...
Although the occurrence was too recent to have much effect upon the elections for the National Assembly on January 15, it was nevertheless a potent factor in causing millions of workers to turn their backs on the SPD'46
'!íith the assassination of Kurt Eisner on February
21', 1,91'9 by a fanatSocialist workthe German and Revolution, German ic nationalist, ,,the ing class especiall¡ lost the only constructive statesman who had appeared since November 19L8.a7 Rosenberg wrote: .
The political result of the civil war that was waged during the first half of 79t9 in Noske's name was the total destruction of the political power of
the Councils. Any'l7orkmen's Councils that continued in existence were absolutely devoid of influence. Thus the attempt to found a democracy to succeed to the Revolution was an utter failure' As a result, the disarmament
"
Russian state policy.aa
of the working class was carried out systematically and with the greatest
Confronted with the uprising by the Spartakists, who rejected Luxemburg's warnings, Noske, Ebert, and Scheidemann suppressed them with the help of the right-wing paramilitary Free Corps. This was their ,,fatal mistake," as Rosenberg pointed out. They could have done so without the reactionary troops. The possibility of raising a democratic army
was lost.
-.
ve. By the middle of the year the real power in Germany lay with the Free
Corps and not with the National Assembly.as
The-Assembly's standing was,
the nuclei of the democratic forces were left to atroph¡ and very soon the
revolutionary fervour. True revolutionaries would, above all, have faced the danger thât threatened from the army. The National Assembly might have called all Socialists and Republicâns to arms to save their country' A
German Republic had a counter-revolutionary almy led by former imperi-
al officers.as
general armament of the people would have nipped in the bud any danger of individual coups, would have secured the eastern frontier against the
For Rosenberg, there was not a shred of evidence to prove that the Majority Socialist Representatives of the People desired or agreed to the murder of Liebknecht and Luxemburg.
45
46
lbid., p.86.
lbid., pp.85-86.
47
lbid., p.93.
lbid., p.83.
48
lbid., p.89.
106
in Rosenberg's words'
that of the German Reichstag of pre-revolutionary days - that is to sa¡ it wâs composed of decent, honest, hard-working men altogether lacking in
The officers of the old army were continually raising further Free Corps,
44
thoroughness by the officers. On the other hand, the volunteer army under the command of former professional officers gre\M more and more extensi-
1,07
Poles, and might even possibly have strengthened the position of Germany
in face of the Entente at the peace negotiations. No such armament of the people took place, for it would have accorded ill with the ideal of 'Law and
Order', which the men in power revered above all
else.ae
Like Imperial German¡ the'!Øeimar Republic was deathly ill from the very beginning and doomed to fail. This judgment was, of course, contested by a variety of contemporary writers and is still disputed.so Rosenberg started writing this book when he was still in Switzerland. He finished it in 1935 in Liverpool, whose university appointed him as a lecturer in modern history. ,,In these chaotic days," as Rosenberg wrote thankfull¡ the University of Liverpool showed ,,that it is determined to remain faithful to the fundamental truths of Science and Knowledge without regard for 'race' or political opinion."51 But the university could not give him a tenured position. After his three-year contract had ended, Rosenberg left Britain for the United States, the last stop of his itinerary.
,,Democracy and Socialism": Rosenberq
in the United
Rosenberg visited the United States first
States
in 1935, when he participated
in the Annual Conference of the American Historical Association in Philadelphia. His colleague Hajo Holborn, like Rosenberg a refugee from Germany and meanwhile teaching at Yale, introduced him to Jesse Clarkson and Madeleine Robinton, both teachers at Brooklyn College. They offered Rosenberg a teaching position.s2 The position was low49
lbid., p. 105.
50
For a supportive position see Francis L. Carsten, Revolution in Central Europe (Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1972), for a contrary position see Heinrich-August Winkler, Von der Revolution zur Stabilisierung: Arbe¡ter und Arbeiterbewegung in derWeimarer Republik 1918 b¡s 1924(Berlin and Bonn:J. H.W. Dietz, 1984).
lX.
51
Rosenberg, The
52
Personal communication with Professor Robinton, July 22,2000. ln the late 1930s, several refugees from Germany and CenÌral Europe were appointed at Brooklyn College, among them
108
H i story of the Ge rm an Republ ic, p.
paid. Rosenberg would, however, be supported by the Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced Foreign Scholars as well as by the Carl Schurz Foundation.s3 On October 26, 1,937, Rosenberg arrived with his famil¡ including one-year-old son Peter, in New York.sa Some weeks later he started to teach at Brooklyn College. He brought with him the ,manuscript for a new book; Democracy and Socialism. As in his previous works, Rosenberg emphasized the significance of social conflicts and class struggles in the course of modern history. Seeking the causes of the defeat of liberal-democratic states in the interwar period, he offered a typology of modern democracies. He distinguished between ,,socialist" and ,,bourgeois" democracy. '$Øhile the
first was still nothing but a program, the latter had gone through different stages. France under Robespierre and the United States under Jefferson were, in Rosenberg's words, formed as ,,social democratiesr",which understood themselves as alternatives to the feudal and capitalist oligarchy. The other three forms of bourgeois democracy, however, rejected the idea of class struggle and, therefore, sought a social compromise'between the upper class and the people, in the form of either an imperialist or a liberal democracy. Britain under Disraeli stood for the first, the Scandinavian states and Switzerland for the second variant. Rosenberg considered the United States until L890 and the British Dominions as examples of a third form, that of colonial democracy. Liberal democracy would successfully reconcile class antagonisms and would prefer peaceful agreements between the social forces to violent conflicts.
Hans Morgenthau, Hans Rosenberg, and Feliks Gross. See Munay M. Horowitz, Brooklyn College:The First Half-Century (NewYork: Brooklyn College Press, 1981), p.75. The papers of the Emergency Committee are located in the NewYork Public Library Manuscript and Archives Division (NYPL, MAD), those of the Carl Schuz Foundation atYlVO lnstitute, New York. See also Stephan Duggan and Betty Drury, The Rescue of Science and Learning: The Story of the Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced Foreign Scholars (NewYork: Macmillan,
1948), p.48. When in 1937 the Nazi regime revoked German citizenship f rom Rosenberg and his family, he informed the German embassy in London that his youngest son should not be excluded from this measure. See Hermann Weber, Die Wandlung des deutschen Kommunismus,Vol. ll, p.263 (quoting a letter from Rosenberg's sister to Weber).
1.09
ever be possible to defend the true interests of the working people with the
In France, Rosenberg pointed out,
help of general suffrage. In so far as democracy and general suffrage were
t87t.The
considered as necessarily associated factors, this period marks the beginning
fall of the Commune was also the end of revolutionary democracy. As soon
of a shalloq vapid interpretation of the concept of democracy, accompanied
to lead a concrete existence, the political
by its decline, which has continued up to the present. Democracy was no
an unbroken revolutionary tradition existed only from 1793 to as this
political movement
ceased
and historical writers found it difficult to comprehend it. The politicians of
_
longer regarded as active self-government by the labouring masses for the
the French bourgeoisie regarded the Commune as an atrocity. The workers,
purpose of effecting their political and social emancipation, but only as
to be sure, honoured the memory of the Communards as their
comrades, but when the French labour movement again revived around
form of political organizatíon, which is characterized by the existence of a parliament elected by general suffrage, but which otherwise has no positi-
1880, it no longer carried on the tradition of the past...
ve value for the masses.56
class
During the same period the Chartist tradition had been completely forgotten in England. Similarly aÍter I87t the history of the revolution of 1848 appeared like news from a strange world to citizens of the German empire.
The German bourgeoisie, the intellectuals, and the middle class had long since abandoned their revolutionary feelings. At best the national aspect
of
the movement of 1848 was still recognized; with inadequate means ând without success the men of 1848 had aimed at the same goal, which Bismarck had subsequently attained in such a glorious manner... In Italy and Hungary the tradition of 1848 remained alive even after L871, but it was only the national side of the revolution which continued to exist in the cults
of Garibaldi or Kossuth, and not the democratic aspect.ss
Especially in France, as Rosenberg stated, the radical workers could not forget that the June struggles of 1848 as well as the suppression of the Commune of 1,871, had taken olace with the approval of an assembly elected by general suffrage:
a
As a consequence, democracy lost its prestige. The growing antagonism between socialism and democracy led to an isolation of the workers from the peasants and the middle-class, which was one reason for ihe political immobility of the German Social Democracy in August '1.91.4.s7
Marx and Engels had been conscious of the growing divergence between Socialism and democracy. ,,Marx had demanded a definitive espousal of republicanism from the labour movement in Germany as an expression of revolutionary opposition to the ruling system of the Hohenzollerns. Nevertheless during the period of the Second International this serious problem degenerated to petty questions of tact: whether it wafpermissible for a social democrat to converse with an archduke, to 'S7hile Marx and accept his invitation, or even to attend his funeral."s8 Engels carried on a ,,realistic revolutionary polic¡" the ,,radicals of the Second International abandoned a popular revolutionary policy for a policy more directly concerned with the economic interests and protests of the industrial workers."se
Napoleon III had employed general suffrage in order to bestow a semblance of popular approval on his shady empire. .. Now general suffrage no longer appeared to be such a menace to the monarchies and the wealthy upper classes. On the other hand, the
co
lbid., p.220.
57
On another occasion, Rosenberg wrote: ,,The contradiction between the practical activity of the Socialist pariies and ultimate Man
radical labour groups doubted that it would
o.215.
55
Arthur Rosenberg, Democracy and Socialism: A Contribution to the Political History of the Past 150 Years (New York and London: A. A. Knopf, 1 939), pp. 21 8-21 9.
110
Òö
ldem, Democracy and Socialism, p. 294.
b9
lbid., pp.294-295.
1,1,r
Rosenberg emphasized that
Marx and Engels always regarded war
as a political instrumenr, capable of being employed for the revolutionary cause as well as for any other. The Second International, on the other hand, unconditionally advocated peace
under any circumstances. Marx and Engels always affirmed the right of national self-determination and the right of major [sic!] nations to exist. In contrast with this the radicals of the Second International by their polemrcs against the national policies of their own governments and their general
avowal of the brotherhood of man produced the most serious misunderstandings, to say the least, in the mind of both friend and foe.60
But even Marx and Engels ,,failed to recognize that... they were not dealing with individual mistakes within the socialist parties but rather with a new type, ând that the average European labour party was basically different from revolutionary Marxism."61 Rosenberg's minor writings of this last period of his life are also worth mentioning. He advocated a dialog of Marxist and non-Marxist German historians in exile.62 After the expected end of the Nazi regime, Rosenberg envisaged ,,common efforts" of émigré historians of all kinds ,,in order to display the new, positive principle of German future.
"
63
After the outbreak of the Second World 'S7ar, Rosenberg wrote an essay entitled ,,The Soviet-German Pact and the Jews". He pointed out that ,,the German-Soviet treaty has done an extraordinary service to all the friends of Labour and Democracy as well as to the Jews in that it has broken the united front of their enemies," by which Rosenberg meant Nazism, but also British imperialism which favored the Arab
60 61 62
gard Hitler ,,as the traitor to their class and as the accomplice of Stalin."6a Rosenberg tragically underestimated Stalin's assistance to Hitler's war efforts, which enabled the Nazi regime to conquer large territories where they persecuted and murdered masses of Jews. In 1940 Rosenberg's health began to deteriorate rapidly. He suffered from cancer. He planned to write a social history of the ancienr Near East and he even started to learn old oriental languages.6s Rosenberg remained engaged on the left. Through his friend Felix Boenheim, a doctor of medicine and committed communist, Rosenberg again came in touch with KPD exile activities, although he remained critical of German Communism.ln L940 Rosenberg, Boenheim and Alice Rosenfeld, the wife of the Socialist politician Kurt Rosenfeld, founded an unabhängige Gruppe deutscher Emigranten (Independent Group of German Emigrants).6ó Rosenberg cooperated with the American Guild for German Cultural Freedom, one of the refugee organizations.6T Besides that, he established contacts with the left-wing Zionist studenrs' federation Auukah (the Torch), and taught history at its summer camp .
in Lrbert¡
64 65
NY.68
ArthurRosenberg,"TheSoviet-German PactandtheJews,"Jeøbh Frontíer,Vol.Vl (1939), No.
I,
p. 14.
For these and the following information see lhe materials at NYPL, MAD, Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced Foreign Scholars, Box No. 30. His colleague Samuel J. Hurwitz wrote that Rosenberg was,,engaged in the study of Babylonian and Assyrian history. He had an excellent
command of foreign languages and knew how to decipher cuneiform hieroglyphics." Samuel J. Hurwitz in his ,,lntroduction" to Rosenberg, A History of Bolshevlsm, p. XlV. lbid., p.295.
66
lbid., p.297.
Forthesocial contextseeMarioKessler(ed.),DeutscheHistorikerimExil 1933-1945:Ausgewählte Studien (Berlin: Metropol, 2005).
63
leadership in Palestine. ,,That is a consequence of the treaty which was certainly not wanted by Hitler." The conference at Munich,,had been the natural expression of a united front between reactionary capitalism and.fascism," between Hitler and ,,the conservative Lords and the bankers of the City of London." Chamberlain and Daladier would nov/ re-
Arthur Rosenberg,,,Die Aufgabe des Hislor¡kers in der Emigration," Emil Julius Gumbel (ed.), Freie Wissenschaft: Ein Sammelbuch aus der deutschen Emigration (Strasbourg: Sebastian Brant, 1 938), p. 21 3.
67 68
See Rosenberg's letters to Kurt R. Grossmann, November 28, 1 939 and January 2, 1 940, and the circular (Februay|940) in Hoover lnstitution Archives, Sianford, eA, Kurt R. Grossmann Collection. Box No.7. Folder I D: Boenheim. See Deutsches Exilarchiv 1933-1945, Frankfurt-Main, American Guild for German Cultural Freedom/Deutsche Akademie im Exil, F¡les Arthur Rosenberg and Hermann Borchardt (letter Rosenberg's to the American Guild, October 24, 1938).
a
t
See,,Arthur Rosenberg and Avukah," Avukah Student Act¡on,May,1943.
!
, .Å
tL2
t13
':å
.,:"# :tttlt ',,1a&
'',:Å
.::Å
On June 22, 1941, Rosenberg gave a lecture in which he articulated his changed view of Soviet Russia. ,,The totalitari ltartan system ls essentially the same as the Russian system today," he said, ,,and whether or not dictators like each other is beside the point. The totalitarian idea is the idea of a strong state economy without personal freedom. The mass of people must obey the state bureaucracy which in return gives them a certain amount of security." This did not mean that he had abandoned class analysis. ,,The position of the capitalists within the state differs from state to state. In Russia individual capitalism was annihilated, while in Germany and Italy most of the private capitalists have an important position in the state machine. Totalitarian state economy has a dictator on the top." From this he argued that the task and duty
of the Jew today is ,,to
engage in politics. First, national politics in Palestine, and secondl¡ world politics, to fight fascism - because fascism and totalitarianism are the worst enemies of human principles, especially Jewish principles." In Palestine, the ,,democratic front is represented by labor, the Histadrut, the Kibbutz. On the other side we
have a nucleus of fascism, the Revisionists... The Revisionists ate an enemy among us who would undermine the democratic forces among the Jews and open the gate to the enemy whenever possible."6e The next day Rosenberg lectured again. In the meantime, he had become aware of the consequences of the German attack on the Soviet Union. He did not underestimate the Soviet side. ,,Certainl¡ the German economy is very good. On the other hand, the Russian army is not so bad." Rosenberg said that Hitler could not attack the symbol of workers' power and at the same time make grandiose promises to the German workers. ,,Russia had to be attacked as a state, not as a philosophy. So in his war proclamation, Hitler does not proclaim against Bolshevism. If he did, there would have been difficulties with the army."7o Rosenberg was not aware of the war aims that bound Hitler and the German generals together. Obviousl¡ he did not repeat his remarks on
totalitarianism, which he had made on the previous day. Rosenberg continued to teach at Brooklyn College, where he had been given tenure in 1,941,. But in the fall of 1,942, his fellowships, on which he still was depending, had not been renewed. In a moving letter to Betty Drur¡ the secretary of the Emergency Committee, he explained that his ,,situation had turned worse. During the last months, I began to have pains in my hips and to limp on my right leg. As the pains continually increased, I went to a specialist, and was told that one of my bones had a serious disease, which is affecting the surrounding organs of the body. I must undergo a long treatment with X-rays. I will tr¡ in spite of my illness to go on with my academic duties as much as possible. You know how expensive such a treatment with X-rays is; and I do not see how I will be able to afford it at the present. Without this treatment, I will be forced to give up my academic activities in a short time. Please inform the committee of this new develooment. which makes a grant more urgent than evet."71 On Februarl 1, 1943, Rosenberg was sent to the hospital. Six days later he died. His friend and colleague (but not relative) Hans Rosenberg managed to get a death benefit of $2,000 for the family from Brooklyn College. It was stated in a short note that ,,in case of dela¡ [it] will not get [to you] until May."72 The college's obituary said that the students ,,always loved" Arthur Rosenberg ,,and flocked to his classes and-lectures. He was always a friend and a scholar. He made history a
living subject."73 In his last published essay, ,,'What remains of Karl Marx?," Rosenberg emphasized
in L940:
Marx was never a rigid inflexible thinker. In a great revolutionary crisis, he favored ruthless action of the proletariat. In other times. however. he
Arthur Rosenberg to Betty Drury, November 4, 1942, NYPL, MAD, Emergency Committee, Box
No.30. 72
69 70
Arthur Rosenberg, ,,Why Should Jews Have a Political Program," Avukah Cooperative Summer School, Summary of lecture. Unpublished manuscript in NYPL Jewish Division. ldem,,,The War Situation," lb¡d.
't14
Ibid. Brooklyn College Vanguard, Vol. XXI I (1 943), No. 1 , pp. 1 and 8. For other obituaries see The NewYorkTimes, February9, 1943; NewYorkerStaats-Zeitung und Herald, February 10, 1943; Avukah Student Action, May 'l 943; Aufbau, February 1 9, 1 943 (Hans Rosenberg).
115
supported peaceful reforms within capitalism, if this improved the situation
of the working class. He acknowledged the historical mission of the proletariat in advanced industrial societies, but he made no cult of the workers. Marx devoted a great part of his life's work ro the study of the agrarian question and peasants' movements... The present generation cannot find remedies and fulfilling prophesies in Marx's writings. However,
he remains an example of how to reconsider critically and to draw conclusions from the changes in society... The political bankruptcy of the Second and Third Internarional parties seems often the proof of the worthlessness of Marxism, but the basis of this criticism is false. Síhen
The Resistance of Small Socialist Groups Against German Fascism'
parties, which have nothing to do with Marxism but superficial appearances, are defeated, an objective criticism
will not take it
as a
proof of the failure
of Marxism.Ta
The German Communist Part¡ the KPD, like many of the Comintern 'When
On another occasion, he wrote: ,,The future of socialism thus rests with the democratic and intellectuallv indeþendent Dartíes of the west."75
,sections, was wracked by factionalism throughout the 1920s. after 1925 the party was headed by Ernst Thälmann (a transport worker from Hamburg), the Swiss Comintern functionary Jules HumbertDroz described him as ,,a leader made in Moscow" and an ,,ideal executor of Russian policy in Germany."2 By the Sixth Comintern Congress
The majority in the Central Committee, led by Thälmann, was aligned with Stalin in his struggle against Bukharin. The strongest opposition to Stalin was called - the -,,Rightist" faction, led by Heinrich Brandler and August Thalheimer, and became the KPD-Opposition. Between the Thälmann and rightist factions were the so-called Versöbnler (Conciliators), led by Arthur Ewert and Gerhart Eisler, brother of the composer Hanns Eisler, and the former KPD chair Ruth Fischer. Both the 'Conciliators' and, more expressl¡ the 'Rightists' rejected the Stalinist notion that a'new revoIutionary wave' was underway both in Germany and throughout the world. They also opposed the designation of Social Democrats as Sozialfaschisten (Social Fascists).3
in 1.928, three currents were left within the party.
1 2 Arthur Rosenberg',,Was bleibt von Karl Marx?," Maß und Wert,Vol. lll, No. 3, MàrzlApril1940, p. 389, reprinted in: ldem, Demokratie und Klassenkampf , p. 137 .
ldem,,,Socialist Parties," p. 220. My emphasis.
1,1,6
3
Jointly written with Theodor Bergmann. Quoted from: Robert J. Alexander, The Lovestoneites and the lnternational Communist Oppo' sition of the 1930's (Westport, CT, and London: Greenwood Press, 1 980)' p. 135 See Hermann \Neber, Die Wandlung des deutschen Kommunismus: Die Stalinisierung der KPD,2vols., (Frantdurt-Main: Europäische Verlagsanstalt, 1969); Ossip K. Flechtheim, Die KPD
1,1,7
The Fratricide of the German Labor Movemenr Before 1933
This new theory of 'social Fascism' fell on fertile ground, particularly because of the enormous amount of suffering that virtually every social stratum was subjected to by the Great Depression of the early 1930s. This created widespread desperation and a readiness for violent solutions to social problems. The political armosphere, with its deep, growing despair and wild revolutionary illusions, also provided a suitable climate for the growth of Fascist mass movements all over the world.a The German government, Ied by the Social Democratic Party (SPD) until March 1930, pursued a vigorous 'law and order' polic¡ the most notorious example of which occurred on Labor Day (May 1) of 1929.|t had been customary in Berlin, on May first, to gathï workers together in one big demonstration under the auspices of the trade unions. That year, however, the head of the Berlin police (an SPD member) had forbidden the demonstration, though the KPD ignored rhe resrriction. The demonstrators and the police clashed head-on, and the police fired on the workers, killing thirty-two and wounding several dozen. The SPD defended the hard line and did not reprimand the chief of the police.s The repercussions were very serious. Up to this point, the KPD had always attempted to draw a line between SPD leaders and rank-andder We¡marer Republik (Frankfurt-Main: Europäische Verlagsanstalt, 'l976, f¡rst published 1948); Eric D. Weitz, Creating German Communism, 1890-1990: From poputar protest to Socialist State(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990); Klaus Michael Mallmann, Kommunisten ¡n der We¡marer Republik: Sozialgeschichte einer revolutionären Bewegung (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1996); Andreas Wirsching, Vom Weltkrieg zum Bürgerkrieg? Pol¡t¡scher Extremismus in Deutschland und Frankreich 1918-1933/39: Berlin und Paris im Vergleich (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1999); Klaus Kinner, Der deutsche Kommunismus: Selbstverständnis und Realität,Yol.1: DieWeimarerZeit(Berlin: D¡elz, 1999);in a larger context see David E. Barclay and Eric D. Weilz (eds.\, Between Reform and Revolution: German Socialism and Communism from 1840 to 1990 (NewYork and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), cited hereafter as Between Reform and Revolut¡on. ¡n
4
See Thomas We¡ngartner, Stalin und der Aufstieg Hitlers: Die Deutschlandpolitik der Sowjetunion und der Kommunistischen lnternationale(Berlin: de Gruyter, 1970); Siegfried Bahne, Die
KPD und das Ende von Weimar: Das Sche¡tern einet Pol¡t¡k, 1932-1935 (Frankfurt-Main: Campus,1976).
5
See Thomas Kurz, ,,Blutmai:" Sozialdemokraten und Kommunisten im Brennpunkt der Berliner Ereignisse von 1929 (Berlin and Bonn: J.H.W. Dietz, 1988). For similar incidents see also Eve Rosenhaft, Beat¡ng the Fasc¡sts? The German Communists and PoliticalViolence, 1929-
1933 (Cambridge and NewYork: Cambridge Un¡vers¡ty Press, 19gg).
