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Revolution in Germany

p The victorious October Revolution in Russia and the first decrees of the Soviet Government, which were enthusiastically received by the German proletariat, contributed to the mounting revolutionary movement in Germany. The heavy defeat suffered by the German armies on the Western front in August 1918 hastened the advent of the imminent revolution. On November 3, soldiers and sailors raised a revolt at Kiel, and popular uprisings Were successful, in the course of the days that followed, in Hamburg, Bremen, Leipzig, Stuttgart and several other cities. On 114 November 9, a victorious revolutionary uprising in Berlin sent Kaiser Wilhelm II fleeing to Holland, leaving his family behind. The Hohenzollern empire had ceased to exist. A republic was proclaimed in Germany.

p In the wake of this German revolution, bourgeois-democratic by nature, came such measures as the nation-wide repeal of martial law, the announcement of democratic freedoms, an amnesty for political prisoners, and the introduction of an eight-hour working day. At the same time, however, the government which came to power on the crest of the revolution and which was headed by F. Ebert, a Right-wing Social-Democrat, was anxious to curtail the revolution as quickly as possible and prevent its further development. As a matter of fact the Ebert government continued to defend the interests of the German capitalists and Junkers, though using somewhat different methods than its predecessor. In pursuit of this policy it entered into a secret agreement with the reactionary military, made efforts to disarm revolutionary army units, used every opportunity to provoke workers’ squads to unauthorised action, arrested their leadeis—all this in order to exterminate the Spartacus Union, which stood at the helm of the revolution. The Berlin proletariat 115 retaliated, on January 5, 1919, with an armed uprising. Inadequately prepared, the uprising was ruthlessly crushed by the Ebert government, which sent troops and volunteer reactionary detachments against the workers. Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, leaders of the German working class, were killed in cold blood. The defeat failed to break the backbone of the proletariat, however; and the month of March saw a renewal of bitter fighting, jn which the proletariat was pitted against the counter-revolutionary government troops aided by reactionary volunteer detachments under the Social-Democratic leader "Bloody Dog" Noske. And once again the proletariat suffered a defeat.

p Following the Russian example, Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies had been set up in Germany in the early days of the revolution, but the majority of seats in these bodies belonged to the Social-Democrats, who were against further developing the revolution and its evolving into a socialist revolution. The German Communist Party had been organised only as late as December 1918, and the Communists were in a minority in the Soviets.

p In February 1919, the Constituent Assembly met at Weimar, with the majority representing the various bourgeois parties. It elected F. Ebert president of the republic and P. Scheidemann, also a Right-wing Social-Democrat, head of the government. A constitution was adopted, establishing a bourgeois-democratic regime in the country, and, before adjourning, the Social- Democrats had the Soviets proclaimed dissolved.

p In spite of all this, a series of important strikes occurred in Germany in the spring of 1919. This time the revolutionary movement began in Bavaria. On April 13, 1919, the workers of Munich, the Bavarian capital, seized the power and proclaimed a Soviet Republic. Immediately, however, the young republic found itself facing enemies from all quarters. A regular army of 100,000 was sent to crush the Soviet government of Bavaria. On May 1, it entered Munich—and turned the city into a shambles. That was the end of the Bavarian Soviet Republic.

p In the years that followed, bitter class encounters and mass movements continued in Germany. In March 1920, monarchist forces made a bid to restore the order that had existed under the Kaiser by launching a putsch under the leadership of General W. von Luttwitz and W. Kapp, a landowner. The workers retaliated with a general strike; and close co-operation and united action enabled them to make short work of the putsch. A year later, in March 1921, the whole of Central Germany became the arena of armed resistance, by way of an answer to the government’s Underhand tactics. Much heavier class battles, however, were to be fought in 1923. 116

