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1923 (II): A Missed Revolution?

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A Political Biography of Arkadij Maslow, 1891-1941

Part of the book series: Critical Political Theory and Radical Practice ((CPTRP))

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Abstract

In Saxony and Thuringia the KPD joined the left-wing governments led by the SPD while Gregory Zinoviev, chair of the Communist International (Comintern), helped Ruth Fischer to become a member of the KPD Party Executive. They harbored similar views and the Russian party sent emissaries to Germany and set the date of the uprising for November 7. The end of German inflation and French-Belgian occupation of the Ruhr region, however, undermined the revolutionary mood. Workers’ governments in Saxony and Thuringia were dissolved by German president Friedrich Ebert and the KPD chair, Brandler, called off all plans for an uprising. Unfortunately, however, his decision did not reach Hamburg in time. A communist insurrection had been organized but, in the confusion, it remained isolated and it was quickly put down. The KPD was then outlawed, a ban that lasted until March 1924.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    William Guttman and Patricia Meehan, The Great Inflation: Germany 1919–23 (Farnborough: Saxon House, 1975), p. 31. People developed a series of initiatives: In Krefeld, an industrial town at the Lower Rhine area, the unemployed paid only two thirds of the marked price for all goods. In Essen workers “impounded a stock of potatoes earmarked for export abroad and distributed it among the people.” Gilbert Badia, Histoire de l’Allemagne contemporaine (1917–1962), Vol. 1 (Paris: Editions sociales, 1962), p. 196.

  2. 2.

    See Jean-Claude Favez, Le Reich devant l’occupation franco-belge de la Ruhr en 1923 (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1969), pp. 291–295; Chris Harman, The Lost Revolution: Germany 1918 to 1923 (London, New York, and Sydney: Bookmarks, 1997), pp. 262–264.

  3. 3.

    Speech by Ruth Fischer on July 25, quoted in: RF, July 29, 1923; also in: Ben Fowkes, Communism in Germany Under the Weimar Republic (London: Macmillan, 1984), p. 97.

  4. 4.

    See ibid.

  5. 5.

    RGASPI, Fund 495, Inventory 292, File 4, p. 224: Paul Böttcher to the KPD Zentrale, letter of June 28, 1923.

  6. 6.

    See ibid., Fund 495, Inventory 18, File 175a, p. 219: ECCI Presidium to KPD Zentrale and Zentralausschuss, letter of July 18, 1923.

  7. 7.

    This was also a reaction by the Right to allegations made against the KPD because of its alleged inactivity. See Badia, Histoire de l’Allemagne contemporaine (1917–1962), Vol. 1, p. 197.

  8. 8.

    See Jean François Fayet, Karl Radek (1885–1939): Biographie politique (Bern: Peter Lang, 2004), p. 468.

  9. 9.

    SAPMO-BArch, RY 5/I 6/3/93, pp. 91–92: German Section at the ECCI, Radek to Brandler, letter of August 7, 1923.

  10. 10.

    To my knowledge, no comprehensive biography of Zinoviev has been published to date. The most extensive study (64 pp.), N. A. Vasetsky’s, G. E. Zino’ev: stranitsy politicheskoi biografii [G. E. Zinoviev: Pages of a Political Biography] (Moscow: Znanie, 1989), still lacks a lot of information. A even shorter account on Zinoviev in German can be found in: „Unpersonen“: Wer waren sie wirklich? Bucharin, Rykow, Trotzki, Sinowjew, Kamenew (Berlin: Dietz, 1990), pp. 138–179 (chapter author: N. A. Vasetsky).

  11. 11.

    See SAPMO-BArch, RY 1/I/2/3/208, pp. 458–459: Heinrich Brandler to ECCI, letter of August 8, 1923. See also Jens Becker, Heinrich Brandler: Eine politische Biographie (Hamburg: VSA, 2001), p. 216.

  12. 12.