118
file members, trying to convince the members that they were being betrayed by their leaders. Now the KPD declared that the SPD members' views more or less agreed with the policy of the leadership, resulting in the new theory that every membef of the Social Democratic party and every member of the sPD-dominated trade unions were active enemies of the cause of the proletariat and the socialist fevolution. Open conflict with these 'elements' (the maiority of workers and socialist intellectuals) became the first duty of every true revolutionary. The idea was raised that a fascist policy could be conducted by a Sociai Democratic party. The careers of the ex-socialists Benito Mussolini and Jozef Pilsudski seemed to illustrate the truth of that contention. After May Day of 1,929, the KPD concluded that the German government (formed by the SPD and the moderate bourgeois parties of the socalled 'Weimar Coalition') was essentially a Fascist government under iocialist leadership - Social Fascists. Bourgeois democracy and Fascism were now equated with one another. The KPD identified the ingenious concept of 'social Fascismr' declaring that the Social-Democrats in fâctories and the Fascists were twins (hence the main enemies of communisr workers), and as such they had to be defeated first - before defeating Fascism proper. The KPD claimed that any Fascist rule would last only weeks and would be succeeded by the dictatorship of the proletariat, establishing a Soviet Germany. The Social Democrats were hardly any wiser' They saw Communists as ,,red-varnished Fascists," and believed that the bourgeois democracy would fight against Hitler, thus protecting the social and po-
litical achievements of the working class.6 The SPD tolerated the minority coalition under conservative Heinrich Brüning, whose government introduced measures openly detrimental to the conditions of workers and the growing unemployed masses.
6
Forthe SPD policy see Heinrich AugustWinkler, DerWeg in die KatastrophejAlle¡ter und Arbe¡terbewegung in derWeimarer Repubt¡k 1930-1933 (Bonn: J.H.W. Diete 1987); more critical is Bernd RãOeñl's, ,,Auf dem Wege in die nationalsozialistische Diktatur: Die deutsche Soz¡al-
demokratie zwischèn'Großer Kóalition'und der legalen'Machtübernahme'Hillers," Manfred Scharrer (ed.), Kampftose Kapitulation: Arbeiterbewegung 1933 (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1984), pp-
18-72.
In July 1930, the German coalition government broke down and the Reichstag, the German parliament, was dissolved. The new elections in September were a surprising triumph for Hitler. His party won 18.3 per cent of the votes and brought 107 Nazi deputies into the Reichstag.The Communists also made an advance, getting 13.1 per cent. The SPD, although still the largest part¡ fell from 29.8 to 24.5 per cent. ,,Yesterday was Herr Hitler's 'great day,"' the KPD dally Rote Fahne jubilantly declared, ,,but the so-called electoral victory of the Nazis is only the beginning of their end." A few weeks later, the same newspaper stated that ,,the '1,4'h of September was the high watershed of the National Socialist movement in Germany - what follows now can only ebb and decline."T The Chancellor, Heinrich Brüning, whose government was largely tolerated by the SPD, was supposed to be fascist. The KPD slogan of. Volþsreuolution (People's Revolution) was advanced as the chief strategic slogan of the party - an attempt to ourdo the Nazis
in nationalist demagoguery. When, in the summer of 1931., the Nazi pafty promoted a referendum to dismiss the Social Democratic government of Prussia, the larg-
est German state, the KPD supported the move, calling it the Roter Volksentscbeid (Red Referendum) and did its best (unsuccessfully as it turned out) to destroy the government in circumstânces where the only alternative was a right-wing government including the Nazi party. In March 1,932, the SPD felt obliged to supporr Field Marshall Paul von Hindenburg, the reactionary military leader and loser of \ùØorld 'War I, in the runoff-election for President. The party justified this measure as the supposed last protecting trench against Hitler. Only eight months later, the same Hindenburg made Hitler the chancellor of the German Reich in a formally legal coup d'etat. In November 1.932, on the eve of the Nazi's seizure of power, the KPD found itself in a bloc with the Nazis in supporr of an unofficial transport worker's strike in Berlin. In some districts, communists and Nazis were standing arm in arm collecting money for the RGO (RezoBoth quotations from lsaac Deutscher, The Prophet Outcast:Trotsky, 1929-1940 (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1 980), p. 1 30.
lutionäre Gewerkschaftsopposition or communist trade organization) and the NSBO (Nationalsozialistiscbe Betriebszellenorganisation or trade union organization of the Nazis). The strike quickly collapsed, and the KPD was even more politically isolated. In fact, the KPD policy had strengthened the position of the SPD leadership among the working '$7hile the KPD had short-term growth in membership, they did - masses. political influence or social prestige. Most of the newcomnot grow in ers were no longer steeped in the internationalist and radical democratic tradition of the pre-war labor movement but were, rather, politically radicalized desperados, the likes of Erich Mielke, who later became the head of East Germany's secret police service. the Staatssicherheits' dienst or Stasi.s It is no surprise that the KPD also underestimated the danger of Nazi ideolog¡ especially its anti-Semitic dimension. The KPD had alïays oppored any kind of anti-Semitism, despite some anti-Semitic feelings among its rank-and-file, and the KPD was sharply critical of Nazi anti-Semitism. However, in 1930, KPD leader Hermann Remmele wrote a booklet entitled Sòwietstern oder Haþ.enl
8 9
See the impressive biography by Wilfr¡ede Otto, Erich Mielke eines Tschekisten (Berlin: Dietz, 2000), pp. 16-17.
-
Biographie: Aufstieg und Fall
For the KPD'S attitude towards anti-Semit¡sm and Jew¡sh issues see Mario Kessler, Antisemi' tismus, Zionismus und Sozialismus: Arbeiterbewegung und jüdische Frage im 20. Jahrhundert(Mainz:Decaton, 1993), passim; alsoThomas Khaury, An¡rlsemitismusvon links: Kommunistische ldeologie, Nationalismus und Antizionismus in der frühen DD,9 (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2002), chapter 5: ,,Die KPD in der Weimarer Republik." :a.
l)
t20
121,
..a/!
,*
t;:¿
a:ï
'Slhen
prevent members of the bourgeois parties from being heard.1o in August 1.930 Die Rote Fahne printed a denunciation of ,,Jewish stockmarket jobbers,"11 the SPD accused it of competing with Hitler in the anti-Jewish fervor.Lz The next day the KPD organ expressed regret for what was called a misprint: instead of ,,lobber fuden," it should have rcad ,,lobber, luden" (stock-market jobbers and Jews) - asserting its commitment to fight anti-Semitism uncompromisingly.13 1933 saw the destruction of Communist illusions regarding the scope and impact of the Nazis' seizure of power. Among German refugees in France, Czechoslovakia, and elsewhere, new groups had been formed that were close to the platforms of Trotsky and of Brandler-Thalheimer. The groups were small, but their influence could not be ignored. In the international arena, they had briefly forced Stalinism onto the ideological defensive. However, in the Soviet Union the German political catastrophe strengthened Stalin's hand. The establishment of Nazi rule gave new impetus to the Stalinist trend, and the Communist International remained loyal and obedient. More than ever, the overwhelming majority of Communists saw in Stalin's rule a guarantee against Hitler's bid for world dominance. As on the international scene, there were in Germany not only the well-known and large labor movement organizations (the SPD, KPD, and ADGB/General Trade Union's Association) but also several small
leftist groups like the KPD-Opposition (KPDO), SAP (Sozialistische Arbeiterparlel; Socialist 'SØorker's Party), LO (LinÞe Opposition; Left Opposition), and the ISK (Internationaler Sozialistiscber Kampfbund; International Socialist Fight's Union).14 To fully understand the imporVorwärts, May 16, 1 930, quoted from: Donald L. Niewyk, Socialist, Anti-Semite, and Jew: German Social Democracy Confronts the Problem of Anti-Semitism, 1918-1933 (Baton Rouge, La.: Louisiana State University Press, 1971), p. 'l80. 11
,,Rotes ABC," Die Rote Fahne, August 27, 1930.
12
N
iewyk, Socrallst, Anti - Se m ite,
tó ,,Ein Fehler, 14
,,
a n
d J ew, p.
1
August Thalheimer's Analysis of Fascism
Tie- first full Marxist analysis of German fascism was written by August Thalheimer in 7928. He saw in Fascism a qualitatiuely new form of bourgeois rule. Already in 1.929, four years before Hitler's ascent to power, he wrote that ,,Hitler is no longer a desperado who operates beyond the boundaries of bourgeois reaction; the National Socialists are now the vanguard of a capitalism which is concentrating of the basis of Fascism."ls In other words, the Nazi party would grow out of bourgeois-parliamentary democrac¡ but would destroy the same democracy when in power. In the same year, when the Nazi party was but a tiny group in the Reichstag, Thalheimer clearly described the obiectives of Fascism to include the: Abolition of bourgeois democracy. This includes closing down the parliament or its transformation into a fake parliament, abolition of freedom
of assembling, of coalition, of the press, of strikes, abolition of all pãrliamentary parties, [and] the abolition of mass organizations of the proletariat, particularly of the independent trade unions... The armed services of the state are supplemented by terror gangs.r6
Regarding the objectives of Fascist foreign polic¡ Thalheimer asked whether the new German imperialism reach its goals in ,,peaceful ways" and answered his own question very clearly: To begin with, German imperialism uses means of peaceful diplomacy [and]
80.
advocates general disarmament in order to obtain equality in rearmament
Die Rote Fahne, August 28, 1930.
For more recent publications on two of these groups see Theodor Bergmann, ,,Gegen den Strom:" Die Geschichte der Kommunistischen Partei Deutschlands (Opposition),2nd ed. (Hamburg: VSA, 2001); Helmut Arndt and Heinz Niemann , Auf verlorenem Posten? Zur Geschichte der Sozialistischen Arbeiterparte¡ (Berlin: Dietz, 1 991 ).
122
tance and impact of the small leftist groups' active resistance to German fascism, one has to look at the early stages of Fascism's rising wave in the late L920s.
15
Gegen den Sf/'om, September 14,'l'929, p.37, quoted from: Martin Kilchen, ,,August Thalheimer's Theory of Fascism," Journal of the History of Ideas,Vol.XXXlV (1973), No. 1, p.74.
16
,,Plattform der KPDO," (beschlossen am 20. September 1929), 3rd ed. (Berlin, n.d.), pp.23-24.
1,23
, :,7 ti¿
4
for itself.
Bur it can realíze Íallimperialist rearmament and participation in a new distribution of the [coroniar] world only as a consequence of a new
imperialist war. German imperialism prepares for a new imperialist war.17
Thalheimer also analyzed the dual social character of the Fascist movement: its mass base consisted of the declassed parts of the middle and working classes, or the Lumpenproretariat, whire its leaders pushed for the long-term aims of German imperialism. This combination of interests was achievable only via extensive use of social demagoguery. Similar Marxist analyses were made somewhat r"t., bf Fritz Sternberg and Leon Trotsky.lB Trotsky inrerprered the giganiic growth of Nazism as a consequence and response to two central factors: ,,a deep social crisis, throwing the petty bourgeois masses off balance, and the lack of a revolurio nary party that wourd today be regarded by the popular masses as the acknowledged revolutionary leader.,,1s frkeady
in 1929, Thalheimer had warned against the rising
wave of Fascism and proposed a strategy of unified struggle for alr working crass organizations, which would attîact the insecure, wavering, and intermediate social layers. Since the KpD readers instead took ih, ,,easy road of making propaganda against the spD, and since the Right wing socialist leaders mistrusted the power of the proretariat and preferred the .lesser evil,' no such united socialist fighting front came into existence,.. wrote the Marxist historian Arthur Rosenberg. ,,Arthough the working
class comprised three-quarters
of the entire nation, they were unable to unite either upon their political ideals or their political tactics.,,20
17 lbid., p. 19. 18 The best colrections of sternberg's and rrotsky's wr¡tings on Fascism are: Fritz
sternberg, Fúr die Zukunft des soziar,rl_r9, qeniás eial aBonn, J.H.w. o¡åìr, iòããil iäo r,otrr¡, 99. ¡e1oa schriften übet Deutschtand, ed. Herñrur oan¡iei et aì., zvots. lrranrtuir-'r,rrãN,tiiopai."n" vertagsanstart, 197i ); partiar Engrish transration: tãon rrotst
19
lbid., pp. 13-14.
20
Arth.ur Rosenbe rg, A History of the German Repubr¡c(Newyork: Russe, & Russer, 1965), 906'iæ"di. 07, rirst German edition: Geschichte ¿er ¿euticiàn Þ"prøi* ci"pñ¡ä,
the essay on Rosenberg in thls volume.
lkuir.oä0,
s""
The Surrender of 1-933 The dominant German labor organizations were in total disarray, having produced political illusions and ignored the real threat. Both the large workers' parties fought a bitter internecine struggle for the ideologiôal and organîzational dominance of the working class. They had rejected all calls by the smaller leftist groups and known leftist individuals to organize a united front. The workers were waiting, in their usual discipline, for the call from leadership to begin the fight against Fascism. Labor's surrender, almost without resistance, led to confusion, paralysis, disappointment, and in some cases desertion of one's class to the ranks of the victorious enemy. Such incidents could be observed even among some leading functionaries. The surrender
of
1.933
had long-standing demoralizíng effects on the legitimacy of leftist op-
þosition movements. Some Social Democratic leaders nurtured the illusion
of a possible
co-existence with the Fascist regime, by adapting themselves somewhat to the new rulers. Thus when Hitler declared Labor Day a national holida¡ Trade Union leaders called upon their members (on April 1.9) to join the official Labor Day demonstrations as a formal duty. However the morning after, aII Union houses and offices were stormed and occupied by Fascist storm-troopers and all leading Unionists were arre"sted and transferred to concentration camps, where they met their fellow communist workers, against whom they had fought. Many of the leaders were tortured, and quite a number died under this torture. The SPD leadership was split. Some of the leading functionaries emigrated immediately and established a party leadership while in exile in Prague. Others remained and voted for Hitlert ,peace plan" in parliament on April 1,7,1,933. Their illusions were soon blown in pieces by fascist brutality and the establishment of a wholesale dictatorship, where no rival party was permitted. Naturall¡ the SPD was banned. The Unions were also abolished, and a Deutsche Arbeitsfront (German Working Front) was proclaimed under Nazi leadership. Employers were installed as leaders of the Betriebsgemeinschaft (enterprise community), and the workers were the Gefolgschaft (followers); this was
1,25
in fact a compulsory organization with zero democratic influence
by
the workers. Any negotiations about wages and working conditions ceased.21
This defeat, after so much boasting, paralyzed the big labor organizations for quite a while. Only the small groups had understood the real dangers of Fascism, had prepared their organizations for the foreseeable terror, and espoused the necessity of underground activity. They began immediately to reorganize into smaller groups of three to five, publishing illegal periodicals and leaflets and informing workers about the political objectives of the Nazis, i.e. describing the fast adaptation to armaments production and the significance of this change: pteparation for a new war. These groups also clearly articulated that there was no chance for the workers to influence the Nazi German'Working Front. Thus, they began to organize illegal, class-conscious Trade Unions, uniting workers of all leftist parties and groups. One development illustrates the full confusion of the KPD. From 1.928 to 1933, the KPD had tried to establish its own Red Unions, compelling their members to leave the free Trade Unions, arguing that the reformist Union leaders were traitors and that rank-and-file members had no chance of democratic influence. After the formation of the Deutsche Arbeitsfront, however, the KPD called its members to join this entirely undemocratíc organization, which had openly and explicitly declared its hierarchical structure. KPD members were asked by the party to work inside the Deutsche Arbeitsfront and try to conquer leading positions. The Nazi Regime erected immense daily hurdles against the underground struggle. The control of all public life, via spying and organized terror, were intensified daily. Immediately after the semi-legal coup d'état of January 30, 1933, concentration camps were established all over German¡ and Hitler's storm-troopers became auxiliary policemen. It was difficult to purchase large quantities of paper, stamps, or
- spying and reporting were everywhere, and every house had a reporting caretaker. Railway passage was also controlled. The small leftist groups established their own network of information and communication between exiled leaders and the underground at home. Trusted members settled in adjacent countries and transmitted ,political information from the borders via publications and letters. Some internationa| organizations supported the underground work, particularly the International Transport'SØorkers' Federation under secretary Edo Fimmen. However when the Nazis occupied the Netherlands in 1940, they arrested Fimmen and executed him. The left-wing groups maintained their political program which included the revolutionary overthrow of Fascism, the expropriation of the capitalist class (which was labeled responsible for the rise and establishment of Fascism and co-operation with the Fascists), and speaking out in favor of a socialist society. In the case of war, they would work toward defeating their 'own' government - whose demise would open the way for revolutionary change. typewriters
The Resistance Begins Soon after Hitler came to po\À/er, a minority of communist resistance fighters cooperated with non-communist workers. The most notable outcome of these efforts was the clandestine organization Neu Beginnen (New Beginning), comprised of KPD members, the SPD, and small leftist groups. Neu Beginnen stated that the collapse of German Social Democracy dates not from its passivity in the final crisis of 1933, but from the opportunity it missed in 1918. It bitterly
paid for the illusion, to which it had clung to the bitter end, that a working class may securely enjoy the fruits of political democracy, while the reality
of power remains in the hands of the possessing
21
Most valuable maler¡als on these developments can be found in Timothy W. Mason, Naz¡sm, Fascism, and theWorking C/ass, ed. byJane Caplan (Cambridge, MA, and London:Cambridge University Press, 1 995).
22
class.22
Miles (i.e. Walter Loewenheim), Socialism's New Beginning: A Manifesto From the Underground Germany (NewYork: League for lndustrial Democracy, 1 934), p. 5. For the conten see Jan Foitzik, Zwischen den Fronten: Zur Politik, Organisation und Funktion linker politischer i ,t
,; .l¿
t26
1.27
,:lå, 1
.c
:13
Among the Neu Beginnen activists were the political scientist Robert Jungk, and the historian Francis L. Carsten (then Franz Ludwig Carstens).23 Some communist resistance groups included Social Democrats and independent Marxists, like those led by Walter Markov in Bonn and by Ernst Engelberg in Berlin. Markov and Engelberg, who became famous historians after 1,945, were both sentenced and arrested.2a Under the influence of the new, post-1934 line of Soviet diplomac¡ the Comintern changed its tactics a yeü later. Hitherto it had aimed for a Sowietdeutschland (Soviet Germany) - a somewhat unusual and unpopular slogan. However in 1935, they decided to establish a popular front together with all non-fascist social forces in and outside of Germany. The German bourgeoisie was said to include a non-fascist section that should become a partner in this popular front. All revolutionary goals were explicitly discarded: a parliamentary bourgeois democracy became the KPD's official aim. Nevertheless, these progressive and democratic capitalists could not be found, neither in Germany nor abroad. The German Popular Front Committee, established in Paris, soon dissolved in a quarrel, since some leftists wished to invite Trotsky's followers, while the KPD labeled them the agents of Fascism. The KPDO, under its exiled leadership of Heinrich Brandler and August Thalheimer, criticized the Moscow show trials of 1936-1938, during which the whole Bolshevik old guard was liquidated. The KPDO also protested against the Stalin-Hitler-Treaty of August 1.939, explaíning it as Stalin's attempt to stay away Írom the coming war between the \ùlestern alliance and the fascist axis of Hitler and Mussolini. The Soviet Union was finally isolated ín 1,939.'When with the German aggression Kleinorganisationen im Widerstand 1933 bis 1939/40 (Bonn: J.H.W. Dietz, 1986). For a general account see Hartmut Mehringer, Widerstand und Emigration: Das NS-Regime und seine Gegner (Munich: dtv 1997).
23 24
On Jungk see his autobiography Trotzdem: Mein Leben für die Zukunft (Munich: Droemer/ Knaur, 1994), on Carsten see his autobiographical sketch: ,,From Berlin to London ," Leo Baeck lnstituteYear Book XLlll (London: Secker & Warburg, 1 998), pp.339-49. On Markov see his memoirs: Revolution im Zeugenstand,ed.lhomas Grimm, ([East] Berlin and Weimar: Aufbau-Verlag, 1989); also Sven Heitkamp, Walter Markov: Ein DDR-Historiker zwischen Pa¡leidoktrin und Profession (Leipzig: Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung, 2003); on Engelberg see Mario Kessler, Exilerfahrung in Wissenschaft und Politik: Hemigrierte Historiker in der frühen DDR (Cologne, etc.: Böhlau, 2001), chapter 8.
1.28
against Poland the war broke out on September 1,1939, the KPDO and the Trotskyists were in favor of defending the Soviet Union as the only 'worker's state,' while at the same time criticizing its international
political strategy. The KPD and the communist parties of
'Süestern
Europe were, once again, entirely confused after the German-Soviet treaty of eternal friendship of September 30, 1.939. Now, by order of Moscow, they had to contradict their own earlier anti-Fascist propaganda. Hitler now became a promoter of peace, Britain and France became the war-monger's, and there was no more mention of a Popular Front against fascist Germany. German anti-Fascists, including volunteers from the Spanish civil war, were advised to return to German¡ where they would not be in any danger. But all who returned were jailed by the Nazis, and some German Communists, who had found asylum in the USSR, were handed bver to the Gestapo by Soviet authorities'2s The leftist groups were convinced that the ,,eternal" friendship between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union would not last long, and the first Soviet military moves confirmed this judgement. Stalin's armies occupied the borderlands to Rumania, the eastern part of Poland, and 'Winter .SØar against the three Baltic states. These occupations and the Finland were clearly strategic preparations for the final confrontation 'Wehrmacht and the Red Army. between Hitler's Leftist resistance and underground work was guided by a Marxist political analysis and strategy with revolutionary objectives. But their technological means and methods could not match and compete with the growing intensit¡ wealth of resources, technical sophistication, and growing brutality of Nazi control and persecution. Thus more and more underground activists were discovered, arrested, and brought to trail' Countless years of imprisonment were meted out, and many of the prisoners were not released when their jail terms expired. A large number were directly transferred to concentration camps, where many of them remained until liberated in the Spring of 1'945 by the advancing
25
For details see Wolfgang Leonhard, Betrayal: The Hitler-Stalin Pact of 1939 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1989).
allied armies. Members of the KPD, the SPD, and of the small groups were, after their jail terms, relegated to special divisions, set up for politically unreliable and criminal soldiers, who were then sent to the most dangerous places in the war.26 Some of them tried to desert, going over to Yugoslav and Greek partisans. Underground propagandists had to battle the Nazi ideologues, which had disposed of the monopoly of legal media, and thus claimed some temporary and superficial success. Nazi propaganda influenced the mood of those who had no access to alternative sources and critical analyses. Thus after the early surprising victories of the ,,invincible" German Wehrmacht, some reveled, believing in a lasting victory, but were sobered in the wake of crushing defeats in northern Africa (1,942) and Stalingrad (1,942-1,943). After these military setbacks, workers' acts of resistance intensified (not at least inspired and conducted by activists from the small groups). There were at least three trials in which KPDO members were sentenced for the second time. Having been jailed once after 1.933, they had to lie low after their release because of police supervision. However, when the military situation changed, they resumed their clandestine antifascist work. In all three trials, some of the accused communists were condemned to death and executed, some as late as 1.945.27 The murder machine worked until the last day of the Nazi dictatorship. The KPD remained officially legal until March 1933. The party's Central Committee issued on January 30, 1,933 (the day of Hitler's nomination as Chancellor), an appeal to the SPD and Trad.e Unions, calling for a united response in the form of ,,strikes, mass strikes, general strike!"28 The KPD recognized that its inability to quickly mobilize resistance to Hitler's regime was a major defeat, revealing the failure of the ultra-left line of the years prior to 1933. But this appeal was issued too late and convinced neither the nonCommunist workers nor anti-Fascist intellectuals. ¿o
Such units were the Division Dirlewanger and Division 999.
27
For details see Bergmann,,,Gegen den Strom", passim.
28
Reproduction of the leaflet in Margot Pikarski and Günther Übel (eds.), Die KPD lebt! Berlin: Dietz, 1980), pp. 125-26.
130
(låasll
After the Reichstag Fire of February 27,1,933, full-scale persecution started. On the night of the fire and in the following days some 10,000 communists were arrested.2e Among them were many middle-ranking functionaries. The leadership, with the exception of Ernst Thälmann, managed
to
escape.