p In January 1923, the French Government headed by R. Poincare ordered French troops into the Ruhr district. It sought further to weaken Germany and make her strictly observe the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. The bourgeois Cuno government then in power in Germany adopted a so-called "passive resistance" policy, involving a stoppage of coal-mining in the Ruhr, non- cooperation with the forces of occupation, etc.; and also providing for substantial government subsidies for the owners of idle enterprises. These measures had a disastrous effect on Germany’s economy. Inflation on an unprecedented scale set in: the mark declined in value, and the real wages of the workers shrank accordingly. The German people found themselves facing hardships and poverty far worse even than privations they had suffered during the war. By way of protest against the government’s policy the German working class organised mass demonstrations and strikes. The general strike that began in August 1923, led to the overthrow of the Cuno government. A new government was formed, also with Right-wing Social-Democratic participation, which repudiated the policy of passive resistance and began to look for some arrangement with the French which would leave it free to deal with the revolutionary movement.

By the autumn of 1923 Germany was ripe for a revolution. Workers’ governments with the participation of Left-wing 117 Social-Democrats and Communists had been set up by the middle of October in the Lands of Saxony and Thuringia. Here, as in some other German Lands, armed workers’ detachments known as "proletarian hundreds" had been organised. Favourable factors were thus present for initiating a struggle for an all-German workers’ government. However, the movement lacked a genuine leadership, for the men who headed the German Communist Party at the time were strongly tainted with opportunism. It was owing to them that the carefully planned armed uprisings in all parts of Germany were never carried out. Only the Communists of Hamburg, led by E. Thaelmann, rose in arms, on October 23, and for three days and nights 300 staunch revolutionaries fought against a force of soldiers and police 6,000 strong. When it became clear that the uprising would receive no support elsewhere in the country, Thaelmann ordered to cease fighting. This uprising is one of the finest chapters in the history of the German revolutionary movement. Once again, just as in 1918-19, the Right-wing Social-Democrats had helped the bourgeoisie to retain the power in their hands. From then on the forces of reaction were to intensify their activity. And Hitler was to become their mouthpiece.

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Hungarian Soviet Republic

p The bourgeois-democratic revolution in Hungary, which began towards the end of October 1918, quickly developed into a socialist revolution. In March 1919, an ultimatum of the Entente powers, designed to achieve a split of Hungary, produced a violent political crisis and caused the country’s bourgeois government to resign. The Social-Democratic leadership, faced with a growing revolutionary movement and fearing to assume alone the task of governing the country, approached the Communist leaders serving sentence in prison at the time with an offer to form a government jointly. Their offer was accepted. The Social-Democratic and Communist parties joined to form a single party, proclaimed the dictatorship of the proletariat and took over state power. On March 21, 1919, Hungary was proclaimed a Soviet Republic, and the new government, for all practical purposes, was headed by Bela Kun, the Hungarian Communist leader.

The proletarian revolution of March 1919 had been won peacefully, without recourse to an armed revolt. The government of the Soviet Republic initiated a series of measures along socialist lines, such as the nationalisation of industry, banks and transport, the introduction of an eight-hour working day, a 25 per cent raise of wages, the confiscation of lands belonging to the landed gentry and the church, etc. A Red Army was created to defend the gains of the revolution. In June, an All-Hungary Congress of Soviets was convened in Budapest, with Lenin elected Honorary Chairman, and the constitution of the Hungarian Soviet Republic was adopted.

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The imperialist powers, however, refused to put up with the existence of a socialist state in the middle of Europe, and French, Czechoslovak and Rumanian troops moved against the Hungarian Republic on orders of the Entente governments. Aided by the Hungarian counter-revolutionary forces under Horthy, they were able to defeat the Red Army. It must be said that the victory of the counter-revolution was facilitated in a measure by errors on the part of the republic’s government. Gravest among these errors were two: failure to purge the Social-Democratic Party of reformist elements after its union with the Communist Party, and incorporation of the lands confiscated from the church and the landed proprietors in state farms instead of their distribution among landless peasants and peasants with insignificant holdings. Both these errors had grave, though different, consequences for the republic. Whatever the case, on August 1, 1919, the Hungarian Soviet Republic fell, after a heroic resistance that lasted 133 days.