    See Fischer, Stalin and German Communism, p. 323.

  13. 13.

    SAPMO-BArch, RY 1/I 2/3/3, pp. 227–228: Polburo Session, August 10, 1923.

  14. 14.

    An English resident in Germany noted in his diary “that the shops are plundered and Bolshevism is gaining recruits every day.” Guttman and Mehan, The Great Inflation, p. 75.

  15. 15.

    See SAPMO-BArch, RY 1/I 2/3/3, pp. 223–224, 231–234. See also Fischer, Stalin and German Communism, p. 308; Edward Hallett Carr, The Interregnum, 1923–1924 (London: Macmillan, 1954), pp. 201–226; Karsten Rudolph, “Das Scheitern des Kommunismus im deutschen Oktober 1923,” Internationale wissenschaftliche Korrespondenz zur Geschichte der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung, Vol. 32 (1996), pp. 484–519; Harald Jentsch, Die KPD und der “Deutsche Oktober” 1923, (Rostock: Verlag Ingo Koch, 2005), pp. 130–132; Pierre Broué, Histoire de l’Internationale communiste 1919–1943 (Paris: Fayard, 1997), pp. 319–320; Fayet, Karl Radek, pp. 467–468. Fowkes notes correctly: “The general strike of mid-August was in fact the high point of the mass movement in Germany.” Fowkes, Communism in Germany, p. 99.

  16. 16.

    See SAPMO-BArch, RY 1/I 2/3/3, pp. 231–238: KPD, Polburo Sessions, August 14, 17 and 21, 1923; Protocol of the Zentrale Session, August 24, 1923. The peaceful solution of the Ruhr crisis ended with a revision of the Dawes Plan in 1924 that substantially lowered German reparation payments. During and after the crisis the army preserved the cohesion of the Reich and reinforced its own position within the state while the KPD was now considered a destructive force, even among many workers. The KPD rejected the Dawes Plan and was supported by both the French and British Communist Parties. For the historical background see in detail Favez, Le Reich devant l’occupation franco-belge, pp. 341–359; and Conan Fischer, The Ruhr Crisis, 1923–1924 (Oxford and London: Oxford University Press, 2003), ch. 10: From the Micum Agreements to the Dawes Plan.

  17. 17.

    See L. G. Babichenko, “Politbiuro CK PKP(B) i sobytiia v Germanii b 1923 g.: Novye arkhivnye materialy [The Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP(B) and the Events in Germany in 1923: New Archival Material],” Novaia i noveishaia istoriia [Modern and Contemporary History], Vol. 38 (1994), No. 2, pp. 130–132, also for the following paragraph. On the formation of the Proletarian Hundreds, see Helmut Gast, “Die Proletarischen Hundertschaften als Organe der Einheitsfront im Jahre 1923,” Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft, Vol. 4 (1956), No. 3, pp. 439–465; and James M. Diehl, Paramilitary Politics in Weimar Germany (Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, 1977), pp. 133–136.

  18. 18.

    See Gleb Albert, “‘German October Is Approaching’: Internationalism, Activists, and the Soviet State in 1923,” Revolutionary Russia, Vol. 24 (2011), No. 2, pp. 113–120.

  19. 19.

    See Trotsky’s letter to Zinoviev, Kamenev, Stalin and Tomsky, August 22, 1923, in: Bernhard H. Bayerlein and Hermann Weber (eds.), Deutscher Oktober 1923: Ein Revolutionsplan und sein Scheitern (Berlin: Aufbau Verlag, 2003), pp. 129–130.

  20. 20.

    RGASPI, Fund 495, Inventory 292, File 4, p. 231: Edwin Hoernle to Heinrich Brandler, letter of July 2, 1923.

  21. 21.

    The poem, signed by “Mally Resso” (obviously a pseudonym) called for an immediate uprising and exclaimed that “the hour of the final struggle” is near. See RF, August 16, 1923.