, The Nazis were confident that the German labor movement could never recover. But the last free election to the Reichstag, of March 5, 1933, produced surprising results: the KPD obtained not fewer than 4.8 million votes (12.3 per cent of the electorate), while the SPD gleaned 18.3 per cent of the vote. Soon afterwards, the KPD was officially banned, as M/as the SPD two months later. . The building of an illegal network involved decentralization, for which the KPD was not prepared. Therefore, political actions, particularly by anti-Fascist propagandists, started quite late, in effect by the iummer of L933. The KPD established a foreign directorate (Auslandsleitung) in Paris and a domestic directorate (Inlandsleitung), that illegally operated in Berlin. Two years later, the majority of the leadership 'Wilhelm moved to Moscow. Pieck, the acting chairman of the KPD, reported at the Seventh Comintern congress that, in 1,935, of 422 leading cadres 219 were in German imprisonment,'1,25 had been forced into ext\e, 4L had left the party, and 24 had been murdered.30 As mentioned, the KPD had changed its political line in 1935, suddenly promoting cooperation with what was depicted as a democratic bourgeoisie, and in 1939 stopped working almost altogether, resuming again in June 1941,, when Hitler suddenly ended his alliance with Stalin. 29
30
See Detlev Peukert, Die KPD im Widerstand:Verfolgung und Untergrundarbeit an Rhein und Æuhr(Wuppertal: Peter Hammer, 1980), pp. 110-12; Heinz Kuhnrich, Die KPD im Kampf gegen die faschistische D¡ktatur 1933-1945 (Berlin: [East] Dietz, 1983), p. 30; Allan Merson, Communist Besistance in Nazi Germany (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1985), p. 32. For a general account see Michael Schneider, Unterm Hakenkreuz: Arbeiter und Arbeiterbewegung 1 933 b¡s 1939(Bonn: J.H.W Dietz, 1999); Peter Steinbach and JohánnesTuchel (eds.), Wlderctand gegen den Nationalsoziaflsmus (Bonn: Bundeszentrale für Politische Bildung, 1994), especially the essays of Klaus-Michael Mallmann, Hartmut Mehr¡nger, Michael Schneider, and Michael Kissener.
See Beatrix Herlemann, ,,Communist Resistance Between Comintern Directives and Nazi
lerror," Between Heform and Revolution, p.362.
1.3'1.
The SPD had been more passive. Those who did not capitulate and desert socialism tried to maintain friendly contacts and save themselves for a post-Hitler era. In a detailed letter from mid-May 1933, the party functionary Fritz Blümel informed the SPD executive of the then prevalent mood in Berlin: In the eyes of the workers the party has suffered such a tremendous loss of confidence in every respect that in all likelihood
it will
be impossible to
it. Let us take care to ensure the survival of the [social democratic] idea in new organizational forms, and let us see to it that the idea will regain respect through struggle.3l rescue
united front in the Central German, industrial town of Zeitz, several Thuringian towns, and in Cologne, Germany's fourth largest city. In Hanover, a united front encompassed all Marxist parties: the KPD, SPD, KPDO, as well as the SAP.34 It was the Stalinist terror in the Soviet Union, the Moscow show trials, and the persecution of independent socialists by Stalin's secret police (during the Spanish civil war) that ended united front activities both in exile as well as in Germany. Since 1,939, the Soviet policy of reconciliation with Hitler ran parallel with intensifying Nazi terror in thé wake of the war, and by 1,940, the clandestine social democratic network was destroyed by the Gestapo.
In a report dated July 1934, Iü/aldemar von Knoeringen, one of the leaders of the social democratic underground struggle, noted a profound sentiment in favor of unifying the various brands of the \Morkers' movement: These groups want a unified socialist class party of the proletariat. The comrades gave me examples of how workers reject communist leaflets as soon as they start up their older insults of the SPD. They do not want the continuation of the old tone, and they believe that the new era has created entirely different preconditions for class struggle. The divisions of yesteryear are cleared away; the methods of struggle have become uniform; [and] the terrain is prepared for a united workers' movement.32
The local presence of small leftist groups may, in the words of the historian Gerd-Rainer Horn, ,,have eased the road to unity or prepared the ideological terrain for unity sentiments to gain ground."33 According to a Ì|lday 1935 Gestapo report, pro-unity agitation on the part of SAP members was in part responsible for the emergence of a viable
31
Fritz Blümel to Paul Hertz, May 21 , 1933, as quoted in: Gerd-Rainer Horn, ,,The Social Origins of Unity Sentiments in the German Socialist Underground, 1933 to 1936," Between Reform
and Revolutíon,p.343. 32
Quoted in: lb¡d., p.344. lbid., p.348-49.
t32
Underground Work During the
,ÙVar
of the leading SPD politicians became more active ín 1,943; as the breakdown of the Nazi regime came closer, they joined with the emerging bourgeois resistance. This resistance groups only appeared shortly before the end of the'war. After many hesitations, they made their first attempt to assassinate Hitler on July 20, 1,944.3s It failed, and most of the participants of the military and bourgeois conspiracy were executed. Not a few of them were conservative, anti-Communist, anti-Semitic, influenced by Nazi ideolog¡ and some had even been earlier supporters of Hitler.36 By the end of 1943, they had begun to fear that the old social order in Germany might be destroyed after the looming military defeat In spite of this late awakening, some historians have set the date of the beginning of resistance to July L944, ignoring the workers' resistance that began much earlier and had, from the start, antiSome
34
lbid., p.349.
iJ5
See, among many other works, the books by the East German historian Kurt Finker, Sfauffenberg und der 20.Juli(lEasll Berlin: Union-Verlag, 1967, 7th ed. 1989);idem, Graf Moltke und der Kreisauer Krels ([East] Berlin: Union-Verlag, 1978, 2nd ed. 1980, new ed.: Berlin: Dielz, 1 993); idem, Der 20. Juli 1 944: Militärputsch oder Revolution? (Berlin: Dietz, 1 994). On the ideology of lhe conspirators against Hitler see the convincing study of Theodore S. Hamerow, On the Road to the Wolf's Lair: German Resistance to Hitler (Cambridge, MA, and London:The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1997).
133
fascist and anti-war objectives. For a long time, for example, the courageous attempt of the worker Georg Elser to assassinate Hitler in the fall of 1938 also remained untold.37 The record cleaily indicates that, both in their political programs and the underground work against Nazism, the small leftist groups proved to be an important alternative to the ineffective targe organíza-
tions of the German labor movement, with their extensive political machinery. The latter had misled German workers into waiting in vain for orders that were never given to fight against Hitler and his accomplices. After the war, the SPD and KPD were reconstructed with the strong support of the four allied powers. Both parties, but particularly the KPD and the East German SED, ignored the sustained, consequential and heroic underground work of the small groups, despite the fact that their political achievement had been in excess of their size.38 If a political cost-benefit analysis could be assessed, one would see the efficiency of the small groups and, conversel¡ the damage done to the Iabor movement by the large organizatíons' sense of superiority and neglect of clear warnings. The small groups proved the usefulness of non-dogmatic Marxist analysis and offered socialist alternatives. One could even say that they saved the German labor movement's ,,soul," refuting the arguments of Lord Robert Vansittart and Henry Morgenthau who claimed, during and after'$7orld !üar II, that all Germans suppofted Nazism in one or another way.
The West German historian Gerhard Ritter, himself an opponent to Hitler and imprisoned in '1944, bluntly declared Communists to have no place in the history of German resistance. See his book: Carl Goerdeler und die deutsche Widerstandsbewegung (Munich: dM 1964), p. 109, first edition 1954, Engl¡sh translation: The German Resistance: Carl Goerdeler's Struggle
againstTyranny (London: Allan & Unwin, 1958). More moderate in his attitude towards communists was Hans Rothfels,lhe olhet doyen of West German historical scholarship after World War ll. See his Die deutsche Opposition gegen Hitler (Frankf urVMain: Fischer, 1969), revisededition o1 TheGermanOppositiontoHitler(Hinsdale, lllinois: HenryRegnery, 1948).
38
See the self-critical reevaluations of Olaf Groehler, ,,Zur Geschichte des deutschen Widersrandes: Leistungen und Defizite," Rainer Eckert et al. (eds.), Krise - Umbruch - Neubeg¡nn: Eine kritische und selbstkr¡tísche Dokumentation der DDR-GeschichtswissenschaÍ (Sluttgart: DVA, 1992), pp. 408-1 8, and of Kurt Finker, Zwischen lntegrat¡on und Leg¡timation: Der antifaschi-
stische Widerstand in Geschichtsbild und Geschichtsschreibung der DDR (Leipzig: RosaLuxemburg-Stiftung Sachsen, 1 999).
The Soviet Style of Power in Eastern Germany: Some Notes on the SED'
The German Democratic Republic (GDR) was 'democratic' only in the ¡ery specific, Soviet-communist interpretation of that term: So-called 'democratic centralism' was in reality more centralist than democratic, a dictatorship from above rather than government consent from below. ,,But to recognize that the GDR was a dictatorship is not to say very much about the specific character of this dictatorship", as Mary Fulbrook has written.2 ,,The focus on repression is not actually very revealing. It does not tell us very much about degrees of political compliance, or acquiescence in their own, domination, to be found among the East - Gergran population."3 In this essay two methods of rule will be anaIyzed and the following question raised: What conclusions can one draw about the logic of the Soviet style of power in Eastern Germany by considering changes in that system's methods of rule, particularly its blend of repression and tolerance? An examination of the ways that forms of repression and tolerance in the GDR changed over time can offer us insights into Soviet-communist societies in both general terms and in detail. The GDR was unique in having more than 300,000 Soviet Parts of this essay have been published in a considerably ditferent forin in: Mar¡o Kessler and Thomas Klein, ,,Repression and Tolerance as Methods of Rule in Communist Societies," Konrad H. Jarausch (ed.), Dictatorship as Experience: Towards a Socio-Cultural H¡story of the GDÆ (NewYork and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 1 999), pp. 1 09-2 1.
MaryFulbrook, Anatomyof aDictatorship:lns¡detheGDRl949-1989(OxfordandNewYork: Oxford University Press, 1995), p.8.
135
troops stationed on its soil; line of the Cold War.
Repression
it
was also unique in represenring the front
in Stalinist and Post-Stalinist
Societies:
fhe Case of Eastern Germany The function of repression in Soviet-communist systems is indeed a key question in analyzing these models of power. Stalinist societies, such as the Soviet Union from 1935 to about 1.956, or post-war Easrern Europe up until 1956-1957, were based generally on state surveillance sysrems created and used by the communist state party to maintain social order. In the Soviet Union, this was preceded by the collapse of the party's social and political base - peasants and workers - that it had won at the beginning of the 1930s. The gradual switch ro organized rerror was made possible only by previous changes in party rule. From its origins, the Bolshevik party had focussed on creating a party apparatus, and after the October Revolution of 1.91.7 it established a nornenklatura system for party and stare positions.a The highest-ranking members of the party hierarchy began to build a pafty bureaucracy. The specific feature of emerging Stalinism was a concentration of power rn the hands of a few privileged members of this bureaucracy, which became increasingly independent over time. This was accompanied by the expansion of the state security service that sought to replace voluntary submission with absolute obedience. The history of the Socialist Unity Party (the SED) reflects the larger evolution of East German society. It provides an example of how Soviet system, developed under strict party control, was transformed into regimes geared to gratifying internal needs. lflhat remained constant during this transformation was the main characteristic of the system: its
3 4
compulsive nature. However, as Konrad H. Jarausch has pointed out, the objectives of post-Stalinist party leaders were fuelled by different motives, such as the move to a ,,patriarchal" or ,,welfare dictatorship", directed towards social gratification of the society.s These goals were not just a continuation of the more repressive phase of socialist ,transformation. The following example of changes in internal party disciplinary methods will serve to illustrate the nature of this process. In May 1.945,the re-organized Communist Party of Germany (KPD) was established as a Stalinist-style, cadre-centered party. The 'bol'SØeimar Republic had already shevized' party of the later years of the rid itself of dissidents, and the party's exiled members who had survived the Soviet terror of the 1930s were obedient to Stalin's policy.6
But unlike the Soviet Union, the KPD in the Soviet Zone of Germany had not yet experienced the liquidation of alternative political currents. 'The situation in post-war Germany presented the party with new challenges. In deference to his Western war allies, Stalin dispensed with an open imposition of the Soviet political system immediately after the war's end. But according to his wishes, expressed in June 1.945, ,,the hegemony of the working class and its revolutionary party" were to be guaranteed in a parliamentary-democratic republic.T The KPD was forced to show a large degree of tolerance for the reinstated non-comDemocratic Party (SPD), - munist parties, and particularly for the Social the KPD's main opponent within the labor movement. It was clear from the outset to the Soviet occupying powers that, if their military administration in eastern Germany were to be replaced by a German government, a Soviet-style, unified labor party was a
5
See Konrad H. Jarausch, ,,Care and Coercion:The GDR as Welfare D¡ctatorship," ldem (ed.), Dictatorship as Experience, pp. 47-69.
6
For the history of the KPD in the Weimar Republic see Hermann Weber, Die Wandlung des
under the Weimar Republic (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1984); Klat¡s Kinner, Der deutsche Kommunismus: Selbstverständnis und Real¡tàt, Vol. 1: Die Weimarer Zeit(Berlin:.Dietz, 1999). For a full account see Eric D. Weitz, Creating German Communism: From Popular Protests to Socialist State, 1890-1990 (Ptinceton, NJ: Princeton University Press), 1997.
lbid., p. 11. Some valuable malerials about the nomenklatutasystem in the Soviet Union can be found in: Michael Voslensky, Nomenklatura: Die herrschende Klasse der Sowjetun¡on (Vienna and Munich: Molden, 1980).The author, for many years h¡mself a privileged person in Soviet soc¡ety, writes from a militantly anti-Communist standpoint, simply turning his former glorification of the Soviet regime into its opposite.
136
deutschen Kommunismus: Die Stalinisierung der KPD in der Weimarer Republik, 2Yols. (Frankfurt-Main: Europäische Verlagsanstalt, 1969); Ben Fowkes, Communism in Germany
7
See Jochen Laufer,,,Genossen, wie ist das Gesamtbild? Ackermann, Ulbricht und Sobottka ¡n Moskau im Juni 1945," Deutschland Archlv, Vol. XXIX (1996), pp. 355-71 .
L37
prerequisite. However, the unexpected strength of the SPD in the second half of 1945 complicated the situation for Soviet and German Communists alike, and encouraged the KPD ro seek immediate unification with the Social Democrats. Hermann \Øeber argues that cadre problems also forced the KPD to develop a parh that would preserve irs claims to leadership and control. According ro ìüeber, the KPD found itself short of experienced and capable working-class activists to fill the administration, local governments, and economic institutions in eastern Germany. The new recruits simply had too little education and administrative experience to carry out the required tasks. At the same time, the SPD enjoyed much more continuity with prewar labor organizations and represented a potential source of administrative talent for the KPD.8 But the main impetus towards unity was the Soviet desire to crush the SPD as an active force in East German politics. Also important was Kurt Schumacher's intransigent line against the Soviets which posed a particularly sharp threat to Soviet authority in Germany.e In April 1946, the KPD and the East German SPD formed the SED. The new party was seen by leading Soviet-trained Communists as 'mixed'. It was permeated with 'elements' which had to be brought under control. However, the pressure to cleanse the pafty of dissenters in no way matched the potential threat posed by the former German Social Democratic Party. Furthermore, the Soviets and their German allies were well aware of another potential for resistance: namel¡ that of SED members who had belonged, before 1933,to leftist socialisr and anti-Stalinist communist groups, such as the Socialist IØorkers Party of Germany (SAPD) and the KPD-Opposition (KPDO).lo
Those members of the small leftist workers' organizations who had survived the Nazi regime were very active in forming local committees (Antifaschistische Aþtionsausschüsse) in a number of German cities and .Slestern armies liberated these places. towns, even before Russian or The English and Americân troops simply dissolved these committees; ,the Russians moved more cautiously. But'Walter Ulbricht, the German Communist leader who was closest to Moscow; soon ordered the disso-
lution of these spontaneously formed bodies. Most of the committees' activists joined the KPD, if only to raise their critical voices.11 The Soviet Military Administration in Germany (SMAD) was particularly disturbed by this situation. In May 1,946, Sergey Tyulpanov and Fyodor Bokov, two high-ranking Soviet military administrators, warned the SED leaders Ulbricht, Pieck, and Grotewohl of ,,Trotskyist" elements within the party and urged them to undertake countermeaòures.12 Hermann Matern, then head of the Berlin organization of the SED, wrote that the ,,Ultra-Leftists [i.e. alleged supporters of Leon Trotsky]" do not have ,,their own orgânization, but they work in factions, " 13
"
The SMAD and the SED leadership were particularly vulnerable to attacks on the Soviet Union from independent-minded Communists using 'distorted Marxism and Leninism'. ,,Only after our intervention", reported a Soviet Lt. Colonel, did the SED ,,begin to take measures to exclude several of them from the party."Ia
11
Among the literature on these committees see Ulrich Borsdorf, Peter Brandt, and Lutz Niethammer (eds.), Arbe¡terinitiative 1945. Ant¡faschistische Ausschüsse und Reorganisation der Arbeiterbewegung in Deutschland(Wuppertal: Peter HammerVerlag, 1976); Staritz, Geschich-
te der DDR, pp. 100-03, and most recently Jürgen Tubbesing, Nationalkomitee'Freies Deutschland'-Antifaschistischer 8
I
10
See Hermann Weber, Geschichte der DDR (Munich: dtv, 1999), p. 71 . See Dietrich Slarilz, Die Gründung der DDH: Von der sowjet¡schen Besatzungsherrschaft zum sozialistischen Sfaaf (Munich: dtv, 1 995), pp. 120-21; Norman Naimark, The Russians in Germany: A H¡story of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945-1949 (Cambridge; MA, and London:The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1995), pp.276-77. Schumacher was the leader of the SPD in the three Western zones of Germany.
t¿
For fecent literature on these parties see Helmut Arndt and Heinz Niemann, Auf verlorenem Posten? Zur Geschichte der Sozial¡st¡schen Arbeiterpartel (Berlin: Dietz, ,l991 ); Theooor Bergmann, Gegen den Strom: Die Geschichte der Kommunistischen Partei-Opposition,znd ed. (Hamburg: VSA, 2001 ).
14
138
Block-Einheitspartei: Aspekte der Geschichte der antifaschi-
stischen Bewegung in Leipzig (Beucha: Sax-Verlag, 1996).
IJ
Rolf Badstübner and Wilfried Loth (eds.), Wilhelm Pieck: Aufzeichnungen zur Deutschlandpol¡t¡k 1 945-1 953 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1994), p.73-7 4 Documented in: Beiträge zur Geschichte der Arbeiterbewegung,Vol. XXXV|ll (1996), No. 1 , pp.
78. Lt. Colonel Blestin to Tyulpanov FebruayI 0, 1 948, quoted in: Norman Naimark, ,,The Sovlets, the German Left, and the Problem of 'Sectarianism' in the Eastern Zone, I 945 to 1949," David E. Barclay and Eric D.Weitz (eds.), Betvveen Reform and Revolution:German Socialism and Communísm from 1840 to 199O (NewYork and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 1 998), p.433.
139
The Soviet local administrators in Thuringia feared that communist and social democratic criticism of the Soviet Union would merge and lead to an organized platform within the party. They supposed that such a platform could formulate a political program which asserted that while Lenin had followed Marxist traditions, Stalin had created an imperialist USSR. ln 1,946, there were indeed underground activities by. former KPDO members, who smuggled materials from Heinrich Brandler and August Thalheimer to the Soviet zone, particularly to Thuringia. Brandler and Thalheimer, two KPDO leaders from the 'Sleimar Republic, had written in their Cuban exile a number of pamphlets in which they drew exactly that conclusion.15 The Soviet military intelligence ser vice made enormous attempts to identify the source of these highly ,,sub' versive" activities, but without notable success.l6 At the same time, a group of SED dissenters around Karl Schmidt, a Trade Union functionar¡ sought to ,,invigorate" socialism by ,,reviving" Lenin's policies. Schmidt even argued that the Soviet Union had abandoned Leninism through the policies regarding the Oder-Neisse line as the new German borderline to Poland; a clear violation of Lenin's ,peace without indemnities" polic¡ in Schmidt's eyes.17 There was even a revival of Trotskyist activities, but they were very quickly suppressed.ls These and many other similar developments in various parts of the Soviet Zoneled the SMAD and the SED to the conclusion that administrative instruments to meet internal Dartv threats had to be created.le 1
1
5
6
would make the party an effective instrument of administration. Through interrr"l cadre policies he sought, as Norman Naimark stated, ,,to reduce institutional conflicts and make administrative practices more hierar"chical." Thus, the SED leadership created ,,the kind of nomenklatura system... that would deliver the appropriate cadres to the administration."2o According to this system, the PPA had to approve all appoint-
to leading positions in administration, public institutions' and, particularl¡ in the SED. An open and enforced stalinization of the SED - with the aim of ffansforming it into a well-disciplined mass-party - started aftet May 1,g48 and. was carried out largely by the central Party control com-
ments
Most nolable of these pamphlets are: Aldebaran [August Thalheimerl, Grundlinien und Grundbegriffe der Weltpolitik nach dem zweiten Weltkrieg, n. p. n. d. 119451; August Thalheimer, Ðre Potsdamer Beschlüsse: Eine marxistische Untersuchung der Deutschlandpolitik der Großmächte nach dem 2. Weltkrieg, n. p., 1945. Both pamphlets were, in fact, co-authored by Brandler. One of the most active organizers of KPDO underground act¡v¡t¡es, espec¡ally in Thuringia, was Theodor Bergmann, who had ¡ust returned f rom Swedish exile. See Theodor Bergmann, /m Jahrhundert der Katastrophen: Autobiographíe eines kritischen Kommunisten (Hamburg: VSA, 2000), pp.78-79.
Andreas Malycha, Die SED: Die Geschichte ihrer Stalinisierung 1910 '!9_s! lPadefborn: SònOningn, eôOO); fnoma s Klein, ,,Für die Einheit und Reinheit der Partei": Die innerparteíli'
See Naimark,,,The Soviets," p. 433.
18
See the memoirs of one of the most active Trotskyists, who spent many years in Bautzen State Penitent¡ary Prison: Oskar Hippe, Und unsere Fahn' ¡st rot. Er¡nnerungen an sechzig Jahre in de r Arbeite rbewegung (Hamburg: Juni us, I 979).
9
-rial was forwarded to the Counter-Intelligence Committee by informants who had infiltrated such groups or who were recruited from iheir ranks. Before the internal parry purges of the early 1950s, such information, if not immediately used for ,,disciplinary measures" (which ranged from exclusion from the party to imprisonment and deportation to the Soviet camps), was filed away for later use. Ir was 'llalter ulbricht who sought to develop sED policies that
mission (ZPKK). Based on rheir JuIy L948 declaration regarding the lead,,Purging of hostile and degenerate elements from the party," SED interpreted and ers followed the policies dictated by the Cominform any deviation from the official line as enemy activity and the work of foreign agents.21 The policy of a 'special German path to Socialism' i. e. a path independent from the Soviet model - had been formulated in
17
1
To that end, the Counter-Intelligence Division (Referat Abwehr) within the Section for Party Personnel (PPA) in the Central Committee (ZI() was created. The Counter-Intelligence Division collected material about party dissenters, particularly about organized faction work. The mate-
See in detailThomas Klein, Wilfriede Otto, and Peter Grieder, Visionen: Repression und Opposition in der SED (194e-1989), 2 Vols. (Frankfurt-Oder: Frankfurter Oder Editionen, 1 996);
140
20 21
chenKo-ntroltorganederSEDinderAraUlbricht(Cologneetc:Bóh'lau'2002). Naimark, The Russians in Germany, pp' 46-7. ln June 1948, the lnformation Bureau of the Communist and Workers' Parties (Cominform) passed a resólution which depicted the Communisl Party ofYugoslavia.as an,,espionage office process in the service of foreign intelligence agencies." This resolution marked lhe increasing of Stalinization of all Óommuñist parties, who had merged with Social Democrats after 1945.