Mounting Revolutionary Movement in France

p The victory of the Socialist Revolution in Russia gave a powerful impetus to the revolutionary movement in France. In addition to their demands in the economic sphere, such as better working conditions, higher wage rates, an eight-hour working day, etc., the French workers waged a determined fight for the implementation of a definite political programme. The basic points of that programme were: immediate cessation of armed intervention in Soviet Russia; demobilisation of the armed forces; and amnesty for political prisoners. In the spring of 1919 red flags were hoisted on French warships in the Black Sea waters when the sailors raised a revolt, refusing to bear arms against the Soviet Republic, and the French headquarters were forced to withdraw the fleet from the Black Sea.

p Within France, too, workers, soldiers and sailors acted energetically in defence of the Soviet Republic. The May Day demonstration of 1919 in Paris, with more than half a million participants, developed into a huge anti-government demonstration. Strikes, meetings and demonstrations under the slogan "Hands Off Soviet Russia!" swept the country from end to end late in 1919 and in the early part of 1920. This movement, initiated by the French proletariat and actively supported by such leaders of the intelligentsia as H. Barbusse, R Rolland, A. France and others, was a decisive factor in forcing the French Government to refrain from further armed intervention in Soviet Russia. Moreover, the Clemenceau cabinet (1917-20) was forced 120 to meet some of the other demands presented by the workers: an eight-hour working day was enacted, wage raises were approved in respect of certain jobs, and trade unions were granted broader powers.

p The weak point of the French revolutionary movement of 1918-20 lay in the lack of an adequate revolutionary leadership. Left-wing groups had formed within the Socialist Party, but they were not sufficiently strong and failed to co-operate. It was already December 1920, when a majority of delegates to a Socialist Party Congress at Tours adopted at long last a resolution establishing the French Communist Party.

To divert the masses from the revolutionary movement, the French bourgeoisie launched a broad campaign to arouse nationalistic feeling, and made such good use of the victory over Germany that this soon developed into an orgy of chauvinism. A "national bloc" was formed, embracing all the range of bourgeois parties, from Right-wing to radical. In November 1919, this "national bloc" won the parliamentary elections.

Crisis of the Revolution
and Class Battles in Italy

p The years 1919 and 1920 were marked by an unexampled upsurge of the revolutionary movement in Italy. When the Italian bourgeoisie attempted to systematically scale down wages in order to make the workers pay for the war, they ran into determined opposition. Workers began to strike all over the country, in greater and greater numbers, until a record 2,200,000 were on strike in 1920. This revolutionary ferment spread into the rural districts. In the south of the country and in Sicily armed peasants began to seize and distribute among themselves the lands of the gentry. Farm labourers and tenant farmers joined the struggle against the exploiting classes by the tens of thousands.

p Surpassing in scope all other revolutionary action on the part of the Italian workers during that period was the seizure of industrial plants in August and September of 1920. For roughly three weeks practically all the important plants of Milan, Turin and other towns in the north of Italy were held by the workers. Red Guard units were formed in many towns. Under the protection of their own armed guard the workers themselves operated the plants they had seized.

As in the other European countries, the workers of Italy, while fighting for their rights and a better life, moved decisively in the defence of the world’s first workers’ and peasants’ state, that is, the Soviet Republic.

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p In the autumn of 1920, it seemed as if the Italian proletariat stood on the threshold of a socialist revolution. The government and the bourgeoisie were in a state of bewilderment. Yet, when the hour of decision struck the working class found themselves without a proper revolutionary leadership. Within the Socialist Party the majority decided to withdraw after delegating the functions of leadership to the reformist leaders in the General Confederation of Labour, who feared and disliked the idea of revolution and preferred to come to terms with the bourgeoisie.