  22. 22.

    See ibid., August 19, 21, 22, 1923. See also Werner T. Angress, Stillborn Revolution: The Communist Bid for Power in Germany, 1921–1923 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963), p. 409.

  23. 23.

    An arrest warrant had already been issued against Ruth Fischer in July but was not executed because she was already on her way to Moscow. It was dropped after her return. See ibid., pp. 409–410.

  24. 24.

    Fridrikh I. Firsov, “Ein Oktober, der nicht stattfand: Die Revolutionären Pläne der RKP(B) und die Komintern,” Bayerlein and Weber (eds.), Deutscher Oktober 1923, p. 40. As a follower of Trotsky Radek saw the possibility to strenghten Trotsky’s and his own position vis-à-vis Zinoviev and Stalin. See Fayet, Karl Radek, p. 471. The decision to carry out the insurrection is published in German in: Lew Besymenski, Stalin und Hitler: Das Pokerspiel der Diktatoren, 2nd ed. (Berlin: Aufbau, 2003), p. 37.

  25. 25.

    See Firsov, “Ein Oktober, der nicht stattfand,” pp. 40–41. The International Relations’ Department of the Comintern (Otdel’ Mezhdunarodnoj Svyazei or OMS) formally belonged to the Organizational Department of the Comintern but was actually directed by the Soviet members of the ECCI. Officially its existence was kept secret. See G. M. Adibekov et al., Organizatsionnaia struktura Kominterna [The Organizational Structure of the Comintern] (Moscow: Rosspen, 1997), p. 49.

  26. 26.

    See Babichenko, “Politbiuro CK PKP(B) […],” p. 129; Besymenski, Stalin und Hitler, pp. 36–37.

  27. 27.

    His recent biographer writes that Stalin was aware of the risks to be caught in Zinoviev’s “delirious plot” to instigate a “German October”. Stephen Kotkin, Stalin, Vol. 1: Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928 (London: Penguin Books, 2014), p. 473.

  28. 28.

    RGASPI, Fonds, 17, Bestand 2, Akte 317, p. 122: Stalin to Zinoviev, letter of August 7, as quoted in: Bayerlein and Weber (eds.), Deutscher Oktober 1923, pp. 99–100. Passages of the letter were first cited in: August Thalheimer, 1923: Eine verpasste Revolution? (Berlin: Junius-Verlag, 1931), p. 31. English translation by Mike Jones in: https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/revhist/supplem/thalheim.htm.

  29. 29.

    See Pierre Broué, Trotzki: Eine politische Biographie. Translated by Nicole M. Kaufmann et al., Vol. 1 (Cologne: ISP, 2003), p. 402.

  30. 30.

    Heinrich Brandler to the ECCI, letter of August 28, 1923, as quoted in: Weber and Bayerlein (eds.), Deutscher Oktober 1923, pp. 135–136.

  31. 31.

    See Jentsch, Die KPD und der “Deutsche Oktober”, pp. 141–142.

  32. 32.

    See Fayet, Karl Radek, p. 471; Bernd Kaufmann et al., Der Nachrichtendienst der KPD 1919–1937 (Berlin: Dietz, 1993), p. 77.

  33. 33.

    Kotkin, Stalin, p. 514.

  34. 34.

    See Kaufmann et al., Der Nachrichtendienst der KPD, pp. 77–78; Broué, Histoire de l’Internationale communiste, p. 328; and Schröder, Internationalismus nach dem Krieg, pp. 386–387.

  35. 35.

    SAPMO-BArch, RY 1/I 2/3/3, pp. 247–248: Polburo Session, September 11, 1923. Fischer’s and Maslow’s intransigence found support among rank-and-file members after the Saxon police murdered six workers after a demonstration in Leipzig. See Becker, Heinrich Brandler, pp. 208–209.

  36. 36.

    See SAPMO-BArch, RY 1/I 2/3/3, pp. 224–226.