141.
the first KPD documents right after the war and was expounded in Anton Ackermann's famous essay of 1946. This policy was now rejected.22 Strict disciplinary measures were the most direct strategies of Stalinist control during the purges of 1949-1951. It should be noted that most of the victims of the proclaimed battles against 'Tito Fascism', 'Trotskyism', 'Social Democratism', 'imperialist spies and agents' and, as we see \ater,'Zioníst conspiracies' were not explicitly attacked for their dissident activiries, but for alleged crimes. They became hostages of Stalinist 'disciplinary measures' due to their political past and because of changing Soviet foreign policy inrerests, particularly in East Central and Southeastern Europe during the early stages of the Cold \X/ar. The most prominent vicrim in the GDR was SED Politburo member Paul Merker, who was sentenced to a long prison term.23 Some of the most hard-line attacks against these victims came to an end right after Stalin's death on March 5, 1,953, but it was only after Nikita Krushchev's revelations ar rhe 20,h Party Congress in 1956 that the repressive system itself was stopped. Open repressive means were ultimately supplanted by an authoritarian rule which was characterized by a mixture of suppression and tolerance.
From Repression to Tolerance - and Back? Changing Methods of Rule in Communist Societies
In 1956, those who had been responsible for purges within the SED had to fear being confronted by comrades from within their own ranks, as a result of the unbroken lines of personal continuity at the upper levels of
22
See ,,schaffendes Volk in Stadt und Land! Männer und Frauen! Deutsche Jugend! (Auf ruf des ZK der KPD, June 1 1, 1945)," Lothar Berthold and Ernst Diehl (eds.), Hevotutionärc deutsche Parteiprogramme ([East] Berlin: Dietz, 1964), pp. 191-22. See also Anton Ackermann, ,,Gibt es einen besonderen deutschen Weg zum Sozialismus?," Einheit,Vol.I (1946), No. 1, pp.22п.
The literature on this top¡c is vast. For a valuable bibliography, which includes works in Eastern European languages, see George Hermann Hodos, Schauprozesse: Stal¡n¡stische Säuberungen ¡n Osteurcpa 1948-1954,2nd ed. (Berlin: Aufbau Taschenbuch Verlag, 2001 pp.343), 353.
1.42
the party. Although East Germany did not experience show-trials like the Rajk, Kostov, and Slánsky spectacles in Budapest' Sofia, and Prague, the SED was nevertheless forced to deal with the touchy issue of past and present party discipline. Since the party 'purges' were still on everybody's mind, the next step was to replace repressive techniques of party control by more subtle forms of governance. These were to be carried out with as much consistency as the most repressive Stalinist meâsures. The new disciplinary techniques, which were largely implemented by party control organs, developed in conjunction with the changing political challenges of the mid- to late 1950s. They served, as before, mainly to secure the party leadership's monopoly and to protect the party from all kinds of suspected or actual opposition' There is space here for only brief mention of the fact that party leaders still had to prevent currents of dissent which were the result of "frustration with party control measures and disciplinary action. It became imperative for the leadership to maintain what was called the 'Unity of the party?. After 1.956, the party's policy goal - the so-called 'battle against revisionist tendencies' - established a less than consistent course of de-Stalinízation that ultimately aimed at the preservation of the Politburo's power and authority. This phase of reconstruction which lasted well into the late 1950s, also involved repressive measures, albeit to a milder degree than in previous years.2a Beyond demonstrations of strength, which served to underscore publicly the illegitimacy of any form of criticism, the party leadership began to turn to mixed methods of repression and tolerance. In the early 1960s, just after the Berlin'SØall was built, the SED leadership developed more moderate and even partly self-critical methods for dealing with its own members. Party leaders placed increased emphasis on integration, rather than ideological coercion, and developed
24
The trial of the circle of younger intelleciuals around the philosopher Wolfgang Harich exemplifies this course. Harich, who had openly called for Ulbricht to be deposed, was sentenced to
nine years in Bautzen prison. White olhers around him were sentenced too, prom¡nent
intellectuals who had been suspected of supporting Harich, like the economists Fritz Behrens and Gunther Kohlmey, and the historian Jürgen Kuczynski, were not sent to jail, as they probably would have been before 1 956.
1,43
more flexible approaches to meeting real needs, insread of pure indoctrination. Proof of this trend toward moderation can be seen in administrative measures taken to make the judiciary more independent of direct party control. This was accompanied by more realistic youth and economic policies, and until 1965, by a relative openness towards 'Western cultural trends, especially in popular music. All of rhese measures were intended to create a basis for far-reaching economic reforms within the Iegal framework of the system. As soon as it became clear that a rebellious and uncontrolled current had arisen among East German youth, who followed'Western Beatnik and emerging Hippie counrer-culture, rhis trend toward líberalization was stopped at a plenary session of the Central Committee in November 1965.2s Similar fears of spontaneous and uncontrolled developments, which might go beyond the limits of the authoritarian model of rule, led the SED leadership to stop economic reforms by the end of the 1960s.26 The clocks were pur back, but nor ro rhe point where mass repression became once again the basis of the sysrem. The 'czechoslovak crisis' of 1968 provided a precedent for the success of a double strategy of reintegrating dissidents while removing any potential for opposition through massive intimidation.2T It should be noted that a policy of rolerance, ar leasr as it was applied
by the SED leadership, characterized principally pre-bourgeois societies. The Edict of Toleration issued by Emperor Joseph II in 1781 guaranteed religious freedom to Protestants in Austria, but did not grant the Protestant church the same rights as the catholic state church. The tolerance edict issued by King Friedrich 'l7ilhelm IV of Prussi a in 1847 should be viewed in a similar light - namely as political instrumenr of 'enlightened absolutism'. For a broader historical perspective, one should emphasize that in Soviet Russia under Lenin, one can hardly speak of tolerance as constituting an essential elemenr of politics. The Council of Peoples' Com-
25
see Günter
26
see Jörg Roesler, Zwischen PIan und Markt: Die wirtschaftsreform l96s-1970 in der DDR
Agd e (ed.), Kahlschlag: Das fe (Berlin: Aufbau Verlag, 1991).
1
1.
Plenum des ZK der sED. studien und Dokumen-
(Freiburg and Berlin: Haufe, 1990).
27
For this'double strategy'see Lutz Priess et al ., Die sED und der,,prager Frühting" 196g (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1996).
1.44
missars combined repressive measures with policies aimed at granting smaller groups, such as ethnic minorities, Iegal emancipation. Under such premises, Soviet policies towards the Zionist movement, for example, were relatively tolerant until about 1,922. Whlle Zionist parties were treated as political opponents, but not yet as arch-enemies, emigration Palestine was not outlawed, and Zionist agricultural colonization -to
pfojects, namely on the Crimea, won limited support.2s After Stalin's death, the limited freedoms granted by party and state as tn leaders were not guaranteed and could be revoked at any time pre-bourgeois societies. How this tolerance actually functioned can be seen in changing policies towards various ethnic, social, and cultural
minorities - particularly towards minorities who had served as scapegoats under Stalinism and had suffered accordingly. Policies towards religious minorities (or the religious majority of ihe po-pulation) varied from continued repression in Stalinist Albania to more measured oppression, such as in Czechoslovakia, or even accommodation, as in the GDR or Hungary. In Poland, the state party recognized the importance of the Catholic church and granted it so much autonomy that one can almost speak of a 'dual power' within the cultural infrastructure of society.2e Policies towards social and cultural minorities also encompassed a variety of different approaches. For example, attempts were made to reduce the Jews to a mere religious group and to assimilate the nonreligious parts of the Jewish population. When this policy failed, the Polish regime reacted in 1,968 with forced expulsion, while in Romania some steps toward liberalization were undertaken at this time. In the Soviet Union, tolerance towards the Jews had relatively fixed limits in the long period between Lenin's death and Gorbachev's rise to power.3o 28
SeeMarioKessler, ZionismusundinternationaleArbeiterbewegunglS9T-1933(Berlin:AkademieVerlag, 1994), pp. 106-14.
29
Francois Fejlö, A H¡story ol the People's Democracies: Eastern Europe since Stal,n (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1974), pp. 436-48 offers an overview of religious inslitut¡ons in Eastern and East Ceniral Europe (without the GDR).
30
For Communist policies towards the Jews in the former Soviet Bloc see Peter Bettelheim el al.
(eds.), Anfrsemitismus in Osteuropa: Aspekte einer h¡storischen Kontinuifáf (Vienna: Picus,
1992); Jan Hancil and Michael Chase (eds.), AntLsemitism in Post-Total¡tarian Europe
145
ì
l
l
The GDR, with the burden of Germany's Nazi heritage, was a unique case in the Soviet Communist world. Scholarly attempts to understand the Holocaust have focused largely on how the international workers'
movement, particularly its communist arm, dealt with the Jewish question. Communist approaches have emphasized the political and social dimensions of anti-Semitism and Jewish emancipation, while paying little attention to its ethnic and religious components. The uniqueness and irrational nature of the motives behind Auschwitz have largely been underestimated in such analyses. The GDR's policies towards the country's small population of Jews
were, however, largely determined by the Soviet Union. Repressive Stalinist measures towards the Jews, as carried out in the USSR beginning in 1.949, were extended, in considerably milder form, ro the GDR in 1952/3. Stalinist anti-Semitic policies ended an initial phase of SED policies towards the Jews that was not only characterized by tolerance, but by active engagement. The anti-Semitic campaign initiated later not by the SED but by the Soviet leadership, pur a stop to this process. The Soviet-initiated campaign against'cosmopolitanism' affected Jewish and non-Jewish re-immigrants from the tJØest much more than other segments of the population.3l At the end of 1952, the Stasi searched Jewish communiry offices and confiscated files. This led to great fear among many Jews. Five of eight leaders of the Jewish community and over 400 Jews fled to rhe ìØesr at this time. SED leaders nevertheless refused to stop financial suppoft ro the religious communities, although the Stasi suspeced them of being 'agents of our class enemies'. Following Moscow's polic¡ the SED adopted the anti-Semitic rhetoric of the Prague Slánsky trial while simultaneously suppressing individual outbursts of anti-Semitism in the population. The series of internâl party investigations, temporary imprisonment, professional difficulties, and degradations, as well as excommunications from the part¡ intensified during the winter of 1.952 to 1953. Paul Merk(Prague: Franz Kafka Society), 1993; Leonid Luks (ed.), Der Spätstalinismus und die'jüdische Frage' (Cologne: Böhlau, 1 998).
31
See ,,Anti-Semitism Against a Non-Jew:The Case of Paul Merker" in this volume.
1,46
er, who was non-Jewish, was suspected
of encouraging Jewish SED mem-
to join ,,the Jewish community." Ffe was also accused of having promoted Zionist views during his years of exile in Mexico, as well as having urged the compensation of those Jews whose property was stolen by the Nazis only in order to allow U.S. capítal to penetrate Eastern Germany. Stalin's death finally brought to an end the particular brand of anti-Semitism associated with his person, which was disguised as fight against Zionism and 'cosmopolitanism.' However, Merker was not released from prison until 1956. bers
The conflicts around June 17,1953 pushed the problem of anti-Semitism in the GDR into the background. Paradoxically enough, the same Jewish communists who just six months earlier had feared state power, as well as the pafty and security apparatus, and most of all the Soviet dictator now came to regard the presence of state power as a warranty Tor their (relative) safety. Afterwards, the SED was able to introduce a policy of tolerance toward the Jewish community and toward secular Jews. The memory of Nazi genocide was disseminated, if somewhat one-sidedl¡ throughout society.32 The Jewish community was expected to comply with official polic¡ but was not forced to come out in open opposition to Israel.33 In the 1980s, this measured tolerance was replaced by active support of Jewish culture and religious practices. The reasons for this shift are to be found in more general overtures towards the Unifed States, increased prestige in the eyes of the Federal Republic of Germany, and new freedoms resulting from changing Soviet policies under Gorbachev, who was decidedly against any form of anti-Semitism. To pose the problem in a broader context, one should consider that policies of tolerance proved to be difficult to take back, once established. The question of tolerance became central during attempts at social emancipation 'from above'. The farthest-reaching concept of tol-
32
See Chaim Schatzker, Juden, Judentum und Staat lsrael in den Geschichtsbüchern der DDR (Bonn: Bundeszentrale f úr politische Bildung, 1994).
33
See Erica Burgauer, Zwischen Erinnerung und Verdrängung: Juden in Deutschland nach 1945)Reinbek: RowohltTaschenbuch Verlag, 1992), chapter 3;Angelika Timm, Hammer, Zrkel, Davidstern: Das gestörte Verhältnis der DDR zu Z¡onismus und Staa.t lsrael(Bonn: Bouvier, 1997); Lothar Mertens, Davidstern unlet Hammer und Zrkel: Die Jüdischen Gemeinden in der SBZDDR und ihre Behandlung durch Partei und Sfaaf (Hildesheim: Olms, 1997).
1,47
of the 'Prague Spring' in L968. This effort to achieve socialist democracy based on self-emancipation instead of repression and tolerance was destroyed by Soviet tanks. The second attempt, Gorbachev's perestroika, came too late to mobilize a majority for a reform of socialism from above and below. erance was formulated by the reformers
Anti-Semitism against a non-Jew: The Case of Paul Merker, 1952-1953' The attitude towards Jews and Jewish issues during the post-war years must be carefully examined, especially in the country from which the ïestru-ction of European Jewry emanated. In that context initial attempts to come to terms with the past were emphasized more strongly in the Soviet Zone of Germany. This explains for why many Jews, who had survived in Germany or in exile, opted for the GDR as their future pJace of residence. The political orientation in the Soviet Zone was shaped by the pre-1933 traditions of the German working class movement, and was dominated by its Communist wing. The Socialist Unity Party (SED), which had been in the process of Stalinization since 1948, also-identified itself with the position taken by the Communisr Inrernational (Comintern) for solving the 'Jewish Question': They believed that in order to defeat Anti-Semitism Jews should give up their Jewish identity and assimilate into the Communist movement. This movemenr urged Jews to struggle for a classless and socially just society. It was assumed that any form of Anti-Semitism would fade away, given that the Comintern approach explained Anti-Semitism via economic reductionism, i.e. in a truly socialist societ¡ Anti-Semitism would have no class basis. Zionism was rejected in all of its manifestations.2
1 2
1.48
The following has been summarized from the author's book: Dle sED und die Jueen - zwtschen Repression und Toleranz: Politische Entwicklungen b¡s 1967 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1 995), chapters 2 and 3. Forthe Comintern's attitude towards Zionism and Jewish issues see JackJacobs, On Socrairsfs and ,,The Jewish Question" after Marx (New York and London: New yo¡1k Universitv press,
t49
During the years that followed, Ieading Communist politicians frequently attributed much responsibility for the crimes of National Socialism to the German people. One important example, albeit not the only one, is the declaration of the KPD on June 1.1.,1.945, which emphasized that ,,in every German the awareness and guilt must burn that the German people bear a significant responsibility for the war and its consequences. It was not just Hitler who was responsible for these crimes against humanity! Partially responsible are also those ten milIion Germans who freely voted for Hitler in 1,932, even though we Communists warned 'whoever votes for Hitler votes for war!"'3 While this declaration of the KPD did not exclude the genocide against Jews, it did not mention it in any particular way. This was in accordance with the Soviet line of viewing the Holocaust as only secondary to the Nazi regime. Yet, during the first post-war years, but only then, there was serious consideration of offering surviving Jews not only individual, but also collective, compensation. There was also some criticism for these proposals from within the KPD. Already during its first meeting the Berlin governing council of the Victims of Fascism organization (Opfer des Faschismøs; OdF) announced its interest in limiting the range of people who would be entitled to compensation. ,,Victims of fascism", the Deutsche Volkszeitung argued, ,,are those Jews who were persecuted and killed based on Nazi racial delusions, are those Jehova's 'slitnesses, as well as the so-called 'Arbeitsuertragssünder'.a But we cannot extend the range of 'victims of fascism' so far. They all suffered much, but they did not fight [the Nazis actively]."5 However, after some debate within the KPD and the Victims of
1992); Mario Kessler, Anfl.semlf¡ìsmus, Zionismus und Sozialismus: lnternationale Arbeiterbe. wegung und jüdische Frage im 20. Jahrhundert (Mainz: Decaton, 1 993); ¡dem, Zionismus und ¡nternat¡onale Arbeiterbewegung 1897-1933 (Berlin, 1 994); Enzo Traverso, The Marxists and the Jewish Question:The History of a Debate, 1 843-1943 (Allantic Highlands, NJ: Humanit¡es Press, 1994); Shlomo Na'aman, Marxismus und Zionismus (Gerlingen: Bleicher, 1997).
3
Quoted from: Lothar Berthold and Ernst Diehl (eds.), Revolutionäre deutsche Parte¡programme: Vom Kommunistischen Manifest zum Programm des Sozialismus ([East] Berlin: Dietz, 1964), p.193.
4 5
Persons who are breaking labor contracts.
DeutscheVolkszeitung,July3,
1945.
it was decided to include the ,,racially in the 'category' of... victims of fascism."6
Fascism organization.
persecuted
The East German administration provided essenrial moral support to the Jewish victims of Nazism. This had several practical resuhs already in the late '1.940s. First of aII, an Association of Victims of Nazisrn had been created, aimed at supporting those who had suffered.T -Second, in public meetings officials exposed and vigorously condemned Nazi crimes. Third, the administration turned death camps and other sites of atrocities into hallowed grounds which East Germans, particularly schoolchildren, were expected to visit.s Fourrh, officials distributed large numbers of books, brochures, radio programs, movies and art works about Nazi atrocities and the Concentration Camps.e After his return from Mexican exile in July 1946,Paul Merker, member of the SED Central Secretariat,l0 supported Jewish survivors of the ÏIolocaust and their cause. He frequently reminded Walter Ulbricht, the party's deputy chairman (and de-facto leader), that the SED had not produced any specific guidelines for the compensation of the Jewish victims of fascism. Merker also noted that, as in 1947 in Thuringia, the Liberal Democratic Party had taken the initiative for such actions.ll As late as August '1,947 the Central Committee of the SED rejected Merker's arguments. This was based on the statement that any collective compensations for Jews would only promote anti-Semitism.12 After a lbid., September 25, 1945. 7
The Association, orVereinigung derVerfolgten des Naziregimes (VVN), was set up in February
1947, but ceased to exist in 1953. See Elke Reuter and Detlef Hansel. Das kurze Leben der VVN von 1947 bis 1953, (Berlin: Edition Ost, 1997). See Richard L. Merritt, ,,Politics of Judaism in East Germany," Unpublished Manuscript, 1988, p.8; and Stefan Küchler,,,DDR-Geschichtsbilder: Zur lnterpretation des Nationalsozialismus im Geschichtsunterricht der DDR," lnternationalTertbook Research,Yot. XXll (2000), No. 1, pp.
31-48.
rl
I
For details see Kessler, Die SED und die Juden, pp.37 et seq.
10
The SEDs leading body. lt was succeeded by the Politburo in 1949.
11
See Thomas Schület ,,Das Wiedergutmachungsgesetz vom 14. September 1945,", Jahrbuch für Ant¡semitismusforschung,Vol. ll (Frankfurt-Main and NewYork: Campus, 1993), pp. 1181 38.
12
SAPMO-BArch, DY 3O/2/2O2713O, p.3.The abbreviation stands for the Foundation for the Arch¡ves of the Parties and Mass Organizations of the GDR under the Federal Archives of Germany.
rll
t:
t: !) 11,
ì: '2 't¿
,.'É
150
L51.
& & 4 &
.,&
considerable debate within the SED, a new policy was put into practice
on October 5, 1949, two days before the founding of the GDR. This policy focused on the individual situation of recognized victims of the Nazi regime and offered the survivors significant social programs. There was, however, no official position on the questions of restitution and compensation.13 As it was, the Soviet military administration had issued orders (number 124 and 126), which declared all formerly Jewish companies which were of particular interest to the Nazi state should be confiscated as Nazi property. Thus, these companies were excluded from any restitution.14 First contacts between Israeli and German officials were established during the Israeli-Arab war of 1.948, when weapons were being airlifted from Czechoslovakia to support the Israeli military forces, the Haganah. FoIlowing the request of Chaim Yachiel, Israeli representarive in Munich, Julius Meyer, president of the Jewish Communities in the Soviet Zone of German¡ arranged a meeting between Yachiel and Otto Grotewohl, co-chairman of the SED. On this occasion, Grotewohl is said to have expressed the solidarity of the SED with the struggle of the Jewish state for its independence. He promised a help to take the Jews from Displaced Persons Camps in Germany to Israel, although this kind of camp did not officially exist in the Soviet Zone. No concrete action followed, since Grotewohl was obviously not given the necessary Soviet support.15 One month after the founding of the GDR, Hermann Matern, chair of the internal SED Central Party Control Commission (ZPKK), sent a letter to the SED Party Control Commissions on the local level. Thar Ietter specified the objectives and tasks necessary to examine the background of leading figures in the state, the parry and the economy. Nora 1
3
14 15
See Angelika Timm, Hammer, Zrkel, Davidstern: Das gestörte Verhältnis der DDR zu Zionismus und Staat lsrael(Bonn'. Bouvier, 1997), p.66. Cf. also idem, Alles umsonst? Verhandlungen zw¡schen der Claims Conlerence und der DDR über'Wiedergutmachung'und Entschädigung(Berlin: Helle Panke, 1996) (Hefte zur DDR-Gesch¡chte, No.32), pp. I ef seq.; and Mario Kessler, Die SED und die Juden, pp.37 et seq.
Goldenbogen, an East German historian, has shown in the case of Saxony that the guidelines specifically mentioned the Jews as a group of particular interest. The reasons for that were their assumed connections with Zionism, with the US Secret Service, as well as with a so-called ,,Trotskyist-Jewish movement." The large portion of the Jews within all listed emigrê organizatíons was noted.16 Matern's letter marked the beginning of a whole range of investigations whose results were forwarded to the ZPKK as well as to specially created commissions for the sake of comparison and analysis. Jewish Communists were among the first victims of the early waves of inner-party purges ín 1950-1.951, which propelled the Stalinization of .the SED: The well-known journalist Rudolf Feistmann was pushed into suicide, his colleague Lex Ende did not survive the ostracism that was part of his expulsion from the SED.17 Among the imprisoned and btherwise restricted were more party members of Jewish background. Yet, at this point a Jewish background was not in itself an important factor in the check.ups. 'What mattered was whether one came from Western exile, as well as what one did, or supposedly did, while having escaping the Nazis. One exception to this was the questioning of AIexander Abusch through the ZPKK.18 There was an attempt to show some sort of connection between Abusch and Noel Field, the unwitting pawn in these political manoeuvres, in order to present Abusch as a ,,conspirator". Abusch seemingly fit all of the criteria: He had spent his exile in the 'West, he was as a Jew, an outsider who attempted to compensâte for that through particular conformit¡ and he also admitted contacts to Erica Slallach, Field's foster child.
to
ts2
(1
949-
1953)," Mario Kessler (ed.), Arbe¡terbewegung und Antisemit¡smus: Entvvicklungslinien im 20. Jahrhundert (Bonn: Pahl-Rugenstein Nachf., 1993), p. 126. 17
For Feistmann see Wolfgang Kiessling, Partner im,,Narrenparadies": Der Freundeskreis um Noel Field und Paul Merker(Berlin: Dietz, 1994), pp.263 et seq-, and Kessler, Die SED und die Juden,pp.70 etseq. For Ende cf. ibid., pp.70 etseq.
18
Abusch was a member of the SED Politburo.
See Schüler, Wiedergutmachungsgeselz, pp. I 31 ef seq. See AngelikaTimm, ,,Assimilation of History:The GDR and the State of lsrael," The Jerusalem Journal of lnternational Relat¡ons, Vol. XIV (1 992), No. 1 , p, 38.
Quoted from: Nora Goldenbogen,,,Antisemitismus und'Säuberungen' in Sachsen
.