The defeat of the working class opened the road for the fascist offensive. In October 1922, the fascists under the leadership of Mussolini seized the power. The sole effective force to challenge fascism was the Communist Party formed in January 1921, and led by A. Gramsci and P. Togliatti. The balance of power in this class struggle was not in its favour, however, and it was unable to prevent the establishment of a fascist dictatorship.

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“Hands Off Soviet
Russia!” Movement in Great Britain

p In Great Britain, too, the victory of the October Revolution and the successes achieved by the Russian workers and poor peasants in building a new society inspired the workers, when threatened with wage cuts and attempts at worsening their working conditions, to retaliate with strikes. Vigorously pressed, these were generally successful, and the number of strikers steadily increased.

p Characteristic of the action undertaken by British workers in 1919-20 was the fact that in the overwhelming majority of cases economic and political demands went hand in hand, the most important political demand being to stop armed intervention in Soviet Russia and accord it recognition. The movement of the British workers in defence of Soviet Russia reached a peak in the summer of 1920, at the time of the Entente powers’ third campaign. Some 400 "Hands off Soviet Russia!" committees were organised all over the country. They testified in no uncertain terms to the political maturity of the British proletariat and its determination to prevent the imperialist powers from crushing the world’s first workers’ and peasants’ state.

On August 9, 1920, an all-Britain workers’ conference presented the Lloyd George-Curzon cabinet then in office with a strongly worded demand for an immediate cessation of the intervention in Soviet Russia and the conclusion of peace with that country. That the British ruling circles were forced to give up the intervention and, later, to begin negotiations with the Soviet Government regarding the conclusion of a trade agreement, was largely the result of the mass movement of the British workers.

Growing Revolutionary
Movement in Other European Countries

In January 1918, a short-lived victory was won by the workers’ revolution in Finland, and a Finnish Workers’ Republic came into being. Although its existence ended only three months later, its significance for both the Finnish and international workers’ movements was very real. Finland had become the first country in the world, after Russia, where state power had passed into the hands of the people. In the course of 1918 and 1919 Soviet Republics emerged also in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, and it required the joint efforts of the counter-revolutionary forces within and from without to crush the Soviet Republics in these countries. The revolutionary slogans of the victorious 123 Russian proletariat were taken up by the workers of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Austria, Yugoslavia and Spain. All over the continent of Europe revolutionary battles were being fought, sparked by the Russian Revolution of October 1917, their form and scope determined by the national character and the level of political and economic development of the country concerned.

“Rice Riots" in Japan

p The impact of the proletarian revolution in Russia on the international liberation movement was by no means confined to the continent of Europe, however. It was just as powerful, if not more so, in Asia and Latin America. One of the first countries where the ideological influence of the October Revolution led to mass resistance against class oppression was Japan, where it came to be known as the "rice riots".

p The immediate cause of these revolts were a rice shortage in urban areas and sky-rocketing prices on rice. Production of rice in the country was practically at a standstill in spite of the increased requirements of the growing industrial population. The government, intent on protecting the interests of the landed gentry, refused to raise the customs duties on imported rice, which left the leading dealers free to systematically raise prices. Then, too, having embarked on intervention in Soviet Russia, the government was building up stocks of rice for its army of occupation. Speculators, quick to profit by the situation, began to hoard rice. In August 1918, when the limits of their endurance had been reached, townspeople began to sack the rice stores. The riots soon became nation-wide, and in sixty towns assumed proportions which made the authorities employ armed force to quell them.

p Initially a protest against the practices of merchants, the "rice riots”, in which something like ten million took part, soon developed into action directed against capitalists in urban areas and landed proprietors in the countryside. In the urban areas the struggle lasted a few days, the miners holding out longer than all others. The short duration of the riots was due to their spontaneous character and to lack of organisation among the workers. Although quickly put down, the riots increased class consciousness in the Japanese people. Sen Katayama called them the first class battle offered by the Japanese proletariat, which had sown panic among the country’s exploiting classes.