  37. 37.

    See ibid., pp. 248–249.

  38. 38.

    See Babichenko, “Politbiuro CK PKP(B) […],” p. 131. In the beginning of October clashes broke out between workers and the police in several cities and towns. These protests were brutally suppressed by the police: In Aachen eight people died, in Essen and Hamburg three each. See Badia, Histoire de l’Allemagne contemporaine, Vol. 1, p. 199. This brutal repression showed that the ruling apparatus was now on the offensive.

  39. 39.

    See Firsov, “Ein Oktober, der nicht stattfand,” p. 42. A secret conference with representatives from Gemany, France and Czechoslovakia confirmed the decision. There, Heinrich Brandler emphasized that, in contrast to former views, he now saw the revolution as imminent. See ibid., p. 43, with reference to: RGASPI, Fund 495, Inventory 19, File 68. On Brandler’s statement that was also published in Moscow’s Pravda on September 23, 1923, see Babichenko, “Politbiuro CK PKP(B) […],” p. 132, Footnote 32.

  40. 40.

    See SAPMO-BArch, RY 1/I 2/3/203, Bl. 190–212. See also Becker, Heinrich Brandler, pp. 223–227.

  41. 41.

    Some of the measures were taken by the Soviet Politburo in Trotsky’s absence which led to increasing tensions between him and Zinoviev (as well as Stalin). See Kotkin, Stalin, pp. 516–517.

  42. 42.

    See Albert, “German October Is Approaching”, pp. 111–142.

  43. 43.

    See Babichenko, “Politbiuro CK PKP(B) […],” p. 133; Kotkin, Stalin, p. 516.

  44. 44.

    On October 1, the Russian Politburo had signaled its support for this step. See Firsov, “Ein Oktober, der nicht stattfand,” p. 47.

  45. 45.

    Zetkin had supported the project of a workers’ government from the beginning. See Clara Zetkin, “Die Arbeiterregierung,” Die Kommunistische Fraueninternationale, Vol. 2 (1922), Nos. 7/8, as quoted from: Idem, Zur Theorie und Taktik der kommunistischen Bewegung, ed. by Katja Haferkorn and Heinz Karl (Leipzig: Reclam, 1974), p. 153. GDR editors could not refrain from the critical remark that a workers’ government could not operate as a Socialist government “within the framework of the bourgeois state” and criticized Zetkin, otherwise portrayed as a Communist icon, for her position. Haferkorn and Karl took over a passage by Ruth Fischer almost verbatim without, of course, referring to her. See Ruth Fischer, “Der 5. Weltkongress,” Der Funke, ed. by Bezirksleitung [of the KPD] Berlin-Brandenburg, May 12, 1924. Fischer had criticized Brandler for “promoting a labor policy within the framework of bourgeois democracy by the means of the bourgeois state.”

  46. 46.

    The majority of the Saxon MPs of the SPD would have preferred a coalition with the Democratic Party, but Prime Minister Erich Zeigner was able to persuade them to yield to the pressure of the party base. See William Carl Mathews, “The Rise and Fall of Red Saxony,” David E. Barclay and Eric D. Weitz (ed.), German Socialism and Communism from 1840 to 1990 (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 1998), pp. 300. See also Becker, Heinrich Brandler, pp. 228–229. Paul Böttcher and Fritz Heckert were appointed as Ministers of Finances and of Economic Affairs. Both were supporters of Brandler. In Thuringia Karl Korsch was appointed Minister of Justice.

  47. 47.

    Fischer, Stalin and German Communism, p. 333.

  48. 48.

    See S. William Halperin, Germany Tried Democracy: A Political History of the Reich from 1918 to 1933 (New York: Thomas Y. Cromwell Company, 1946), p. 275.

  49. 49.