153
The contacts bet"¡/een Abusch and Wallach turned out to be purely coincidental. Abusch delivered a lemer written by '!Øallach in Prague to her former friend Leo Bauer who resided in Berlin. Shortly afrerwards, on August 24, 1,950, Bauer was taken into custody as an ,,enemy of the party". He was later transferred to the Soviet Union and condemned to death. Pardoned to life imprisonment and finally released in !956, he subsequently left for the West.le Abusch's Jewish background was not a significanr issue during his first questioning which took place on July 1.0, 1.950.20 The second ques-
tioning, on 10 November of the same year, was much different. Max Sens and Hertha Geffke of the ZPKK put Abusch through an interrogation in which they looked into the money he collected ,,from Jewish economic emigrants" and from selling passports during his exile in Mexico, his membership in the German-Jewish Cultural organizatíon Menorab, as well as the fact that he was not a member of the lüdiscbe Gemeinde. Also of interest was Abusch's relationship with Leo Zuckermann, head of IØilhelm Pieck's office at this time,21 and, most of all, with Paul Merker.22 In a subsequenr letter Abusch repeated what he had emphasized during his interrogation: nor since his 18,h birthday has he ,,been interested in Jewish questions, has never written about it, has no experience with political work within this realm, and [was] even married to a non-Jew."23 These facts are not as important as the way Abusch chose to deal with them. He wrote in a spirit of constant apology that, as a youth, ,,I had to liberate myself through bitter domestic feuds from the influence of Judaism" in order to join the working class movement - as if it would disgrace a Communist to be interested in Jewish affairs after Auschwitz.
This, more than anything else, indicates how profoundly the climate changed within the SED apparatus.za Abusch's meeting with Erika'llallach, who meanwhile had been imprisoned and taken to the Soviet Union, was deemed too brief to warrant censure.2s Abusch managed to avoid being thrown deeper into the whiilpool of the purges. He was expelled from the SED Politburo but nçver imprisoned. Later Abusch experienced some degree of rehabilitation, insomuch as he became minister for cultural affairs and deputy president of the Council of Ministers. Yet, Abusch never returned to the'inner circle of power - the Politburo. Paul Merker turned out to be a more suitable sacrificial lamb: unlike Abusch, he was non-Jewish. Thus, one could more easily reject any charges of anti-Semitism. Already in Mexican exile, Merker supported compensation and restitution of Jewish victims of National Socialism.
He urged punishment of those guilty of crimes, and he sought to assure ,,our Jewish friends and comrades in struggle" that a new democratic order in Germany would find ways to ,,destroy anti-Semitism in Germany foreveï."26 For Merker, restitution ,,was a matter of simple justice and decenc¡ but also part of an effort to reconstitute GermanJewish life in postwar Germany."27 This approach also included those Jews who did not reside in Germany. He also, however, thought critically about the Communists' role regarding the situation of European Jewiy. ln 1,944 he addressed the shortcomings of the German labor movement towards Jewish issues. He focussed his criticism on August Bebel's famous 1,894 paraphrase of Anti-Semitism as ,,Socialism of the
24
See parts of Abusch's hitherto unpublished memoirs in Karin Hartewig, ,,Das Gedächtnis der Partei. Biographische und andere Bestände im Zentralen Parteiarchiv der SED in der Stiftung
Archiv der Parteien und Massenorganisationen der DDR im Bundesarchiv," Jahrbuch für Kommunismusforschung,Vol.1 , (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1993), pp. 312-23. Abusch's official 19
See Leo Bauer's brief reminiscences, ,,Die Partei hat immer recht," Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, July 4, 1956, pp.405-13.
¿v
See SAPMO-BArch, DY 30, lV 214/11, pp.9 et seg.
21
Wilhelm Pieck was the President of the GDR.
22
lbid.,pp.30 etseq.FotZuckermann'sb¡ographyseeWolfgangKiessling, Absturz¡ndenKalten Krieg (Berlin: Helle Panke, 1 999) (Hefte zur DDR-Geschichte, No. 57), passim. SAPMO-BAroh, DY 30/21 4/ 1 1 1, p. 43.
1,54
memoirs omits th¡s incident. See Alexander Abusch , Mit offenem Visier: Memoiren, Vol. ll ([East] Berlin: Dietz), 1986.
25
SeeEricaWallach,LichtumMitternacht:FünfJahreinderWeltderV.erfemten(Munich:List, 1
26 27
e6e).
Paul Merker,,,HitlersAntisemitismusundwir," o. 11.
FreiesDeutschlan4Vol. 1,No. 12,October1944,
Jeff rey Herf, ,,East German Communists and the Jewish Question: The Case of Paul Merker," Journal of Contemporary H¡story, Vol, XXIX (1994), No. 4, p. 631 .
1.55
dumb",28 for anti-Semitism was ,,akeady at that time much more than that. It was an instrument of extreme reaction to educate the people into becoming dumb." Merker emphasized that it was necessary to emphasize this issue, ,,to fight it in unity with all liberal forces", to attack anti-Semitism,,already within the imperialist-capitalist era", and to make this fight an essential component of the struggle for democracy and Socialism.2e Like the German Communists in Moscow, he emphasized the responsibility of rhe German people for the Nazi crimes, but unlike them, he pointed our thar the people ,,allowed the crimes of the ruling class against the Jewish people to take place.":o \X/ith similar vigor, Merker justified rhe creation of a Jewish state. This issue was supposed to be handled at the peace conference after the victory over the Nazis, ,,regardless of all previous principles, considerations and prejudices, in accord with the wishes of the Jews." In addition, the full civil rights of Jews must be restored in all countries from which they were expelled. He asserred that the complete narional equality of Jews should be recognized in all these countries.3l ,,Though Merker did not say so explicitl¡ such views would require the Communists to revise explicitly the denial of Jewish nationhood enshrined in Stalin's essay on the national question(', as Jeffrey Herf has noted.32 On the eve of the foundation of the State of Israel, Merker wrote in the SED newspaper Neues Deutscbland thar ,,the establishment of a Jewish srate within a part of Palestine, with progressive ideas and the Socialist aspirarions of its working class movement, will not remain without consequences for the reactionary feudal Arab kings, princes, and muftis." Merker emphasized that the Soviet Union will ,,even permit the Aliyah, the migration of Soviet Jews to Palestine. The leaders of Soviet Jewry from now are 28
August Bebel defined Anti-Semitism as,,Sozialismus des dummen Kerls".This statement was given in a press interview. See Hermann Bahr (ed.), Der Antisemitismus: Ein ¡nternationales
lntervìew(Königstein/Iaunus: JüdischerVerlag, 1979),p.2a (reprintof the lB94edition).
going to be within direct contact with the Jewish center in Palestine." As a Politburo member, Merker took the official position when he wrote that ,,the Jewish population (in and outside Israel) should get the sympathy and active assistance of all progressive forces. Especially the democratic forces in Germany are compelled to show their sympathy
to help."33 The stance taken by Merker was at this time was by no means contrary to the positions of the Stalinist regime in Moscow and their East German comrades.3a Yet, in 1949 the Soviet Union had changed its approach: at that point it favored 'progressive' forces within the Arab sphere.35 Thus, one's previous enthusiasm for Israel came to constitute a black mark in the records kept by the ZPKK and its regional organi-
,and readiness
zations. On November 22, 1,952, Prague witnessed the opening of one of the 'most startling trials of the 20'h centur¡ with Rudolf Slánsky, former General Secretary of the Czechoslovak Communist Party and Stalin's erstwhile lieutenant, appearing as the principal defendant. The trial showed how much the Soviet secret apparatus had infiltrated, as Francois Fejtö pointed out, ,,the East European Communist parties and governments, robbing them of their sovereignt¡ paralysing their nerve centres, and producing a kind of collective pathological condition, compounded of Íeag mistrust, apathy and self-destructiveness from which it was to take the leaders and their peoples much time and trouble to recovef.
The defendants were subjected to all kinds of moral pressure and physical torture in order to convince them that there was no escape from their fate. They were informed by the police that the party had 33 34
Paul Merker, Deutschland: Sein oder Nicht-Sein?, Vo!.2: Das Dritte Reich und sein Ende (Mexico, D. F.: El Libro Libre, 1944), p. 36. 30
Paul Merker,,,Hitlers Antisemilismus und wir," p. 11.
31
tbid.
32
Jeffrey Herf, Divided Memory: The Nazi Past in the two Gemanys (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 1997), p. 50.
1,56
tt 36
35 36
Paul Merker, ,,Der neue Staat des jüdischen Volkes," Neues Deutschland, January 24, 1948. For the SED's attitude towards the Arab-Jewish conflict in Palestine and the new State of lsrael prior to 1949 see Martin W. Kloke, lsrael und die deutsche Linke: Zur Geschichte eines schwierigenVerhältnrlsses (FranKurt-Main: Haag & Herchen, 1990);Timm, Hamme¡ Zirkel, Davidstern, pp. 81 ef seg., and Kessler, Die SED und die Juden, pp. 47 et seq. See the contribul¡ons of Peter Brod and Arnold Krammer in Robert S. Wistrich (ed.), The Left agaínst Zion: Communism, lsrael, and the Middle Easf (London: Frank Cass, 1979).
Francois Fejtö,
A History of
People's Democracies: Eastern Europe Since Stalin
(Harmondsworth: Pelican Books, 1 974), p. 1 4.
157
full confession of guilt, and they were promised that the courr would deal leniently with them if they made complere confessions. The defendanrs were maltreated to such an extent thar some of them believed they had fallen into the hands of Fascist torturers.3T Eleven of the fourteen defendants were of Jewish origin. The organizers tried to show that this was no coincidence, and that the Jewish prisoners were predisposed to become instruments of American espionage and of 'Zionist conspiracy'. The restimonies ar the trial provided the material for a sorr of new Protocols of the Elders of Zion: the Jews, an international people with the State of Israel as its main base, were playing a key role in the American conspiracy against the Soviet Union and her allies. One of the aims of this alleged conspiracy was defined as ,,to destroy the ties of friendship between Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union, and to turn the country into a new Yugoslavia."38 The Communist allies of the Sovier Union, and her satellites in particular, were empowered to adopt the proclamation of the editorial of Rudé Prauo (the Czechoslovak party newspaper) of November 24, 1,952. This proclamation stated that Zionism was the ,,number-one enemy" of the working class. It seems that one of the aims of the organizers of the trial was to justify the anti-Israeli and pro-Arab switch in Soviet foreign policy. Czechoslovakia, with Russian approval, had supplied the Israeli army with arms, ammunition, and even fighter planes. However, as oÍ 1,949 the USSR realized that American influence had prevailed in Israel over that of pro-soviet elements. Moreover, Soviet 'Anti-Zionism' served as a cover for unacknowledged Anti-Semitism. The Jewish victims of the Slánsky Trial remained, through their 'cosmopolitan' background and their experience of living in different cultures, a source of potential dissidence for the Stalinists who sought to transform the party and society inro a
monolithic body. Slánsky and ten other defendants were subsequently executed.3e The specific feature of Stalinist anti-Semitism was to neutralize the internationalist tradition within the Communist part¡ including the SED. On December 2, L952, parallel to the anti-Semitic Slánskf Trial and its associated atmosphere, Paul Merker was imprisoned. The official justification was provided by a Central Committee decision to ,,draw lessons from the case against the center of conspiracy".a0 This text documents the full subordination of the SED to Stalin. Merker was accused, by the Central Committee, of having promoted Zionist views during his years in exile, as well as having urged the compensation of those Jews, whose property was stolen by the Nazis, only in order to allow US capital to penetrate Germany: ,,this is the true origin of his Zionism."al The SED leadership even used the Nazi phrase ,,transfer of 'German Volksuermögen" (the country's fortune) in its condemnations of Merker. He was linked to the ,,Slánsky conspiracy" through his friendship with André Simone (Otto Katz), one of the defendants in Prague. This indictment cited Merker's intend ,,to contaminate the workers with the most reactionary bourgeois ideology" and with ,,the poison of chauvinism and cosmopolitanism", and the resolution pointed to Merker's publications in Mexico, his public efforts on behalf of financial restitution for the Jews, and to his support for Israel.a2 The resolution charged thaf Merker did not care about working-class Jews, but rather, and ,,above all", he was concerned for ,,the wealthy Jews, so-called economic emigrants with whom Merker, André Simone, and other German
39
There is a vast of literature about the Slánskf Trial. Among the most recent publications are Karel Kaplan, ,,Der politische Prozess gegen R. Slánskf und Genossen," Leonid Luks (ed.), Der Spätstalin¡smus und die jüdische Frage (Cologne: Böhlau, 1 998), pp. 1 69-87; idem and Frantiöek Svátek, ,,Die politischen Säuberungen in der KPC," Hermann Weber and Ulrich Mählert(eds.), Terror:StalinistischeParteisäuberungenl936-1953(Paderborn:Schöningh, 1998), pp. 487-562.
37
40
The resolution ,,Lehren aus dem Prozess gegen das Verschwörezentrum Slánsk!" is published in Dokumente der Sozialistischen Einheitspartei Deutschlands,Vol.lV ([East] Berlin: Dietz, 1954), pp. 1 99-21 9. Excerpts in Kessler, Dre SED und die Juden, pp. 1 53-55.
complete knowledge of their acrions and demanded a
38
See the moving report of one of the survivors. Arthur London , lch gestehe: Der prozess um Rudolf Sliánsk¡í, (Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag, 1991) (reprint of the 1970 West cerman edition). The film vers¡on (Laveu) was directed by Kostas Gavras, starr¡ng Yves Montand and Simone Signoret. Klement Gottwald on a party conference on December 16,1952, quoted from: Fetlö, History,
o.18.
158
41 42
Dokumente,Yol. lV, p.206. lbid., pp. 203-204.
1,59
in Mexico were in closest touch." Contacts with wealthy in Mexico were the reasons for Merker's support for Zionism.a3 Jews Stalin's death on March 5, 1953 forestalled possible further repression in the GDR. Yet, Merker was secretly tried and sentenced in 1955, indicting the entrenched nature of SED anti-Semitism.aa After his release from the stasi prison in Berlin-Hohenschönhausen, Merker started his struggle for a complete rehabilirarion.as On June 1, 1956, Merker submitted a 39-page statement on his ,,attitude toward the Jewish quesrion" to the ZPKK. He wrore that his soviet and German interrogators were convinced that he must have been an agent for the United States, Israel or the ,,Zionist Organízation" because he had taken such a strong position on the Jewish cause. emigrants
He noted that the interrogators found no evidence that he was Jewish. He wrote the they ,,repeatedly said that it was completely incomprehensible to them that a non-Jew, such as myself, would become active on behalf of the Jews unless he was paid by Jewish organizatíons, all of which, in the opinion of these examiners, were without exception, agenrs of the imperialist powers. Therefore, a non-Jew could be active on behalf of the Jews only as an agent of imperialism. For them, my engagemenr on behalf of the Jewish people... was by itself a sufficient proof that I must be an agent of imperialism and an enemy of the working class.,.46 Merker emphasized: I am neither Jewish, nor a Zionist though it would be no crime to be either. I have never had the intent to flee to Palestine. I have not supported the efforts of Zionism. I have... occasionally said that among the Jews, after
43
lbid., p.207.
44
The judgement is published in Jeffrey Herf , ,,Antisemitismus in der sED: Geheime Dokumente zum Fall Paul Merker aus sED- und Mfs-Akten," viertetjahreshefte für zeitgeschichte,vol. XLll (1999), No.4, pp.643-s0.
45
Documented in Kessler, Die SED und die Juden, pp.1 56-70.
+o
sAPMo-BArch, NL102J27, pp.31-82. parts of the document can be found in Kessler, Dæ sED tl1td die ,1uden, pp. 157-7Ot full text in: Wolfgang Kiessling, paul Merker in den Fängen der s^taatssicherheitsorgane stalins und tJlbrichts (Berlin: Heile panke, 1995) (Hefte zur ooR-
Geschichte, No. 25), pp.27-68; English excerpts in Hed,,,East German Communists and the Jewish Question," pp. 645 eÍseq.
having been plundered by Hitler Fascism, most deeply humiliated, driven from the homelands, and millions of them murdered, only because they were Jews, the feeling of a deepest bond and the desire for their own, Jewish country emerged among the Jews of different countries. This feeling was
the expression of those most deeply harmed and outraged. Moreover: Hitler Fascism emerged among us.'We [Germans] did not succeed through the
actions of the working masses in preventing the erection of its rule and hence the commission of its crimes. Therefore, especially we Germans must
not and ought not ignore or fight against what I call this strengthening of Jewish national feelíng.a7
On July 21,, 1956 the first chamber of the GDR supreme court declared laconically that ,,in the case against Merker, Paul Friedrich ... the sentence by the supreme court of March 30 has been nullified. The accused "is to b_e let go".as Yet Merker was not satisfied with this. He demanded complete political and legal rehabilitation, including compensation. After a letter by Merker to the supreme courtae it was decided to transfer 50 000 GDR marks to'him.so In response to Merker's inquir¡'slalter Ulbricht replied on July 31., L956, thereby referring to the 2B'h Central Committee meeting in July 1,956: ,,The follow-up investigation concluded that most charges against you are political in nature, which do not warrant a criminal trial... Vith socialist greetings..."" Any further discussion within the party was usually stopped with the warning ,,no Fehlerdisþ.ussionl" (discussion of wrong measures taken by the party), which was regarded as water on the mills of the class enemy. But Merker did not give up. On August 23, 1956 he wrote again to Ulbricht and inquired how it was supposed to be understood that his failings were political in nature, and thus, did not require a criminal trial including sentencing. .Does the Central Committee maintain its
47
SAPMO-BArch, NL102127,p. 46.
48 49 50 51
lbid., p.73. lbid., p.76. lbid., p. 81. lbid., p.84.
l
r60
1,61
4
Å
,Å
charges against me, and feel only compelled to concede that these charg-
not justify a criminal trial, which neverrheless has taken place?"52 Merker defended his dignity as a Communist, as he tirelessly insisted during and after the trial. He also emphasized that he defended the ,,interests of the party and its leadership against the Beria gang, which lifted itself above party and leadership, which mistreated and ridiculed me, because I refused to flee to l7est German¡ and, instead, confronted them". As a ,,reward", Merker found himself being treated unjustly and shamefully by the GDR legal system. ,,And now, after this shamefulness had to be discontinued, I am still being treated as an ourcasr by the party leadership". The decision at the 28'h Central Committee meeting, he claimed, was an attempt not to rectify injustice, but to trivialize it, and to maintain it, albeit in a much reduced form.s3 According to the decisions of the 28'h party plenary meering, Ulbricht explained that Merker's re-"admission into the party had to be immediately arranged. Your release was regarded, by the party and the state authorities, as rehabilitation."5a This is all the compensation that Merker received. Unless one regards that piece of tin given to Merker shortly before his death in 1969 - rhe Vaterländischer Verdienstorden medal - as sufficient for the years of suffering. The series of internal party investigations, imprisonment, professional difficulties and degradations, as well as excommunications from the party intensified during the winter of 1952-1953. The Jewish Communities, just recently granted state subsidies, were now regarded as a sort of the Fifth Column of the capitalist-imperialist system. At the beginning of 1953, the offices of Jewish Communities were searched by the Stasi, members of the Communities were imprisoned and interrogated, as well as accused of being Zionists, ,,ready and able to work under orders of the American secret service."55 IØithin this context Merker was accused of encouraging the Jewish SED members to join Jewish es do
52 53 54
lbid., p. 85. lbid., p. 87. lbid., p.92.
1.62
Communities. Merker rejected such charges; yet, they were repeated. Indeed, many East German Jews were materially supported by the US Joint Distribution Committee; this was, however, well known and tolerated by the SED leadership for a long time. Suddenl¡ this support was viewed with suspicion. As early as December 1951, selected Jews were ordered to the Soviet Control Commission. They \¡/ere questioned about ,,where do your instructions and directives come from? Do you get.them in a similar fashion as the Catholic Church gets its instructions from Rome? ... Don't you understand why 'Joint' sends its gifts of love to Germany?"56 From the end of 1,952 the Stasi not only searched Jewish community offices but also confiscated their files. This led to great fear among many Jews. Leo Zuckermann) who used to be Wilhelm Pieck's chief of staff, fled to the apartment of Heinz Galinski, the leader of the Jewish bommunity in r'X/est Berlin. In January 1953 alone, over 400 Jews fled to the West, includíng Zuckermann and Julius Meyer, Ieader of the Jewish community in East Berlin. Nathan Peter Levinson, an American rabbi who resided in Berlin, urged Galinski to call on the Jews of East 'Süest. Germany to leave for the Galinski, who was reluctant at first, conceded and announced a press conference. The Jewish library was taken from East to West Berlin across the still-open border. The leaders of the Jewish community in Leipzig, Erfurt, Halle, and Schwerin wenr to the 'West.57 This period of suffering came to an end only after Stalin's death. Yet, as eyewitnesses such as Heinz Brandt reported, mistrust toward the state authorities remained for a while.58 There is nothing that can negate or trivialize the pressure on the
55
See Lothar Mertens, Davidstern unter Hammer und Zirkel: Die Jüdischen Gemeinden in der SBZDDR und ihre Behandlung durch Partei und Staat 1945-1 990 (Hildesheim: Olms, 1 997),
56
Quoted from a manuscript by Rainer Hildebrand,,,Vorbereitungen für gesteuerten Antisemitismus?," (Spring, 1953), YIVO Archives, NewYork, FAD-1 , Box 25, also in: Olaf Groehler and Mario Kessler, Die SED-Politik, der Antifaschismus und die Juden: ln der SBZ und der frühen DDH (Berlin: Helle Panke, 1995) (Hefte zur DDR-Geschichte, No. 26), p. 16.
57 58
See Mertens, Davidstern, pp. 54-62.
pp.53 etseg.
See Heinz Brandl, Ern Traum, der nicht entführbar ist: Mein Weg zwischen Ost und West (Munich: List, 1967), p. 192.
1,63
i.
r.l
Jewish community in the GDR, nor the persecurions of the Jewish Communists. But one should be aware of the fact that East Germany did not
experience the excessive anti-Jewish hysteria of the Soviet Union or Czechoslovakia. There were no officially instigated or even tolerated pogroms in the GDR, despite contexrually justified Jelyish fears. On the contrary : Neues D eutschland reported on January 29 , 19 53 that the regional courts of Magdeburg, Gera, and Frankfurr-Oder issued prison sentences, ranging from one to two years, for ,,the propagation of AntiSemitism and lies about our Jewish fellow cirizens."5e One should also note that there were no Anti-Semitic elements connected to the working class uprising of June 1,7,'1.953. Thus, the old Nazi cliche of ,,Jewish Bolshevism" was not resurrected.60 The conflicts around June 17 pushed the problem of anti-Semitism of the SED into the background. It is indeed ironic that rhe same Jewish Communists, who just six months earlier had feared state power, as well as the party and securiry appararus, and mosr of all the will of the Soviet dictator, now came to regard the presence of state power as a warranty for their - relative - safety. Not everyone was able to push aside so quickly what had happened earlier. Alfred Kanrorowicz, who was in the hospital on June 1.7, recorded in his diary: ,,Why did we, intellectuals and old socialists, not lead this movemenr? \øhat did we do besides resist passivel¡ complain, or relocate?"61 'Whether the demonstrating workers would have listened to state-supporting intellectuals is a different matter. Ulbricht and his people became even more firmly entrenched after June 17. This new constellation motivated many Jews, who remained in the GDR) to âccept the realities and move closer to the regime. Afterward the SED was able ro inrroduce a policy of tolerance towards the Jewish community and towards secular Jews.
59
Neues Deutschland, January 29, f 953.
60
Two months after the Luxemburg Treaty which clarified ihe reparation ¡ssue between lsrael and
The memory of the Nazi genocide was disseminated, if somewhat onesidedly, throughout society. The Jewish community was expected to comply with official polic¡ but was not forced to come out in open opposition to Israel. In the 1980s, this measured tolerance was replaced by active support of Jewish culture, including religious practices. The ¡easons for this remarkable shift are to be found in more general overtures towards the United States, increased national prestige in the eyes of !7est German public opinion, and new freedoms resulting from changing Soviet policies (Gorbachev was decidedly against any form of AntiSemitism.
However, any attempt to come to terms with the anti-Semitic interlude in GDR policy in 1,952-1,953 would have required a free discussion of key questions in East German history. This was not possible until the fall of 1989. IØhile it is true that the specifically Stalinist anti-Semitism ãisapp.eared after the dictator's death, it was revived once more at the beginning oÍ 1,968 in Poland. This shows, among other things, how incompletely the post.Stalinist state socialist societies were able to cleanse themselves from this terrible legacy.