The years that followed saw Japan become the arena of numerous strikes with the participation of hundreds of thousands of workers. Trade unions began to be organised in all 124 industries. The 1920 May Day demonstration in Tokyo was the first in the nation’s history. These developments were evidence of a growing class consciousness of the Japanese proletariat. Meanwhile widespread organisational activity, directed towards forming a Japanese Communist Party, was being carried on simultaneously in Japan and by a rather numerous group of Japanese socialist emigres in the United States. Sen Katayama, then in the United States, succeeded in bringing together a circle, which was later reorganised into a Japanese socialist group. This group established contact with progressive workers and members of the intelligentsia connected with the Japanese labour movement. Prominent among the revolutionaries active in Japan was Masanosuke Watanabe, whose efforts were directed towards achieving unity in the working class. On July 15, 1922, an illegal congress of various Marxist groups proclaimed the formation of the Communist Party. Right away it came under heavy assault by the forces of reaction, fearful of the spread of communist ideas.

October Revolution and the USA

p Before long, revolutionary ideas crossed the Atlantic into the United States, citadel of world capitalism, whose ruling circles had made a fortune out of the war and were now bent on strengthening their influence in the post-war world. Right after the October Revolution in Russia and in the early 1920s, the reactionary domestic and foreign policies followed by the ruling classes provoked the American workers to diverse and powerful mass action, aimed, among other things, at stopping American intervention in the Soviet Union. Thus, dockers in the seaports refused to load arms and ammunition destined for the interventionist and whiteguard forces. The Society of Friends of Soviet Russia which was formed in the summer of 1919, launched a vigorous campaign to halt the American intervention in Soviet Russia and to normalise American-Russian relations.

p With the world war over, the capitalists attempted to launch an offensive against the proletariat. The workers retaliated by increasing the scope of the strike movement and demanding an eight-hour working day, higher wages, and collective agreements. More than 4,000,000 were on strike in 1919. Never before, in the history of the United States, had the strike movement assumed such proportions. The strike in the steel industry, involving over 350,000 workers and lasting a hundred days, became the outstanding event of that period. It was led by W. Foster, one of the militant leaders of the American working class and later chairman of the Communist Party of the United States. Although 125 the strikers did get some of their demands accepted, the strike could have been much more successful if the American working class had had a consistently revolutionary leadership, instead of following the mercenary trade union leaders who rejected socialism and acted in collusion with the employers.

The class battles fought in 1919 in the United States contributed towards creating conditions essential for the formation of a Communist Party. However, the development of the Left-wing forces within the American workers’ movement followed a line peculiarly its own, and this led to the simultaneous formation of two parties, each of which proclaimed itself a Communist Party. One had a membership of predominantly foreign extraction. It was headed by Charles E. Ruthenberg, and it was inclined to stress the theoretic element. The other drew its membership chiefly from among those associated with the workers’ movement, and was headed by John Reed, the journalist, author of Ten Days That Shook the World.  [125•1  There were no differences in the two parties in respect of their programme, their fusion followed in 1921; for the communist vanguard could not afford to scatter its forces when it had to face the unbridled assault upon the progressive movement, loosed by the American ruling classes in their fear of the mounting revolutionary movement the world over. Even the Democratic Party  [125•2  seemed to the reactionary elements insufficiently reliable, and in 1920 it was forced to yield to the Republicans, who remained in power until 1932.