    See Donald W. Bryce, “The Reich Government Versus Saxony, 1923: The Decision to Intervene,” Central European History, Vol. 10 (1977), No. 2, pp. 112–147; Hans-Joachim Krusch, Linksregierungen im Visier: Reichsexekutive 1923 (Schkeuditz: GNN, 1998). In cooperation with the Minister of Defense, Otto Gessler, Chancellor Stresemann arranged for the Reichswehr to invade Saxony and Thuringia. He “deliberately destroyed” the pioneering political experiment. Karl Heinrich Pohl, Gustav Stresemann: The Crossover Artist. Translated by Christine Brocks and Patricia C. Sutcliffe (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2019), p. 203. The original German edition, Gustav Stresemann: Biographie eines Grenzgängers, was published in 2015.

  50. 50.

    Bayerlein and Weber (eds.), Deutscher Oktober 1923, p. 359. For the Chemnitz conference see Becker, Heinrich Brandler, pp. 234–236; Pierre Broué, German Revolution, pp. 805–809. Radek, who arrived in Dresden the next day, supported Brandler’s decision. See Firsov, “Ein Oktober, der nicht stattfand,” p. 50; Harman, The Lost Revolution, p. 288.

  51. 51.

    See in detail Harald Jentsch, Die KPD und der “Deutsche Oktober” 1923, pp. 237–269. The best but now dated overview in English can be found in Richard A. Comfort, Revolutionary Hamburg: Labor Politics in the Early Weimar Republic (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1966), esp., pp. 125–128. See also Angelika Voss, “Der Hamburger Aufstand vom Oktober 1923,” Idem et al., Vom Hamburger Aufstand zur politischen Isolierung: Kommunistische Politik 1923–1933 in Hamburg und im Deutschen Reich (Hamburg: Landeszentrale für politische Bildung, 1983), pp. 9–54; and the detailed but partly biased study by Joachim Paschen, Wenn Hamburg brennt, brennt die Welt: Der kommunistische Griff nach der Macht im Oktober 1923 (Frankfurt-Main: Peter Lang, 2010).

  52. 52.

    On the cooperation between the Reichswehr and the Red Army see, based on hitherto enclosed archival material Olaf Groehler, Selbstmörderische Allianz: Deutsch-russische Militärbeziehungen 1920–1941 (Berlin: Vision-Verlag, 1992), pp. 11–64; Alexander M. Nekrich, Pariahs, Partners, Predators: German–Soviet Relations, 1922–1941 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997).

  53. 53.

    Trotsky saw the situation in Germany and the politics of the KPD as “a classic demonstration of how it is possible to miss a perfectly exceptional revolutionary situation of world-historic importance.” Leon Trotsky, “The Lessons of October,” Idem, The Challenge of the Left Opposition, 1923–25, ed. with an introduction by Naomi Allen (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1975), p. 201. See also Peter Schwarz, “The German October: The Missed Revolution of 1923,” 3 Parts, wsws.org.

    In his The Revolution Betrayed, Trotsky wrote in 1936: “The panicky retreat of the German Communist Party was the heaviest possible disappointment to the working masses of the Soviet Union. The Soviet bureaucracy straight away opened a campaign against the theory of ‘permanent revolution’ and dealt the Left Opposition its first cruel blow.” Leon Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed: What Is the Soviet Union and Where Is It Going? (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1977), p. 91.

  54. 54.

    C. L. R. James, World Revolution 1917–36: The Rise and Fall of the Communist International (London, Secker and Warburg, 1937), p. 176. See also the discussion in: Graham Milner, “The German Communist Party and the Crisis of 1923,” Links: International Journal of Socialist Renewal [no date of publication given], http://links.org.au/node/2064.

  55. 55.

    Broué, The German Revolution, p. 899. The different opinions are concisely discussed in: Yusuf Timms, “The KPD and the Crisis of World Revolution,” International Socialism, No. 140 (Autumn 2013), http://isj.org.uk/the-kpd-and-the-crisis-of-world-revolution/.