West Germany, Neues Deutschlandspoke of ,,a deal between West German and lsraeli big capitalists". ,,Reparationen - für wen?", Neues Deutschland, November 25, 1 gb2. The unsigned article came out only three days after parts of the Slánski Trial were published in the same newspaper.
61
Alfred Kantorowicz, Deutsches Tagebuch,Vol.ll ([West] Bertin: A. W. Mytze, 1980), p. A65.
r64
1.65
Exile Experience in Scholarship and Politics: Re-immigration of Historians to East Germany 'l,Who
would have wanted us here [in lü/est Germany], then?,,1 Alfred Kantoiowicz, who had lived for some time in ìØest German¡ asked a 'Síestern critic who reproached him for having, in 1946, chosen the Soviet occupation Zone as the place to which he hoped ro return afrer the end of 'SØorld ìØar II. Kantorowicz knew what he was talking about. He had returned from the United States to rhe Soviet Zone of German¡ but had left East Berlin in 1957 for NØest Germany. He was an example of someone who had-long remained an unwelcome stranger in both parts of the divided
country. In the East returnees were welcome only at the price of adaptation. They were indebted, as some gradually came to realize, to a regime whose practices had little to do with the overly-optimistic expecrarions that those in exile had envisioned for a socialist society. whoever rurned their back on the GDR would auromarically be welcomed in the west. However, once in the Federal Republic, those who stood by their critical assessment of the society's development would then be effectively margìnalized, if not actively persecured. critical questions were direct-
1
Hans Albert walter, ,,Das Risiko des Moralisten: Begenungen mit Alfred Kantorowicz,", preface to: Alfred Kantorowicz, Etwas ist ausgeblieben: Zur geistigen Einheit der deutschen L¡teratur nach 1945(Hamburg: Christians, 1985), p. 12.
167
ed, even posthumousl¡ at anyone who stayed in the GDR regarding their personal responsibility for the failures of that state. Those who share this experience include a group of historians who built up the GDR historical sciences in the 1950s and early 1960s. They are the subject of my book Exile Experience in Scholarship and Politics.z These historians not only had to leave their desks and lecture halls, but also the land of their birth. Upon rheir rerurn, they seized the chance to carry out scholarly work while maintaining their integrit¡ in their understanding, as political historians. To this theme I would like to pose rwo concise quesrions. First: \Øhat were the specific paradigmatic historical assumprions within which those who re-immigrated had to work? Second: To what extent did the works of the re-immigrants shape GDR historical scholarship in its early phase? Basicall¡ to address these quesrions I will limit the analysis ro rhe years up until around 1.961 at which time the construction of the Berlin 'Wall created a caesura not only for historians. But first a short overview: \Øho were the historians?
scholarship. Connected with the re-immigrants was a group of historians who survived nazi concentration camps or prisons such as Erich Paterna (1,897-1982),'S7alter Bartel (1,904-1.992),
'Walter
Markov (1,909-
1,993), and Heinrich Scheel (1915-1996).
Together this founding generation built up Marxist historical scholarship in the GDR. A few non-Marxist historians, whose careers were held back during the Third Reich, or who had identified with the reststance, achieved university positions after L945: Friedrich Schneider (1.887-1.962), Heinrich Sproemberg (1,889-1966), Hans Haussherr (1898-1,960), Karl Griewank (1900-1953), and Martin Lintzel (19011955). Other historians who were, to varying degrees, tainted by association with the Nazis were granted the chance of a fresh start in their careers: Fritz Rörig (L882-1,952), Hellmut Kretzschmar (1893-1.965), Eduard Winter (1,896-1,982), and'Walter Eckermann (1-898-1.978).3 " In its first proclamation the SED was still oriented completely toward cooperation between Marxist and so-called bourgeois historians. However, as of L946, the exclusive claim for universal representation of Marxism-Leninism would become more clearly formulated. Nonetheless there did exist,the opportunity for true cooperation.
IØho were the Historians? Those re-immigrating historians who belong ro the founding generation of GDR historical scholarship include, in order of birth, Hermann Duncker (1874-1960), Albert Schreiner (1892-1979), Alfred Meusel (1896-1960), Leo Stern (1901 -1.982), Jürgen Kuczynski (1,904-1997), Karl Obermann (1905-1987), Ernst Engelberg (b.1,909) and Hans Mottek (1,910-1993). Out of the Stalinist prison camps came Arnold Reisberg (1904-1980) and lØolfgang Ruge (b. 1,91,7) ro rhe GDR after the 20th congress of the Soviet Communist Party. All those whose scholarly and political lives and ways of thinking are described here entereq, upon their return, the eastern part of German¡ a land which was neither a terra incognita nor an uninhabited island even in regard to historical Mario Kessler, Exilerfahrung in Wissenschaft und Politik: Remigrierte Historiker in der frühen DDF (Cologne etc.: Böhlau, 2001).
t68
-
Paradigmatic Assumptions of the Early GDR Historians
Arthur Rosenberg, one of the historians expelled from Nazi German¡ wrote in 1938 about ,,the mission of the historians during the emigration", which depends on ,,breaking the mutual isolation of the so-called bourgeois and socialist historians." Socialists and Communists, bourgeois democrats and socially progressive Catholics, should, according to Rosenberg, re-examine their received views and tactics. ,,Through non-dogmatic and critical work, the emigrated historians must make a concerted and cooperative effort to develop, out of the negation of the
For some of these historians see Heinz Heitzer et al. (eds.), Wegbereiter der DD4-Geschichts'
wissenschaft: Biographien (lEastl Berlin: Dietz, 1989).
1.69
Third Reich, positive new principles for the future of German historical studies. "a
Rosenberg, who died ín 1943, did not live to see rhe failure of his hopes. The political situation of post-war Germany worked to prohibit a dialogue between the historians of various schools. The democratic-
parlâmentary conditions, which the western occupation forces set up, functioned in such a way as to inhibit every artempt at altering the existing social structure. In place of the subsequent dis-empowerment of the classes and the strata from whose ranks Hitler enjoyed the most comprehensive sup-
port, a formal de-Nazification process was instituted through which judges and corporate managers, high- and low-level civil servants, as well as numerous Nazi historians were integrated into the Federal Republic. Persons returning from exile who were wary or critical of this policy were therefore not welcome. In the Soviet Occupation Zone, the dispossession of large-scale real estate and the nationalization of industr¡ banking, and wholesale trade was enforced under the ambitious claim of constructing a democratic socialist society: a project which was fully in keeping with the programatic vision of the KPD as well as the SPD at that time. Those who had been driven out of Germany by the Nazi regime were encouraged to return. ,,To all of you who were driven out of Germany; all German scientists, scholars, artists, and writers beyond the borders of your homeland, we send our greetings", so proclaimed the official statement of the Kuburbund for the Democratic Renewal of Germany in November of 1945. ,,The time of emmigration has ended within Germany and outside its borders. Let it be known that Germany needs you."' For the first time in their lives many of these refugees had the feeling of being indispensable.
4 5
Arthur Rosenberg, ,,D¡e Aufgabe des Historikers in der Emigration", Emil Julius Gumbel (ed.), Freie Wissenschaft: Ein Sammelbuch aus der deutschen Emigrction (Strasbourg: Sebastian Brant, 1938), p.213. Statement, quored from: Karola F¡ngs and Cordula Lissner (eds.), UnterVoþehalt: Rückkehr aus der Emigrat¡on nach 1945 (Cologne: Emons, 1 945), p. 164.
1,70
However, the Soviet reparations polic¡ in which the Soviets appropriated valuable production materials in order to at least aleviate some of the worst consequences of the Nazi total war in their own land, had a sobering effect even among those emmigrants who returned. Some critics of the rigorous Soviet measures, which included more than a few Communists and Social Democrats, were brutally persecuted. The leadership of the SED, which was completely dependent on the goodwill of the-Soviet occupation powers, supported this action. This was a foreshadowing of the Stalinization and transformation of the SED into a Paity of a new type. Some of those who had returned from exile ignored the contradiction between the socialist ideal and the dictatorial reality. Some hoped that through their efforts they would be able to bridge this developing schism. Already before the time of their exile, they were convinced that "ôrises,, war, and material suffering could be overcome only through socialism. This premisè was the deciding point for those who returned to the Soviet Zone of Occupation or the GDR. In this sense it is striking how little the writings of the historians returning from England and the USA - Meusel, Kuczynski, Mottek, Schreiner and Obermann - reveal about social relations within a functioning western democracy; however, Ober'Weydemeyer), mann in the US (writing about Joseph and Meusel in the GDR (writing on the English Revolution), do address important questions about bourgeois society in the 17'h and 19'h centuries. The works on German history which were already being formulated during the time of exile, especially those which came from Kuczynski's pen, depict the genesis and development of industrial capitalism as little more than Lenin's concept of the eve of the proletarian revolution, and the parliamentary system as simply an instrument of dominance for the bourgeoisie - here obviously connected to the KPD's underestimation of democrac¡ but without reference to the Communist dissidents of the KPD opposition, who had defended the constitution of the first German republic. From another perspective, however, the accomplishments of the Communist exile's historical writings are indeed evident in comparison with
1,71,
those of the so-called Third Reich-driven historiography. Here it suffices to be reminded of Jürgen Kuczynski's work on the situation of the
proletariat, especially the foreign workers in Nazi Germany; Alfred Meusel's social historical consideration of German and British foreign polic¡ such as the situation of intellectuals or the family under the Nazi rule; and not to forget Albert Schreiner's towering volumes on military science dealing with German armament. The re-immigrated historians in the GDR and the survivors of the prisons and concentration camps represented a unique tradition of German intellectual history. They were the socialist opponents of those scholars who had begun as Hitler's historians and who, after L945 although nâturally no longer along the lines of National Socialism formed the historical disciplines in !Øest Germany. In contrast to most of their comparable 'West German polar opposites, the GDR historians at no point in their lives supported, justified, or trivialized a racial-biological war of extermination. Often, they themselves barely escaped from Nazi Germany. Their academic accomplishments as well as deficits - but above all their decision to seek, in eastern German¡ an alternative to the course of German history as it had been played out up to thât time - cannot be considered in isolation from their tragic fate. The SED in the years immediately following the war still included Communists and Social Democrats. It became, however, a Stalinist party, leaving no room for a democratic, and therefore pluralistic, understanding of anti-Fascism. According to the official party line, anti-Fascism was simply equated with the GDR and the SED. Only through the rule of the SED, including the command over knowledge production and research, could social progress be guaranteed. This, grounded in methods of historical research, was to become the core policy on historical studies for SED top leaders and their subordinate party members. The party leadership regarded the purpose of SED policy on history as being the adaptation of the results of historical research for the legitimization of the given party line. The historians could only accept the requirement of the convergence of scholarly research and politics 172
when they presented the historical process as being in compliance with a Marxist-Leninist understanding of a progrâmmatic policy directed towards the solution of social problems. It was hardly possible for historians in the GDR to renounce this program, and this was not merely due to the practical consequences. A fundamentally affirmed unity of politics and academic knowledge indicated that there was an intellectual atracion and a politically binding foree behind this deformed version of Marxism. Indeed, Marxism, in all of its various expressions, was, and is, unthinkable without taking its utopian dimension as an article of faith. The most insightful among the Marxist GDR historians saw in historical materialism - which they dedicatedly applied - a stimulating method for research. The¡ however, did not auromatically classify their findings according to the needs of the party leadership. ,,No one wants to see", warned \JØalter Markov urgently in 1,947,,,historical materialism, bãcause of its suppression in other parts of German¡ be compensated for by a monopoly in the eastern zone, unless he intentionally wants to see it ruined through inbreeding. What is called for is that all German universities allow for the free comÞetition of both theories and the duty to make them known."6 Along with the practical partisanship for the socialist project, immediately following 1,945, a discussion developed - that had already been going on intensively during the period
of exile - involving the theoretical understanding of history. The vast majority of the GDR historians viewed themselves as Marxist, even when they followed the development of the socialist world with some concern. Some of them maintained the belief that even Stalin could nor destroy the basic progressive currency of Marxism. Ernst Engelberg emphasized that his understanding of parriality (ir should be noted how he eventually developed this concept further in the seventies) had little to do with party institutions and even less to do
6
Walter Markov, ,,Historia doceÌ?," Forum: Ze¡tschrift für das ge¡stige Leben an den deutschen Hochschulen,1947, No. 1, pp. 8-9, quoted from: ldem, Kognak und Königsmörder: Historische Miniaturen (fEastl Berlin and Weimar: Aufbau-Verlag, 1979), pp. i 9-20.
173
with the molding of facts according ro a mandarory party view of history. To him partiality meanr researching the forces that contribute to the progress of history. By the concept of partiality, those researchers who were engaged with, but not uncritically of the GDR and the SED undersrood something completely different rhan auromarically cooperating with the system. Moreover, it meant there was no commonality to be found between'Walter Markov's non-dogmatic understanding of history and that of Hanna Wolf - the Rector of the SED Party Academy - for whom historiography and party propaganda were one and the same. Even so, Walter Markov and his adherents were able ro remain in the GDR-in the face of the threat of repression - searching for a socialist alternative to the particular historical trend which had been carried out up ro that time. Through 1952 Alfred Meusel could still calmly ward off rhe accusation of Hanna \Øolf, that he propagated the Rankean Objectivity ldeal. ,,I do not know if Frau Director \X/olf is honestly of the opinion that I wish to represent a program of the Rankean school heïe", he stated at the Historians' Meeting in June of 1952, ,,rather, I have merely stated that Rankes' work contains some things from which we may learn. And I am definitely committed to this line of thought..."7
Re-immigranrs as Historians in the Early GDR As the Soviet campaign against the so-called Zionists, Titoists, returnees from the'West, and the members of the early communist opposition groups was carried over - albeit to a lesser extent - into the GDR, the historians who had returned also became ensnared in the network of the Party Control Commission. This especially affected Jürgen Kuczynski as a former associated employee of the American office of strategic services, and also Ernst Engelberg, due to his friendly association with Antonin
Haðek, the brother-in-law of Rudolf Slánsky, during his exile in Switzerland. On the one hand, the re-immigrants soon found out that the Party apparatus was dependent on the skills these refugee historians had acquired during their exile, such as foreign language ability and familiarity with international scholarship. On the other hand, previous contact with Jewish or other relief-organizations, to bourgeois politicians, and even to Communists who were considered enemies of the part¡ could be incriminating, or at the very least a black mark on one's important Kader files. Engelberg and the musicologist Georg Knepler attempted in vain to clear the names of some of those who had been indicted in the Prague Slánskf trial.s Even Stalin's death on March 5, 1,953 did not mean an automatic lifting of the threat or the de facto practice of repression. However, in the end, none of the historians had to suffer the fate of Paul Merker, who as late as March 1955, was sentenced through a secret trial, to serve a prison term. Thus is was not until the 1.970s that that such works, which had as their subject the personal experience of the exile, appeared from the historians here in question: e.g. Jürgen Kuczynski's first volume of memoirs, which covered the time up until 1945 (1973), and Karl Obermann's memories of his exile in France (1,984).' In the literary estate of Albert Schfèiner and Alfred Meusel, biographic descriptions can be found that substantiate the texts that were published in the GDR.10
See Ernst Engelberg's letter of January 14, 1951 to the Central Party Control Commission (ZPKK) in: Stiftung Archiv der Parteien und Massenorganisationen der DDR im Bundesarchiv, Berlin (SAPMO-BArch), DY 30/lV 2/41124, pp.285-86, and Knepler's letter of November 30, 1952, ibid., pp. 159-62. Jürgen Kuczynski, Memoiren: Die Erziehung des J. K. zum Kommunisten und Wissenschaft/er([East] Berlin and Weimar: Aufbau-Verlag, 1973); Karl Obermann, Exil Paris: Gegen Kulturund Bildungsabbau im faschistischen Deutschland (lEastl Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1984), pp. 8-42 (autobiographical notes).
Schreiner's autobiographical notes can be found in a Stasi file (collected materials about ,,Historiker-Tagung, June 7 and I [1952]," Archiv der Berlin-Brandenburgischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Alfred Meusel Papers (ABBAW, NL Meusel), No. 6'lB.
174
Schreiner). See Die Bundesbeauftragte für die Unterlagen des Staatssicherheilsd¡enstes der ehemaligen DDR (BSIU), MfS-Zenlralarchiv, HA l)01 1, Vo|.286. Meusel's notes are collected in: ABBAW NL Meusel, No. I.
1"7
5
Aside from the possibility of cryptic or perhaps some insider-privileged remarks of Kuczynski's, none of these texts address internal party conflicts during or after the exile. For the survivors of Stalin's camps, a public exposé of one's personal biography was completely out of the question. This was not only - or at least not primarily - the fault of the official reading of the past - which did not systematically stipulate a particular version of Stalin's atrocities - but was rather due to the playing-down of these crimes as merely the ,,negative effects of the cult of personality." More often the survivors of the camps decided simply to return to the GDR, whose official silence through mass-repression seemed convenient for easing into what seemed to be the single possible opportuni-
ty to deal with the most terrible chapter of their biography: that is, through silence, to build a protective shield against one's own tormenting questions. Going to the Federal Republic of Germany was not merely a political decision made by some of the other camp survivors, but rather it was often due to the debt they felt they owed to their innermost need to process the terrible events through crying out or through
writing.ll Despite all the coercion and suffering inflicted by their own rank and file, for those historians who returned the ,,general line" of the party remained in principle outside any critique. The re-immigrants swore, without giving any critical analysis to the idea, that the working class and ,,its party" were the prominent forces in socialist society. The faith in the ultimate superiority of socialism united - despite all their underlying differences - the historians with the SED leaders and their party apparatus. In general this must have led the historians, despite diverse individual differences, to an impoverished and dualistic world view - a mind set of good and evil, which pigeon-holed the subtle Marxist class analysis into a friend-or-foe schema. 'Whoever rejected this way of thinking would inevitably come to be considered 'a counter-revolutionary', and
11
See Wolfgang Ruge, Berlin-Moskau-Sosswa: Stat¡onen einer Em¡gration (Cologne: PahlRugenstein Nachf., 2003), pp. 439.
1,76
a 'bourgeois relic.' Within this conception of history there was no place for the idea of a multi-party ('bourgeois') democracy âs prerequisite for the self-government of the working people. From the very beginning a relationship vis-à-vis the institutions of the SED arose that contributed decidedly to rhe subordination of the historical disciplines under paternalistic party guardianship: Even the professionally experienced, and to some extenr critical historians like Ernst Engelberg or Leo Stern, during their controversies, appealed more than once to the Central Committee apparatus as the highest authorit¡ and thereby assisted it in acquiring the decision-making power that they themselves would eventually come to experience. This general loss of political voice was not simply taken by the Central Commitee's apparatus through force, it was also the historians who brought this
loss'upon themselves.
" Did the re-immigrants simply collude ro acquiesce to the SED? Join-
ing thè part¡ and returning to East Germany may look like part of a pact among like-minded individuals, although the ultimate implication of this was submission - even if it did not always turn our to be the case. At any rate, with the rigid classification sysrem within the party structure, a democratic conception of socialism had to weather some damage. This, which to some was a sensitive dilemma, was intensified by the SED exercise of power and its subsequent resistance to critical ideas. Nevertheless, none of the re-immigrants ended their connection to the Part¡ without which socialism seemed unthinkable. IØhat is the significance of all this for scholarly work and its effects? Through their critique of capitalism, the re-immigrants wanted to expose the underlying roots of social disaster and thereby perform the service of making a contribution to the prevenrion of fatally flawed social developments, in both the present and the future. On one hand, Marxist theory offers a point of departure for investigating the historical continuity of various historical developments ranging from imperialism, militarism, and political anti-Semitism ro Fascism. On the other hand, dogmatic axioms often preclude the realistic assessmenr of bourgeois society. However, the GDR historians during their exile, and to a greater extent afterwards, were devoting their attention to areas of research
1,77
that up until then had only rarely been addressed in the German universities, such as the research of revolutions or the history of Marxism and the workers' movement. They were working out, if not at times tending to overestimate, the roll of the mass population and the factors of material life as the primary and deciding forces in the process of history. The works of the re-immigrants were, in this rcgard, a challenge to historical studies in the Federal Republic of German¡ which, consequently, were also gradually taking up these problems and doing so in a way which was actuall¡ at least in part, more open and productive than that which was generally possible in the GDR. rü/ho could seriously contend that Jürgen Kuczynski's History of 'Worþer's Conditions under Capitalism or his historical studies of everyday life, Ernst Engelberg's Bismarck biography and also his investigation of Social Democracy under Bismarck, Leo Stern's large-scale edition on the German 'Workers' Movement, the work of Hans Mottek covering economic history and environmental research, or Karl Obermann's historical presentation of the Revolution of 1848 and the process of class formation in pre-revolutionary years, are not important contributions to German historical scholarship of that generarion and beyond? The question of whether Mottek or Obermann, who, during their exile, took their first steps into what would become life-long careers in histor¡ would have been able to write such works under different conditions in the GDR is just as well left open. The same can be said in regard to any concluding judgements of Alfred Meusel or Albert Schreiner, whose creative apex as researchers had already been secured in the period of their lives prior their return. Any verdict over Arnold Reisberg's and Wolfgang Ruge's works should be prefaced with the question of how their innermost reserves were able to motivate them at all after decades of suffering in Soviet camps so rhat rhey were still able to apply themselves to historical writing. The end of the GDR, which the majority of the eastern German population wanted, also compelled the surviving re-immigrants to reflect on their shared responsibility for the breakdown of this state. Jürgen Kuczynski recognized his personal responsibility for a blatantly repressive system, to which the people had increasingly turned their backs.
1.78
Shortly before his death he wrote, one must discriminate between human failure and historical failure.'!Øhen Kant said
that'good intentions'are what matters, perhaps (?) he was right in terms of judging human character. But man also has, I think, a historical character.