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Creation of the Communist International

p We have already seen that Communist Parties came into being in many countries as the class battles developed, as, for instance, in Austria, Hungary, Poland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Argentina, in the course of 1918. In other countries, such as Britain, France and the United States, the groundwork was being laid preparatory to organising Communist Parties.

p Ideologically and organisationally, however, the Communist Parties of the Western countries, founded, as they had been, by Left-wing elements originating in the Social-Democratic parties and trade unions, were extremely weak and wanting a steadily functioning system of communication among themselves. Moreover, serious errors were no exception in the practical activities of their leaders; chiefly of a sectarian nature, such errors were adroitly used by the anti-revolutionaries in the interests of crushing the revolutionary movement.

p Such were the circumstances that made the formation of an international Communist organisation, that is, the Third, Communist International, a matter of urgent necessity. Indeed, no socialist revolutions could hope to win without genuinely revolutionary parties like that of the Bolsheviks, ideologically and politically based solely on Marxist-Leninist theory. Nor could victory be won, in the circumstances prevailing at the time, unless these parties were welded into a single international communist organisation.

p Driven by their fear of the widespread revolutionary movement in the West, the Right-wing leaders of the Social-Democratic parties hastened to revitalise, in February 1919, the Second International, which had shown itself to be a complete bankrupt and had disintegrated in 1914. This was an effort to obstruct the formation of the Communist International. It failed to accomplish its purpose, however. On Lenin’s initiative, the representatives of the Communist Parties and Left-wing socialist groups of thirty countries of Europe, Asia and America assembled in Moscow on March 2, 1919. On March 4 the congress proclaimed the founding of the Communist International, which would serve as a centre of the international communist movement. The congress also elected an Executive Committee as the International’s permanent steering body. The foundation of the Comintern (as the Communist International came to be known) was a historical event of world-wide significance, a significance which lay, above all, in the fact that this was an international revolutionary proletarian organisation of a new type.

Unlike the Second International, the Comintern acted from the very first as a genuinely international association of the 127 proletariat of all the races of mankind throughout the world. Even its first congress included not only the representatives of the advanced states of Europe and America, but also those of such countries as Iran, China, Korea, Turkey, etc. The Third International openly proclaimed, on behalf of the revolutionary forces the world over, victory of socialism and communism to be the ultimate aim of the world workers’ movement and the dictatorship of the proletariat to be the means of achieving that victory.

Results of the Revolutionary
Battles of 1917-1923

p Never before had the world witnessed such bitter class battles as during the period of 1917-23. Nevertheless, toward the close of 1923 it had become evident that the revolutionary wave had begun to recede, that the determined struggle waged by the proletariat and its allies against the imperialist bourgeoisie and those who supported it, a struggle that had been shaking the world for the last five-six years, was now on the wane.

p The revolutionary upsurge in the lands of the East and West had shown itself insufficiently strong to break the dominance of imperialism. In a number of European countries (such as Germany, Hungary, Finland, etc.) the working class had been able to seize the power, but unable to hold it: the balance of power had 128 been obviously with the European and American bourgeoisie in its united opposition to the revolutionary proletariat. Another important reason why the proletariat was defeated lay in the substantial aid received by the bourgeoisie, in its fight to save the capitalist system, from the Right-wing leaders of the various Social-Democratic parties and reformist trade unions, whose influence with the masses was still quite considerable. No less harmful to the cause of the working class was the fact that no Communist Parties were yet in existence when the revolutionary movement began in the West: they were founded and began to gather strength in some of the bigger countries only when the tide of the revolution was already obviously on the ebb.

p The imperialist bourgeoisie had beaten back the attacks launched by the revolutionary forces, suppressed the Soviet Republics in Bavaria and Hungary, and retained its control over five-sixths of the world’s surface. But that same imperialist bourgeoisie had shown itself insufficiently strong to win a victory over the world’s first socialist state: neither the military crusade of fourteen states, nor the blockade, nor the plotting of foreign governments had been able to crush the Soviet Republic. Supported by the proletariat and the oppressed peoples of the capitalist world, the Soviet people had repelled all the attacks of the imperialist bourgeoisie. Thus, socialism had won control over one-sixth of the world’s surface.

The world remained split between two opposite social systems. The struggle between them now approached its next phase.