  56. 56.

    Arthur Rosenberg, A History of the German Republic. Translated by Ian D. F. Morrow and L. Marie Sieveking (New York: Russell & Russell, 1965), p. 192.

  57. 57.

    Franz Borkenau, World Communism: A History of the Communist International (London: Faber & Faber, 1938), new ed., introduced by Raymond Aron (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press), 1962, p. 247.

  58. 58.

    Ossip K. Flechtheim, Die KPD in der Weimarer Republik (Frankfurt a. M.: E.V.A., 1976), p. 71. The first edition of this path-breaking study was published in 1948.

  59. 59.

    “Nothing ever embittered the German people so much,” wrote Stefan Zweig, “nothing made them so furious with hate and so ripe for Hitler as the inflation”; and this was particularly true for the middle class. Stefan Zweig, The World of Yesterday: An Autobiography. Translated by Anthea Bell, ed. by Harry Zohn (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1964), p. 315.

  60. 60.

    See August Thalheimer, 1923: Eine verpasste Revolution? (Berlin: Junius-Verlag, 1931), p. 28. An English translation by Mike Jones can be found under: https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/revhist/supplem/thalheim.htm—Hermann Weber wrote, that “the year 1923 showed a steadily growing influence of the KPD, which probably had the majority of socialist-oriented workers behind it,” but among the non-proletarian working classes the KPD could not gain the necessary influence. Hermann Weber, Die Wandlung des deutschen Kommunismus: Die Stalinisierung der KPD, Vol. 1 (Frankfurt-Main: E.V.A., 1969), p. 43.

  61. 61.

    August Thalheimer, “The Struggle for the United Front in Germany, 1920–23,” Translated by Mike Jones, Revolutionary History, Vol. 5 (1994), No. 2, p. 88 (The original pamphlet Wie schafft die Arbeiterklasse die Einheitsfront gegen den Faschismus? was published in 1932).

  62. 62.

    Angress, Stillborn Revolution, p. 288.

  63. 63.

    Victor Serge, Witness to the German Revolution: Writings form Germany 1923. Translated by Ian Birchall (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2011), p. 21.

  64. 64.

    Ibid., p. 282.

  65. 65.

    Larissa Reissner, Hamburg at the Barricades and Other Writings on Weimar Germany. Translated by Richard Chappell (London: Pluto Press, 1977), here quoted from the online edition: https://www.marxists.org/subject/women/authors/reissner/works/hamburg/ch01.htm.

  66. 66.

    Clara Zetkin to Zinoviev, letter of October 27, 1923, in: RGASPI, Fund 528, Inventory 2, File 1, as quoted from: Fayet, Karl Radek, p. 477.

  67. 67.

    Julius Braunthal, History of the International 1914–1943. Translated by Henry Collins and Kenneth Mitchell, Vol. 2: 1914–1943 (New York: Praeger, 1967), p. 275.

  68. 68.

    Larry Peterson, German Communism, Workers’ Protest, and Labor Unions: The Politics of the United Front in Rhineland-Westphalia 1920–1924 (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1993), p. 214.

  69. 69.

    Harman, The Lost Revolution, p. 294.

  70. 70.

    Eberhard Kolb, The Weimar Republic. Translated by P. S. Falla (London and Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1988), p. 3.

  71. 71.

    SAPMO-BArch, RY 1/I 2/2/15, p. 273: Zentrale session, October 24, 1923. Victor Serge criticized the ultra-left for its adventurism: “A Communist uprising crushed in Germany by the military dictatorship and the fascist bands would, it seems to me, have provided the German bourgeoisie with a sense of security and victory which it is far from having at present.” Serge, Witness to the German Revolution, p. 287.

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Kessler, M. (2020). 1923 (II): A Missed Revolution?. In: A Political Biography of Arkadij Maslow, 1891-1941. Critical Political Theory and Radical Practice. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43257-7_7

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