-
And it is here that I, as well as so many of my friends, have failed. Neither
Harich nor Havemann, and quite possibly not even I in 1956-57 [when Kuczynski openly placed some of the dogmas of GDR ideology in question],
but also I, when one traces the entire history of the GDR and my activities. In history what counts is not good intentions, not the honest endeavor, but only success. And in that I have simply been a complete failure. Indeed the . point is to change the world, not merely to make it a bit more bearable by being a good example.l2
"Historical analysis and historical faith came together, wïote \ü/olfgang Ruge, in a critical account. Out of this arose what he described as the ,,cardinal mistake" of the GDR historians: This mistake was to conceive reality ,,under'the fascinating influence" of Marxist-Leninist theotY, distortedly misconceived and accordingly represented... Seduced by our preconceived convictions, we dismissed, or at least trivialized, the multifaceted
etonomic, political, ideological, and moral signs of decay that were all around us. Only now did we really acknowledge them for the first time as the historical
career of socialism and its outcome, from its beginning, through Stalinism and stagnation up until its disintegration, can and must be assessed. There is no excuse for this serious neglect that many bad details about the practice of
'really existing socialism' are only now becoming known. ì7hat we knew (and personally
I
have to say: what
I knew), should
have been enough to
rcalize the absurdity of a conception of society in which the appeal to grandiose goals is used to sanctify the deployment of criminal meâns.l3 Júrgen Kuczynski, Foñgesetzter Dialog mit meinem Urenkel(Berlin: Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, 1996), p. 81. Wolfgang Ruge, ,,Nachdenken über die Geschichtswissenschaft der DDR," Zeitschrift für Geschichtswi ssenschaft , Yol. 41 (1 993), No. 7, pp. 584-85.
t79
After the Collapse of the GDR: What Remains? The collapse of the GDR raised the subsequenr question of what standard should be used to judge the historical scholarship that had been
produced there. Nothing seemed more natural to the historians and publicists of the FRG as to impose the pluralistic West German model of historical studies as the measure with which to judge the success or shortcomings of the GDR historians. This was rhe ideal by which the commission in charge of handling the final accounts, and the rebuilding of eastern German historical institutions (which, by the wa¡ did not only consist of western Germans) oriented itself. The severity of the critique of the easrern German historians upon rhe first encounter with them and the historical inheritance of the GDR which all too often was stigmatized as a burden from the pasr - was fed, not insignificantl¡ by the findings of the 'farhers' of 'West German historical studies, that later historians would present at the end of the 1990s. These findings about hisrorians, who after 1945 - unlike most of the post-1990 GDR researchers - were granted a second chance, were for West Germans often sobering, but nothing new to the East Germans who had studied this history. Indeed, in the GDR rhere was research initiated by re-immigrants and carried on by their students, rhat provided lucid information about perpetrators, accomplices, and also the compliance of German historians with National Socialism. Justifiably the propagandistic style of these works has been subjected to critique; it has also problematized their reception in the Federal Republic. However, if one keeps in mind that the initiators of these works, Ernst Engelberg and Leo Stern, as well as many of their students, such as-W'erner Berthold,'Walter Schmidt, and Rudi Goguel, were fighters against and victims of National Socialism, their sometimes acerbic formulations certainly take on a new light. The Cold \Øar adversely affected both of rhe German srares. As the French historian of the Comintern, Pierre Frank, pointed out, ,,the result was the mutual intensification of reactionary tendencies, originating from two clearly different societal foundations."la Cerrainly the
14
Pierre Frank, Gesch¡chte der Kommunistischen Internationale,Vol.2 (Frankfurt-Main: ISPVerag,
180
1
981 ), p. 783.
distortion of historical observations made by historians in both of the German states led to a self-induced blockade in the processing of the past - and not only in the West. Georg lgger's assessment remains worthy of discussion, according to which ,,it was not until the end of the 1960s that a pluralistic historical scholarship in the Federal Republic was possible for the first time, although a fundamental difference remained between the two states in regard to the mechanisms for disciplining nonconforming historians: the FRG, with its rule of law, and the GDR with a dictatorship."15 The debate over German historians in National Socialism, as well as over the handling of history in the individual departments in both German states, raise questions about the quality control of present academic standards as well as questions about an overdue precautionary discussion in regard to the reintegration of those East German fristorians who have been cast out of the production of academic knowledge, but who nevertheless fulfill all of the moral and professional criteria of modern research and teaching. Indeed the historical academics of the two Germanies did have an in.fluence on each other - albeit an indirect one - even during the Cold 'Slar, as has been discussed above. At the beginning of the 1950s Marxist and non-Marxist history educators, in both instruction and research, coexisted with one another in the GDR. At the beginning of the next deca-de the non-Marxist historians, to the extent that there were any remaining in the GDR at all, had been condemned to a marginal existence. The inteiference of the Party impeded or strangled any serious research as far as it was not in agreement with the wishes of the SED apparat. The paternalistic control of the Party over academic knowledge had exclusively negative results. Historians, especially Marxists, who supported this policy ultimately worked against their own interests as researchers. Indeed every critique of the re-immigrants who shared in this counter-productive relationship of scholarship and political interests is stuck with the counter-question of what chance they (or
15
Georg lggers, Deutsche Geschichtswissenschaft: Eine Kritik dertrad¡tionellen Geschichtsaul fassung von Herder bis zur Gegenwart (Vienna: Böhlau, 1997), p. 428.
181
l
t)
ri
,i r'l 11
any other Marxist historians for that matter) had, during those same years, in the FRG. Unlike, for example, England, the '$Øest German historians' guild never offered Marxists full citizenship. Had it been otherwise, some decisions about liquidation or the continued existence of GDR institutions after 1,990 could have very well turned out differently.
This contribution has dealt with one of the problems within the dynamic fields of academic knowledge and politics and at the same time poses some implicit questions on the subject of political ethics. The well-known question, what remains of the works of the re-immigrants and of the body of historical knowledge that came out of the GDR, is a question for which this author, unlike some of his colleagues, does not
The Fall of the Berlin Wall and the Radical Right in East Germany
presume to provide a definitive answer.
For the overall majority of works by eastern German historians it is the case (as it is for historical works in general) that they are products of their own particular time and that they are written so that a new generation may improve and surpass them. It is part of our trade - in contrast to that of the architect or even the philosopher - that the names of the historians, if they are fortunate, remain engraved in collective memory with regard to their moral value longer than to their works. Their shelf life is usually already determined by the immediately following generation. Yet it still remains an open question: who will be remembered longer by posterity, these historians who seamlessly switched over from the Third Reich to the Federal Republic; or those historians who resisted Hitler, who only in the GDR were given a chance at a career, and who were ready to pay the price for all this?
Translated by Dauid Schrøg.
,,The strong case of guest-workers from the Balkan countries and from Anatoliar" wrote the essayist Rolf Schneider, an East-German-born author, ,,provides the main arguments for right-wing currents in the old Federal Republic. This is not the case in the five new states, i. e. the
former GDR. It is not easy to answer the question why such a movement constituted by the extreme political right should arise, a movement, which is not only noticeable, but speaks with such a shrill voice."1 This essay deals with the problem of right-wing radicalism) parricularly with its neo-Nazi variant in the new German states, the former Gerfian Democratic Republic, during the immediate years after the fall of the Berlin \íall. The fact that since the early 1.990's Germany was struck by a wave of xenophobic violence renders special significance to the topic. The violence evo,ked a sense of horror both in and outside Germany. At the same time, it led to an unprecedgnted degree of solidarity with foreigners and asylum-seekers who lived in Germany. The solidarity was demonstrated openly by the German public, most significantly in a huge government-supported demonstration on the symbolic Rolf Schneider, ,,Die rechten Deutschen ¡m Osten," Un-Heil über Deutschland. Fremdenhaß und Neofaschismus nach der Wiedervereinigung (Hamburg: Stern, 1993), p. 1 36. This essay was published ¡n an earlier form as ,,The extreme righl after German unification: ls the eastern part of Germany a special case?," in: Krzysãof Glass et al. (eds.), Fremde-Nachban-Partner widerWillen? Mitteleuropas alte/neue Stereotypen und Feindbilder (Vienna and Torun: Adam Marszalek, 1 995), pp. 73-83.
t82
183
date of November 9, 2000 in Berlin.2 Nevertheless, neo-Nazis continued their daily and nightly attacks against the homes of asylum-seekers, residents of Turkish origins and also against Jewish cemeteries
during the following months.3 It has been said that the initial repercussions of 'Hoyerswerda' helped to galvanize right-wing violence.a Hoyerswerda, a city of about 60,000 inhabitants in the State of Saxony in Eastern German¡ was the stage for a week-long outburst of violence against hostels for foreigners in September 1.991.. One year later, violence against hostels housing foreigners in Rostock, a seaport on eastern Germany's coast, gave the extreme right another burst of motivation. These violent offences in eastern Germany fostered successive outbreaks in the western parts of the country) as, for example, in the small town of Mölln, where two Turkish families were brutally murdered in 1.993. For some researchers right-wing radicalism in the east is in its causes fundamentally different from that in the west. For them, the wave of violent xenophobia in eastern Germany mainly results from the negative aspects of German unification, and is in that sense a new phenomenon. Other interpretations underline the fact that right-wing activities already existed clandestinely many years earlier in the GDR.5
The Transition in Eastern Germany and the End of 'Imposed' Anti-Fascism Anti-fascism was a main goal of the East German educational system on all levels, but this effort was largely one-dimensional. The antifascist struggle of 'i.933 to L945 had been incorporated in the commu9 November is the anniversary of the ,,aborted" German revolution of 1918, the mislead Hitler putsch of 1 923, lhe ,,Night of Broken Glasses" of 1 938, and the fall of the Berlin Wall of 1989.
German Veñassungsschutz ('Service of the Proiection of the Const¡lution'), quoted in DerTagesspiegel and Neues Deutschland, March 30,2001. For the extent of the attacks see the annual report of the
4
Stuttgarter Zeitung, November 6, 1 992.
5
See the special issue of Aus
1.84
Po l¡tik
und Ze¡tgesch,bhfe, September 22, 29oo, on the subject.
nist tradition, to which the leadership of the socialist unity part¡ the sED, claimed to succeed. since the historical lessons of the anti-Fascist resistance were ofren propagated in a dogmatic and simplistic way, they were increasingly less accepred by a majority of East Germans. This does not mean that people were nor willing to break with the past after rØorld war IL rn 1945 an anti-Nazi and to some exrenr an anticapitalist tradition was still alive amongst workers and intellectuals, although it had diminished after rwelve years of bloody suppression. The reasons for the survival of anti-Nazism cân be found in the democrátic and socialist labor movement of the years of the rØeimar RepubIic. However, the sED leadership wasted and finally lost almost all credit it had immediately aÍter 1945. over the years, the means of political indoctrination, over-simplistic agitation and obtrusive propaganda gradually turned all values of a genuine socialism with a human Tace into its opposite. In ìhe GDR, as in the whole Soviet Bloc, a narrow concepr of Fascism was the ttreoretical base for the approach towards a complex problem. The cominternls famous definition of Fascism as ,,open terrorist dictatorship of extremely reactionary, most chauvinistic, most imperialistic elements of finance capital". might have been valid for Fascism in power, particularly for Nazism. ,,However, it reduced the problem to that of support for the NSDAP by big enrrepreneurs, bankers and landlords, and neglected otherwise the mass base of National socialism. which was its key to success."T In party propaganda, the various currents of anti-Fascist resistance in Germany and Europe (communist, socialist, bourgeois, religious) were reduced to a movement which was almost exclusively led by communists. only in the last years of the GDR did more balanced inrerprera-
6
Quoted'lrom Vll. Kongreß der Kommunistischen lnternat¡onate: Referate und Resotut¡onen ([East] Berlin: Dietz, 197S), p.93.
7
christoph.Butterwegge, ,,Rechtsextremismus vor und nach der wiedervereinigung: Grundlagen-Gefahren-Gegenstrategien", ldem/Horst lsola (eds.), Rechtsextrem¡smús iñ vereinten Deutschland: Randerscheinung oder Gefahr für die Demokratie?,3rd ed. (Berlin: Linksdruck, 1991), pp. 17-18.
185
tions have a chance to be published.s Except for a few professional historians, almost nobody had access to 'Western literature on the subject, including books written by anti-Stalinist Marxists. The lack of objective re-evaluation of the past (which would have included the shortcomings of official communist politics during the'Weimar Republic and also worker's support for Hitler before and mainly after 1933) reflected the way in which the SED leadership dealt with Nazism and anti-Nazism as 'the '!ühilst burden of the past'. !Øest Germany was depicted as a hotbed of neo-Nazism, where Hitler's supporters (i.e. the capitalists) were still in power, the GDR was considered to be a place in which capitalism, as the ,,breeding ground" of Nazism, no longer had a chance to flourish. Consequentl¡ even organízed meetings of young people with survi-
vors of the concentration camps were held in a ,,ritualized" manner. The party leadership, the \Øest German writer Ralph Giordano wrote, imposed its own understanding of Fascism and anti-Fascism upon the population. It ,,imposed" anti-Fascism.e It should be noted, however, that all four allied powers tried to impose their respective understanding of anti-Fascism upon the Germans after World 'SØar IL
The fall of the Berlin
'!Øall
and the 'German Problem'
The fall of the Berlin'Wall and the implosion of the GDR are the most significant events in recent German history. The 'German problem' returned to the agenda of European politics. Until the early 1970s the East German leadership has blamed the West for being responsible for the division of Germany. It was then the GDR who sustained the notion of a single and united German nation. However, ,,with the international rec-
ognition of the GDR after the conclusion of Ostpolitik, rhe stance In the 1.970s, srrenuous efforts were made by the East German regime to develop a sense of a separate GDR identit¡ based on a class theory of the narion which held that not only were there two German states (the East German still being viewed as the moie progressive), there were now also two German nations."lo One of the ironies of recent history is the fact that the small groups of dissenters which emerged since the mid-1980s in the GDR mostly supported the idea of an independenr socialist (although non-Stalinist) East German state. They still supporred this position in late 1989, when the viability of the GDR became quesrionable after the fall of the Berchanged noticeably.
I!n.'S(/all, when East Germans poured westward. 'SØithin weeks it became obvious that. a majority of East Germans demanded not only the dismantling of the regime, but also the end of the 'existin-g order and that they wanred a quick unification with NØest Germany. The dissenters who initiated the street demonstrations were strong enough to mobilize the masses for overthrowing the regime, but were not powerful enough to win mass support for their ideas of a socialism with a human face or of a','Third IØay'between market capitalism and state socialism. But even a democratic socialist project could not provide people with an attractive alternarive to the policy of quick unification on 'Süest German terms. In face of an acute economic, political, ecological and-moral crisis, not only so-called 'real existing socialism', but every form of socialism was discredited. This collapse pulled down the moral values upon which the old governmenr claimed to be based, including
even anti-Fascism.
Right-wing Radicalism in the GDR Before 1989
8
See Sonia Combe, ,,Mémoire collect¡ve et hisloire otficielle: Le passé nazi en RDA," Esprfi, No. 10, octobre 1 987, pp. 1 1 2-25; Jürgen Danyel, ,,Vom schwierigen Umgang mit der Schuld: Die Deutschen in der DDB und der Nationalsozialismus," Zeitschriftfür Geschichtswissenschaft, Vol. XL (1992), No. 10, pp. 915-28; Kuri F¡nker, Zwischen lntegration und Leg¡t¡mat¡on. Der
Youth dissent in East Germany has a long history and can be traced back to the workers' revolt of June 1953. But it was only in the mid-
antifaschistische Widerstandskampf in Geschichtsb¡ld und Geschichtsschreibung der DDR (Leipzig: Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung Sachsen, 1999).
9
Ralph Giordano, Die zweite Schuld oder Von der Last Deutscher zu sern (Hamburg and Munich: Knaur, 1987), pp.219 etseq.
1.86
1
0
Mary Fulbrook, The two Germanies, 1945-1990: Problems of lnterpretat¡on (Basingstoke and London: MacMilfan, 1992), p.70.
L87
1980s that the use of neo-Nazi symbols as a form of political protest was recorded in top-secret Stasi files. These forms of protest remained admittedly limited to a very small segment of youth (a few hundred).11 Since the mid-1980s, fundamental disapproval of the GDR increased remarkably among the younger generation. According to an unpublished opinion poll conducted 1985 by the Institute of Youth Research in Leipzig, 51. percent of trainees and young workers interviewed supported the GDR in principle, while six percent declared their non-identification. Three years later, the percentage of approval had declined to 18 percent, while the percentage of those who declared non-identification rose to 28. ln 1985, half of the interviewed believed that socialism would finally overthrow capitalism world-wide, while in 1988 the percentage of those who believed in socialism had declined to only 10 percent.l2 Until the second half of the 1980s, dissenting voices from within the GDR were primarily based upon anti-Stalinist socialism or upon Christian humanism. A small number of artists or would-be literati around the Berlin district of Prenzlauer Berg tried to withdraw themselves from society and from its norms and values. Expressions of German nationalism were extremely unpopular among dissenters. But to many 'average' East Germans the West German model was quite attractive. They oriented themselves according to 'West German politics, and had to some extent the same party preferences as 'SØest Germans. This included, particularly among young frustrated people, a feeling of pride in ('SØest) German economic or athletic, mainly soccer achievements, tending to see West Germany as the 'Number One'. While the majority saw in the 'West the land of prosperity, welfare and guaranteed civil rights (often over-emphasizing the positive aspects of life), a minority identified with a different picture of 'SØest German¡ namely with a strong work ethic and law-and-order mentality which supposedly was mainly responsible for what was called the 'Wirtschaftswunder (Economic
Miracle). 1
1
12
In the mid 1980s there were currents of quasi-Nazi oùentation among groups of East German soccer fans. As in other countries there was a good breeding ground for fascist ideas among these skinhead-styled young men. Not all of these mostly male youngsters were hard-core Fascists, but there was a 'gray zone' where racist and fascist ideas ,were mixed with youth resentment and a rebellious attitude against 'the system'. This was the sample matrix from which most of the brutal attacks against foreigners derived. These crimes started in the late 1980s. Since the 7970s, the GDR had imported workers from Poland, Hungary and Yugoslavia, but also from Algeria, Vietnam and Mozambique. For Third lùØorld countries these agreements were made possible by concluding highly exploitative labor treaties with these countries. Even so, less than one percent of all the East German residents were foreigners. They were concentrated mostly around industrial plants, lived isolated from the rest of the population in enclosed housing blocks and
had virtually no contact with East German social life outside their work. The case lvas different for some thousand other foreigners who studied in East Germany or who lived there as 'alien residents'. These were mostly those who had married East Germans and decided to live in the country, primarily people from the Soviet Union, Romania or from Asian communist countries (mainly Mongolia). Open hostility against foreign citizens was â rare phenomenon rn the GDR and was not recorded in the state-controlled mass media. However, a massive attack by dozens of neo-Nazis against musicians and the audience of a rock concert held in the Berlin Church of Zion ín October '1,987, was reported in the press. After that, various incidents were made public. In February 1988, the SED Politburo \Ã/as concerned with neo-Nazi activities, but denied any responsibility. As right from the founding of the GDR, the leadership still took the simple line that Nazism was the product of monopoly capitalism; only subversive influence from the 'SØest could be responsible for neo-Nazi undercurrents in the GDR.13 There was indeed a ..blos-
See Walter Süß, ,,Zur Wahrnehmung und lnterpretation des Rechtsextremismus in der DDR durch das MtS," Deutschland Archiv,Yol.26 (1 993), No. 4, pp. 11 et seq.
SeePeterFörsterandGünterRoski,DDRzwischenWendeundWahl.Me¡nungstotscheranaIysieren den Umbruch (Berlin: Linksdruck, 1990), pp. 39-41 .
188
13
See ibid., pp. 15-16; Loni Niederländ er, ,,Zu den Ursachen rechtsradikaler Tendenzen in der DDR", Neue Jusflz, Vol. XLIV (1 990), No. 1 , pp. 16-18.
t89
'Slestern Europe soming" of rightist movements in'Slest Germany and at that time. But the causes were fundamentally different from those in the GDR, namely an increase in youth unemployment and a loss of credibility of the 'affluent society'. In the GDR neo-Nazism became the most rigid form of protest and rebellion against the existing order.
Right-wing radicalism in Eastern Germany After 1989 After 1.989-1990 numerous writers have emphasized a special affínity of parts of East German youth for right-wing ideas. However, it should be noted that xenophobic sentiments are also current among adults. Nonetheless, sympathy for rightist groups and parties is mostly expressed by younger people. A survey conducted one year before the transition among 3,000 people in the GDR aged between 1'4 and 25, estimated that about 2 percent had radical rightist tendencies, and another 4 percent sympathized with skinheads.la At the end of 1'990 a research group of the Institute of Youth Research in Leipzig issued a report on the attitudes of 2,700 young people from the State of Saxony 'While percent 5 of the intertowards foreigners and extremist groups. viewed individuals were estimated to sympathize with skinheads and hooligans, 10 percent of the apprentices approved of violence against foreigners.15 Another L990 stud¡ commissioned jointly by the Federal Delegate for the Integration of Foreign S7orkers and by the Commissioner for Foreigners of the GDR stated that between 15 and 20 percent of young East Germans condoned violence against foreigners.16 The virtual collapse of the entire East German infrastructure in 1990 and the circumstances of quick unification had disastrous effects: Soon after the conservative pro-Helmut Kohl oriented forces won the first free elections in March 1990, it became obvious that the new govern14
Peter Ködderitzsch and Leo A. Müller, Rechtsextrem¡smus in der DDR (Göttingen: Lamuv 1 990), p. 1 9. See ChristopherT. Husbands, ,,Neo-Nazis in East Germany:The New Danger," Patterns oÍ Prejudice, (1991), No. 1, p. 10.
16
Quoted in: lbid,, p. 10.
1.90
ment and its west German partners were unable to deal with the escaIating economic problems. Far from turning the East German economy around, the currency union of July 1, L990 exacerbated rising unemployment, part-time labor, increased bankruptcy and heightened uncertainty about the furure for millions. The problems of complicity with Stasi activities worsened the situation. Familial and other traditional
patterns of life were disrupted, services were cut and the old social network collapsed. After that racist and xenophobic propaganda could succeed. Almost all East Germans were completely unprepared for the capitalist order suddenly thrust upon them. After having been isolated from the rest of the world with habits formed through decades of living within a paternalistic and hierarchical order, they were overwhelmed both by the promises and the aggressiveness of the new sociery. Many of them sought scapegoats. Part of the blame was directed against \Øest 'German civil servants, businessmen and university teachers (a stereotype of arrogant 'Wessies) who often succeeded dismissed East Germans in top positions. It is little wonder that many East Germans vented their inferiority complex on foreigners. The problem increased with the massive influx of East Europeans to Berlin and East Germany right after the fall of the wall. They came for economic reasons and were confronted with massive xenophobia. Many East German workers saw the new immigrants as competitors for labor and employment. This was the situation when slogans such as ,,German jobs for German workers.. or later the CDU campaign Kinder statt Inder (children rarher than Indians), a rejection against highly qualified compurer specialists recruited from Asia, became popular. During the same period anti-semitic sentiments surfaced in German¡ not only in her Eastern part, with the presence of many Jews among the political left. after 1990, most prominently symbolized in the person of Gregor Gysi, the charismatic leading figure of the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), and the writer Stefan Heym, who won a parliamentary seat in the nation-wide election of 1994.17
17
See Gregor Gysi, Ein ,,nichtjüdischer Jude?,,, in: Nea Weissberg-Bob (ed.), Der dumme Fuß will mich nach Deutschland tragen. von außen nach innen schàuen (Berlin: samson, 1993), pp. 49-63, and my comment ibid., pp. 65-68.
1,91,
As soon as they had access to Eastern German¡'Sflest German rightist and neo-Nazi organizations made strenuous efforts to establish branches in the new German states. Until the mid-1990s, the two major parties of the far right, the Republiþ.aner and the Dewtsche Volksunioz (DW) were able to recruit a considerable amount of East German members: ln 1.994, about 4,000 of the 25.000 Republikaner members came from the former GDR and 3,000 of the 26,000 members of the Deutsche Volksunion were from East Germany.ls Since then, the small Nationaldemoþ.ratiscbe Partei Deutschlands (NPD) as well as several smaller groups have flourished, often through a double-membership of the ac'$Øest tivists. Vhile in Germany their violence makes these small groups
unacceptable to the ultra-conservative electorate to the right of the Christian Democrats (CDU) it is precisely their violent agitation which gives them support among a considerable minority among East German youngsters (and some elder people). The state elections of 1998 brought them into the parliaments of Brandenburg and Saxony-Anhalt.le Their success was based to a considerable extent on a form of ,,anti-capitalism" from the right, or a National Socialism sui generis. The mid-1990s brought a new stage of the rightists' struggle for cultural instead of parliamentary hegemony. A report from the American Anti-Defamation League states that ,,right-wing extremists have moved into the era of high technology through two computerized networks that link like-minded activists from all over the country [East and'West Germany]."20 Holocaust denying texts, which are legally forbidden in Germany, can be downloaded from American web-sites, such as Gary Lauck's NSDAP-Aufbauorganisation. This is also the case for racist skinhead
music which is provided through inrerner sites (one of the best-known German Nazi bands is Brutale Haiezl from eastern Germany).
Some problems
of interpretation
The discussion about right-wing radicalism in Eastern Germany continues. Most of the researchers see some reasons in the GDR's past (the simplistic attitude rowards Nazism; anti-Fascism as an ideology of legitimizing the Berlin rØall and political oppression) but also conclude that the circumstances of unification and the influx of !Øest German right-wingers aggravated the situation. '!Øilhelm Heitmeyer and, later, Armin Pfahl-Traughber saw in young East German rightists typical victims of a rapid modernization within the conrexr of ,,institutional erobion."22 For the ,,Theory of Dominance" and its supporters, the reasons áre mainly to be found in a rapidly adapted ,,chauvinism of affluence", although this is more typical for middle-class pro-Republikaner in the !Øest than for underdogs in the East.z3 other researchers make the discrepancy berween demands and reality responsible for right, wing radicalism after the fall of the wall: unable ro realize their visions, they try all sorts of expedients which are generally not accepted by the 'mainstream'.2a Some current observers also mention the weakness-of the formal control system, mainly the police, in Eastern Germany.25 Some analysts focus on underlying historical traditions of German xenophobia before 1945 as well as the crisis caused by re-unification.
l
l
l
18
See Manf red Behrend, ,,Rechtsextremismus in Ostdeutschland vor und nach dem Anschluß an die BRD," Arbeiterstimme, No. 105, September 1994, pp. 10-17.
19
Since ihis essay was written, the NPD had a tremendous success in the election 2004: in the state of Saxony the party gained almost 1 0 percent of the electorate.
20
Anti-Defamat¡onLeague,TheWebofHate,NewYork, 1996,p.45,quotedfrom:Thomasffeiffer, ,,Antisemitismus in Computernetzen. Neue Kommunikationsmöglichkeiten für RechtsextremÈ sten," Sâcho,: Zeitschrift für Antisemitismusforschung, iüd¡sche Gesch¡chte und Gegenwart, December 2000, p. 131 . See also Burkhard Schröder, ,,Rechlsextremismus ¡m lnternet," ,4us Politik und Zeitgeschichte, September 22, 2000, pp.49-54.
192-
21
Brutal Sharks.
¿¿
wilhelm Heitmeyer et al. , Die Bielefelder Hechtsxtremismus-sfudle (weinheim and Munich: Juventa, 1992);Armin Pfahl-Traughber, ,,Die Entwicklung des Rechtsextremismus in ost- und Westdeutschland," Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichfe, September 22,2000, pp. 3-14.
¿ô
For this opinion see the numerous writings of Birgit Rommelspacher...
24
See the early essay of Wolfgang Brück, ,,skinheads: Vorboten der Systemkrise,,, Karl-Hernz Heinemann and Wilfried Schubarth (eds.), Der antifaschistische Stàat enttäßt seine Kinder. Jugend und Rechtsextremismus in Ostdeutschtand (Cologne: papyrossa, 1 992), p. 45.
see Hans-Gert Jaschke, ,,sehnsuchr nach dem starken staat - was bewirkt Repression gegen rechts?," A us Politik und Ze¡tgesch¡chte, September 22, 2OOO, pp.22-29.
193
l
In that regard, however, Germany seems to be only an extreme example of racial violence which is present in all liberal democracies.26 The gap between a more prosperous West and a relatively poorer East leads to the tendency to define a feeling of solidarity less by common norms than by ,,external" categories. That means that patterns like class solidarity or democratic values lose some of their influence. Ethnic origin or a place from which somebody comes become 'national issues'. The Other seems to be responsible for all sorts of problems while standing for a shared reference of collective German identity. Bourgeois-democratic values and, even more, socialist traditions are under constant attack from the far right, which tries to misuse eroding pâtterns in a struggle for cultural hegemony.
Can Marxist Historical Thought Survive?
The collapse of the Soviet-led world also resulted in the collapse of an ideolog¡ which served as its legitimizing ideology: Marxism-Leninism. Thd seventy years of history appeil in a new light and the historical debates of the years 1985186 until 1991 - the so-called Perestroika are no longer regarded.âs â return to the Leninist Iegacy. These critical years now appear to us as the final crisis, not only of the Leninist approach but of Marxism itself. Those historians who are fascinated by political power and the existance of large stares ask, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the entire Eastern Bloc, as well as the breakup of Yugoslavia, whether Marxism still has any relevance as a guiding ideologf or even as a scholarly methodology. This paper does not want to answer these questions with a swift yes
or no. But this much seems certain: The future of Marxist thought depends on its ability to adapt and change, which - contrary to com-
26
Panikos Panayi, ,,Racial Violence in the new Germany," Contemporary European H¡story, 994), No. 3, pp. 265-87.
(1
1.94
mon assumptions - it has done over the last 150 years. These transformations, which will be sketched in the following remarks, have resuked, albeit not automaticall¡ from the built-in cardinal contradiction of Marxist historical thought. Marxist historical thinking elevated, and at the same time reduced, a millenia of complex and contradictory human developmenr into accessible categories, which turned into building blocks of a positivistic approach. Already in Die deutscbe Ideologie of 1,845, Marx and Engels defined human society from the perspective of labor. Labor consrirutes
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for those millions of suppressed, exploited, and from their true
the first precondition of all human existence, hence of all history... namely
science
the prerequisite that humans have to live in order to ,make history.' Living requires most of all food and drink, shelter, clothing, among other things.
nature alienated people."3 This gave the impression that the historical processes could be reconstructed through knowable laws of the organization of labor, social stratification, and the distrubution of property. History thus became a
Thus, the first historical deed was the production of the means to provide
for these needs, the production of the material life itself ...i
This ,,production of life" appears at the same time as a dual relationship
- on one hand as natural on the other hand as social, in the sense of the coming together of individuals in different numbers, under different circumstances, in different fashions, and for different reasons. This implies that any given level of the means of production corresponds to the particular level of social organization and this level of social organization is in and of itself a ,force of production.' Hence, the amount of the forces of production which are accessible to humans determines the social ârrangement, and thus the ,history of humanity' must be studied within the context of the history of industry and exchange.2
Marx and Engels worked through the immense importance of the economic activities of human societies from the perspective of class struggle. The non-Marxist historian Fritz I7agner observes that ,,those authors elevated the historical conditions of Englánd, with its captains of industry and its masses of wage laborers which they have encountered personally to truly world historical significance: the egotistical ruling classes with their aims of acquisition and profit maximization, as well as the changing conditions of production depending on the level of technology and mastery of nature, became the keys to understanding the true guiding forces of history. It was important to make visible these structural elements: hence history became the central and life-saving
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, ,,Die deutsche ldeologie," Marx-Engels-Werke (Berlin: Dielz, 1955-1968), Vol. 3, p. 28. Cited hereatter as MEW. lbid., p.29.
t96
_socio-ethical program in which Marxists emphasized the inter-dependance of judiciary and constitutional law and politics, as well as arr and science as ideologies which derive from socio-economic circumstances. Yet these socio-economic circumstances change ove¡ time and indeed could be overthrown. These radical correctives of the theologi-
cal, idealistic, and nation-state centered interpretations of history as devised by Marxists turned into, according to ìØagner, ,,a monoism of progress: trans-nationalistic, dynamic, and bold. Hegel's dialectic was changed into a technique of power and meaning for which the humane Tinal goal justified all means: to build the classless societ¡ a paradise free from private properry, indeed in order to make prossible the correspondance of natural social conditions and personal processes of consiousness."a This lasl remark has to be qualified: - Marx and Engels were increasingly aware, during their scholarly and political lives, that their claim to put historical materialism, as a scrence, in the same category as the natural sciences, collided with the critical Marxist perspective rejecting any inrenr roward objectivity as a form of positivism. To say it differently: Marx enriched the possibilities of historical research immensely through his interdisciplinary approach, aiming toward the totality of societal conditions. The Marxist social perFritz wagner, Der Historiker und die weltgeschlchfe (Freiburg and Munich: Karl Alber, 196s), o.69.
lbid., p. 70. The American Murray wolfson sees the following periods in Marx's historicophilosophical development: the first rationalistic and enlightened phase 1843 (Zur Kritik der
Hegelschen Rechtsphilosoph¡e),the second materialist-humanist phase, influenced by Feuerbacn 1844 (Die ökonomisch-philosophischen Manuskripte and Zur Judenfrage), anð a third, dialectic-mater¡alistic, phase extending from the 1B4s rhesen über FeuerbachTothe 1867 Das
Kap¡tal.I will not here argue Wolfson's assertion that historical materialism as well as the Marxist understanding of rwolution derives from Jewish monotheistic throught. see Murray Wolfson, MaH: EconomísL Philosopher, Jew: Steps ¡n the Development of a Dôctrine (London: MacMillan, 1982). For a critique of this position see Enzo Trave rso, The Marx¡sts and thìe Jewish Question: The History of a Debate, 184s-194s (Arlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities press, 1994), p. 14.
1,97
spective, meaning the eventual abolition of any order of exploitation, limited its potential as a tool of social analysis inasmuch as the results of historical research and reflection were judged and prejudged according to their usefulness in the revolutionary struggle. The political impact of Marxism was enhanced by its dual nature as a means of analysis and social utopianism. Yet for Marxism as a scholarly approach, this was a hinderance. Friedrich Engels, who was at times unfairly accused of oversymplifying Marxist thought, was well aware of the implications of a one-sided focus on prophetic dimensions at the expense of scholarly analysis. He warned against narrowing the Marxist theory to just a guide for revolutionary action. The famous letters of the aging Engels are good examples of this. In January 1887 he wrote to Florence Kelley-rWischnewetzky ,,our theory is a theory in progress, not a dogma that one can memorize and repeat mechanically."s Engels spoke in favor of Marxists cooperat-
ing with all, including non-Marxist revolutionary, currents within the context of the socialist movement. In June 1890, he wrote (in the draft of a letter) to Paul Ernst ,,that the materialist methodology will turn into its opposite if it is used not as a guide for historical study but as a rcady made formula for which historical facts have to be fitted."6 To Conrad Schmidt he said ,,shortly later our approach to history is first of all a guide to study not a means of construction à lø Hegelianism. All of history has to be studied anew before one begins to derjve the political, judiciar¡ asthetic, philosophical, religious, etc., views which are indigenous to any given period."7 In this essa¡ I cannot even begin to sketch the development of Marxist historiography as it is connected with the names of Plekhanov, Mehring, Bernstein, Kautsky, or Lukács. I want to address the most important methodological questions and issues, which I can sketch only basically. How can historical analysis work through the unity or contradiction between ,,naturally determined" evolutionism and social laws Friedrich Engels to Florence Kelley-Wischnewetzky, January 27,1887, MEW,Yol.36,p.97.
of development? This problem crystallized in Kautsky's inrerprerarron of socialism as an inevitable process. Is Marxist interpretation of historical connections possible at all given its background in the assumed unity of knowledge and revolutionary practices? What consequences for the Marxist understanding of history have resulted from the social reforming policies of the socialist mass parties, after the end of the great depression of 1896-1897, and the theory of total capitalist collapse linked with those events? '$7ith the Bolshevik revolution oÍ 1,917 the Marxist inrerpretation of history quickly became a singular doctrine. The debates between the intellectuals of the Second International, which contributed to a pluralistic climate among Marxists, were curtailed in Leninist Russia, where all Marxists had to orient themselves to Lenin's polemic toward Kautsky. The Bolshevization of the other Communist parties and the Cominrern, in the mid L920's, made the differentiating historico-philosophical works of Gyórgy Lukács such as his History and Class Consciousness and Karl Korsch's Marxism and Philosophy automatically suspecr. Stalin's Questions of Leninism, which appeared first in 1.925, created the hybrid construction of Marxism-Leninism, which, as the official ideolog¡ was supported by an institutional basis. The dominance of the Stalinist
Party led to the exclusion of all critical historians, including critical Marxists. David Ryazanov, the first Soviet biographer of Marx, became, like many of his colleagues, a victim of Stalinist terror. The differentiating methodological appoach of Marxism toward historical reality was over-simplified and deformed by the supposed unity of science and politics, a unilinear ideological construct which was supposed to lead to the victory of the socialist means of production. This vulgar historicism debased Marxism into a simple legitimating science for the Stalinist system.s This development was already criticized by Arthur Rosenberg in 1,939 in the United States. In his still relevanr comments, Rosenberg
o
Friedrich Engelsto Paul Ernst, June 5, 1890, MEW,Yol.37,p.411.
See Oskar Negt, ,,Maxismus als Legitimationswissenschaft," Abram Deborin and Nikolaj Buchar¡n, Kontroveßen überdialektischen und mechanischen Materialismus{Frankfurt-Ma¡n:
7
Friedrich Engels to Conrad Schmidt, August 5, 1890, MEW, Vol.37, p.436.
Suhrkamp, 1969), p.7.
1.98
199
described the ,,historical vision of Bolshevism" as the product of innerRussian conditions, including internal Bolshevik struggles as well as the transformed strategy of the Communist International after the world revolution did not materialize. Russian history was increasingly instrumentalized by the victorious Stalinist faction. The historical vision of Bolshevism was, according to Rosenberg, shaped by ,,the guiding dogma of Stalinism, that the building up of socialism would be possible in one single country, meaning in Russia."e For Stalin the decisive reasons for the Russian Revolution were located within the particular conditions of Russian history. Thus Stalin wanted to put proletarian content into Russian national form: the development of Soviet Russia became ,,nothing but a new epoch in the historical national culture. The leadership of this national culture, which previously belonged to the nobility or
the bourgeoisie, now belonged to the ruling bureaucracy of Bolshevism and the new intelligentsia as shaped by the Soviet government."lo Under these conditions Bolshevism acquired a new and increasingly positive relationship to the Russian past, including the Romanov dynast¡ whose rule the old guard Bolshevik Zinoviev prior to his execution on Stalin's orders, regarded as the cardinal evil of Russian history. Rosenberg argues that ,,it was no accident that Zinoviev had to be killed before Stalin's new national Russian historical perspective could have been established within Bolshevism."ll Such a doctrine of history meant a sharp breach with \Øestern understanding of science and scholarship which was also the foundation of the theory of Marx and Engels. It would be unfair to completely condemn all of the historical scholarship produced in the Eastern Bloc in the following decades. The more distant historical scholarship was from Stalin's death in 1953, and the more distance it acquired to its original objects of research which served directly to legitimize a dictatorial one-party regime, the larger the spaces
9
Arthur Rosenberg, ,,Das Geschichtsbild des Bolschewismus [1939],' ldem, Demokrat¡e und Klassenkampf: Ausgewählte Studren, edited by Hans-Ulrich Wehler (Frankfurt-Main: Ullstein, 1974), p. 177. See my book Arihur Rosenberg: Ein Historiker ím Zeitalter der Katastrophen (1889-1943), (Cologne etc: Böhlau, 2003) and the essay on Rosenberg in this volume.
'10 1 1
Rosenberg, ,,Gesch¡chtsbild," p. '183. lbid., p. 185.
200
for research according to the criteria of western rationality became. The books and essays of l7estern Marxists exerted, over the course of several decades, a particularly stimulating influence on the historiography in the Eastern Bloc. This left-oriented literature was even more visciously assaulted by the official guardians of the pure doctrine than the results of so-called bourgeois science. -SØestern Marxists were confronted with two important challenges during the first two decades after'World'War II. First of all, they had to - with increasing success - wrestle away the monopoly of interpretation of the Marxist legacy from the institutionalized represenrarives of Marxism-Leninism. Secondl¡ those independant Marxists had to provide empirically founded research in order to combat the anti-Marxists in the west who wanted to label Marxism wholesale as unscientific. \Øith the changes in the political and intellectual landscape of the 'West ïince 1968, those critical Marxists were far more integrated into the mainstream scholarly world. Even the political rollback strategy of the Reagan and Thatcher eras in the English-speaking world could not reverse this tendency.' However, it remains to be seen whether and to what extent the exclusion of Marxists from German academic insritutions will be corrected in a new political climate. It is still open wheth'West) er the German Sonderweg (German divergence from the which has excluded the socialist left from the public sphere, has run its course. The disintegration of Marxist-Leninist historical thought began in the Eastern Bloc long before 1989. This was probably more pronounced in Hungary and Poland than in the Soviet Union or the GDR. Yet, even in East Germany younger historians departed from the priorities of the party ideologues, since the mid-1980s at the latest, as a number of works which were produced before 1989, and published shortly after, testify. Contrary to the situation in other Eastern BIoc countries, critical historians in the GDR remained connected to the Marxist paradigm for the time being. Between them and, at times, older colleagues who suddenly changed into outspoken anti-Marxists in order to secure their place in the new united German academic landscape arose sharp confrontations. About fifteen years have passed since the collapse of Communism in Central and Eastern Europe. Marxist thought is, today, quite marginal-
20r
ized within historiography and other disciplines as well. Many of the former representatives of official Marxist-Leninism are silent, while a smaller number remain bound to the old positions. Others seek a critical engagement with their own academic biographies. Among the latter, one should point out the East German historian V/olfgang Ruge, who between 1,933-1956 fled Nazism ro rhe Soviet Union and also experienced the darkest sides of life under Stalinism in prison camps and
exile to remote areas.lz
disciplines which were unknown to the founding fathers of Marxism. Thus Marxist historians did not open themselves to the differentiating reception of personal and mass psychology. This led to â narrow perspective which was particularly harmful in the analysis of Fascism. These difficiencies are also to blame for the rather negligible contribution of Marxist research to our understanding of the Holocaust. The German Marxist Karl Korsch recognized in 1950, while in American exile, the inevitable failure of a canonized Marxist perspective:
It
is meaningless to ask whether the doctrine of Marx and Engels is still true and applicable... All attempts to restore the Marxist doctrine as a whole and in its original function as a theory of social revolution for the
Our cardinal mistake was that we perceived and represented reality under the distorting influence of a seductive theory. 'What was decades ago very promising and thus seemingly rrue appears today as hollow and lifeless. The creative forces of the October Revolution have destroyed themselves. Behind the successes of the Soviet order and its satellites (including the
working-class are reactionary utopias... For better or worse the important elements of the Marxist doctrine, with their changed function and in diffe-
GDR) Iurked unmistakable economic failure and a disregard for human
rent contexts are still influential today... And from the practical experiences
rights; the impetus of anti-Facism dried out; the hopes of 1.945 evaporated.l3
of the formerly Marxist working-class movement important impulses have merged into todayls struggles between peoples and classes.la
For those historians who want to remain loyal to Marxist historical thought, albeit in a critically reflective fashion, the following consequences emerge out of the failure of the Soviet model: the Marxist notion that the historical process toward socialism can be predicted and interpreted in a linear fashion, has to be abandoned. Marxist historians have contributed much to understanding societal developments in their historical contexts. The historical works of Isaac Deurscher, Eric Hobsbawm, Roy Medvedev, Arthur Rosenberg, 'lØalter Grab, Walter Markov, Albert Soboul, and Ernst Engelberg - to name but a few - will remain relevant for some time to come. These works are significant, not least because of the fact that their authors departed from the rigid demands of a canonized, anti-pluralistic Marxism-Leninism - albeit to different degrees. Most of the East German Marxist works suffered from a second defficiency: they were largely immune ro the insights and research from
12
Cf. Wolfgang Ruge's impressive autobiography Berlin-Moskau-Sosswa: gration (Bonn: Pahl-Rugenstein Nachf ., 2003).
202
Stat¡onen einer Emi-
What the communist'dissident Korsch concluded from this diagnosis of the emancipatory struggle of working people is important also on the Ievel of Marxist historical research: The first step to rebuilding a revolutionary theory and practice is to break
the monopoly of Marxism over revolutionary initiative as well as the theoretical and practical leadership.ls
Marx is now, according to Korsch, only one among many predecessors and thinkers within the socialist movement. Arthur Rosenberg, who
13
ldem, ,,Nachdenken über die Geschichtswissenschaft der DDR," Zeitschriff für Geschichtswis(1 993), No. 7, p. 584.
senschaft,Vol.Xll
14
Karl Korsch, ,,Zehn Thesen über Maxismus heute [1950]," Politische Terte, ed. by Erich Gerlach and Jürgen Seifert (Frankfurt-Main: Europäische Verlagsanstalt), 1974, p. 385.
15 lbid., p.386. 16 Arthur Rosenberg, ,,Was bleibt von Karl Max? 119401," Demokratie
und Klassenkanpf, p. 137.
203
also distanced himself from his previous illusions while being simultaneously attatched to the critical potential in Marxist thought and action, stated in 1939 what seems worth reflecting on even sixty years later. The present generation cannor find remedies and fulfilling prophecies in Marx's writings. However, he remains an example of how to reconsider
References
critically and to draw conclusions from the changes in society.l6
Translated by Axel Fair-Schulz. Karl. Marx: An Example of Anti-Semitism? Previously unpublished. A German version was first published ín: Berliner Dialog Hefte, Berlin, Vol. VII (1,997), No. 1, pp. 3-1.4. Translated by Axel Fair-Schulz. Friedricb Engels on Anti-Semitism. First published in. Science and Society, New York and London, Vol. LXII (1998), No. 1, pp.1,27-44. Translated by Ed Kovacs. The Russian Reuolution and the Jewish Workers' Mouement. First published in: International Politics, Dordrecht and Glasgow, Vol. XXXIII (1,996), No. 4, pp. 417-29. Reproduced with permission of Palgrave/
MacMillan. The Bund and the Labowr and Socialist International. Ftrst published in: Jack Jacobs (ed.), Jewish Politics in Eastern Ewrope: The Bwnd at I 00 (Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001 ), pp. 1,83-9 4. Reproduced with permission of Palgrave/MacMillan. ,,The Pbysical Extermination of the lews": Leon Trotsky on Arcti-Semitism and Zionism. Previously unpublished.
Arthur Rosenberg: Heretic Between the Camps. First published in: Socialism and D emocracy (www.sdonline.org], New York, Vol. XV (2001), No. 2, pp.1.29-50.
204
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The Resistance of Small Socialist Groups Against German Fascism (with Theodor Bergmann). Previously unpublished. The Souiet Style of Power: Some Notes on the SED. First published in: Russian History /Histoire russ e, Idyllwild, California, Vol. XXIX (2002),
Nos. 2-4, pp.31.7-27.
The Author
Anti-Semitism Against a Non-Jew: The Case of Paul Merker. First published in: Leslie Morris and Jack Zipes (eds.), Unlik"ely History: The Changing German-lewish Symbiosis, 1945-2000 (New York and Hound-
mills, Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002), pp. 1,41,-54. Reproduced with permission of Palgrave/MacMillan. Exile Experience in Scholarship and Politics: Re-immigration of Historians to East Germazy. Previously unpublished. A German version was published in: Mario Kessler, Exil wnd Nach-Exil: Vertriebene Intellektuelle im 20. lahrbundert (Hamburg: VSA, 2002), pp. 1,81,-97. Translated by David Schrag. The Fall of the Berlin Wall and the Radical Right in East Germany. Previously unpublished. A French version, translated from the English manuscript by Carmen Corçeu and Doina Lungu, was published in: Marc Angenot and Régine Robin (eds.), La chute du mwr de Berlin dans les idéologies (Montréal: Discours social, 2002), pp. 51.-62. Can Marxist Historical Thought Suruiue? Previously unpublished. A German version was published in: Krzysztof Glass and Zdislaw W. Pu-
slecki (eds.), Mittelewropäische Orientierwngen der neunziger Jahre (Vienna and Poznan: Humaniora,1999), pp.101-08. Translated by Axel Fair-Schulz.
Mario Kessler, b. 1955 in Jena, is Research Fellow at the Center for Contemporary Historical Research (Zentrurn für Zeitbistorische Forscbung) and Associate Professor of Modern History at the University "of Potsdam, Germany. His books include: Antisemitismus, Zionismus und Sozialismws: Internationale Arbeiterbewegung und jüdische Frage im 20. Jahrhundert (Mainz: Decaton, 1993); Zionismus und internationale Arbeiterbewegung 1897 bis L933 (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, L994); Die SED und die luden - zwischen Repression und Toleranz: Politiscbe Ennuicklungen bis 1967 (Berlin: Akademie-Vedag, 1,995); Heroische Illusion und Stalin-Terror: Beiträge zur Komrnunismus-Forschung (Hamburg: VSA, 1.999); Exilerfahrung in \Xl,issenschaft und Politiþ.: Remigrierte Historiþer in der frähen DDR (Cologne etc.: Böhlau, 2001,); Exil und Nacb-Exil: Vertriebene Intellektuelle im 20. labrhunderl (Hamburg: VSA, 2002); Arthur Rosenberg: Ein Historiþer im Zeitaher der Katastrophen (18891943) (CoIosne etc.: Böhlau, 2003); Ein Funþen Hoffnung: VerwicþlunAntisemitismus, Nahost, Stalinismus (Hamburg: VSA, 2004); Vom bùrgerlichen Zeitalter zur Globalisierung: Beiträge zur Geschicbte der Arbeiterbewegung (Berlin: trafo-verlag dr. wolfgang weist, 2005). gen
-
Among many other books he has co-edited Ketzer im Kommwnismus: 23 biographische Essays, 3'd ed. (Hamburg: VSA, 2003, with Theodor Bergmann) and Ausgrenzwng oder Integration? Ostdeutsche Sozialwis-
206
207
aftler zutisch en Isolierung und Selbstbehauptung (Berlin: traþverlag dr. wolfgang weist, 2004, with Stefan Bollinger and Ulrich van der Heyden).
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