Reihe Hochschulschriften

Band 9

Mario Kessler

On Anti-Semitism and Socialism

, Selected Essays

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Mario Kessler

,,On Anti-Semitism and Socialism'

Selected EssaYs"

ISBN 3-896 26-284-X t " --" '

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Preface

Karl Marx: An Example of Anti-Semitism?

Friedrich Engels on Anti-Semitism

The Russian Revolution and the Jewish Workers'

Movement

The Bund and the Labour and Socialist International

,,The Physical Extermination of the Jews": Leon Trotsky

on Anti-Semitism and Zionism

Arthur Rosenberg: Heretic Between the Camps

The Resistance of Small Socialist Groups Against

German Fascism

The Soviet Style of Power: Some Notes on the SED

Anti-Semitism Against a Non-Jew: The Case ofPaul Merker, 1.9 52-19 53

Exile Experience in Scholarship and Politics i

Re-immigration of Historians to East Germany

The Fall of the Berlin'Süall and the Radical Right inEast Germany

Table of Contents

i : i'i ,1.

"-^,|t'.I':

.1 l

1Ii.: I

J

27

47

65

79

91,

1,1,7

135

149

1,67

183

5

Can Marxist Historical Thought Survive?

References

The Author

1.95

205

207This collection of twelve essay deals with problems of historical re-

search 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 investi-

gate aspects of the changing relations between workers' emancipation

and the strugglê against anti-Semitism from the time of the Communist

Manifesto to the fall of the Berlin '!Øall. This book, however, does not

contribute to the tremendous number of contemporary writings that

celebrate the defeat of socialism, a Zeitgeist literature which still dom-

inates official culture and politics in the advanced 'lflestern countries.

Eight of the essays were originally written in English, while four were

translated by colleagues, and I am greatly indebted to Dr. Axel Fair-

Schulz, 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 politi-

cal tradition that has been largely ignored by both orthodox commu-

nists and orthodox anti-communists: i.e., an independent radical demo-

cratic view based on moral integrity and a spontaneous internationalism

as an antipode to both nationalism and anti-Semitism. The uncompro-

mising radical spirit of such communist 'heretic' intellectuals as Leon

Trotsky and Arthur Rosenberg, for example, took shape within the con-

text of the political struggles of the workers' movement. At the same

time, the political errors committed by Trotsky and Rosenberg that

7

Preface

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

was followed by the concenrrarion of power in the hands of a few priv-

ileged members of the party bureaucracy that became increasingly au-

tonomous over time. This was accompanied by the expansion of a state

security service that sought to replace voluntary submission with abso-

lute obedience. Repressive measures were extended to those who repre-

sented the internationalist spirit of the past. The Soviet-initiated cam-

paigns against 'cosmopolitanism' affected Jews as well as non-Jewish

re-immigrants from the west to a much larger extent than other seg-

ments of the population or party membership'

Current political problems may have pushed some of these ques-

tions into the background. It is nevertheless helpful to place contempo-

rary evenrs within a broader historical perspective. Sixty years after

the organized annihilation of the Jews in Europe, anti-Semitism is on

the rise again in many parts of the world; the political situation in the

Middle East is unresolved; the number of refugees is greater than ever

before; and viable socialist alternatives have yet to emerge' This col-

lection of essays does not claim to offet a solution for these problems'

Its aim, rather, is to point out that the search for answers should begin

with reexamining the rich legacy of a workets' movement that can

finally be discussed on irs own terms, rather than in the distorted form

of a repressive state ideologY.

MythanksareduetothepublishersandeditorsofBerlinerDialogHefte, Discours social, Hwmaniora Publishers, International Politics,

palgraue/st. Martin's Press, science ønd society, socialism and De-

mocracy, and VSA.

Potsdam and Berlin, August 2005

Mario Kessler

An Example of Anti-Semitism?

In the introduction to the new German edition of his early works, Her-

bert Marcuse wrote in 1,965, that all ,,wâs written prior to Auschwitzand 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

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

into a socialist society.2

Elsewhere, Deutscher wrote that in early Marxist writings ,,there was

even an undercurrent of certain hostility towards the Jews, not as Jews,

'I Herbert Marcuse, Kultur und Gesellschaft l(Frankfurt-Main: Suhrkamp, 1965), p. 11.

2 Deutscher, lsaac, ,,Who is a Jew? [1966]," ldem, The Non-Jewish Jew and OtherEssays (Lon-don: Merlin Press, 1981), p. 49.

9

Karl Marx:

but as a prominent and spectacular section undercurrent of 'Western

European bourgeoisie. "3

Indeed, Marxt writings are full of invectives against his opponents,

who were of Jewish background, especially Lassalle' Examples can be

found in Marx's correspondence, with his closest personal friend En-

gels, and less so in those arricles intended for publication. Friendly

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

,,anti-Semitism,,, afthough Marx was, in all likelihood, unfamiliar with

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

Most rrearments of ,Marx and the Jews' are heavily colored by the

authors' views toward Marxism.6 such approaches range from unre-

flective 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

,,world without Jews."7 Similarly when Robert Misrahi reads Marx's

essay Zur Judenfrage as a call for the annihilation of a people, it re-

veals less about Marx and more about Misrahi's own pathology.s

3 ldem, ,,The Russian Revolution and the Jewish Problem [1964]," ibid'' p' 65'

4 Thomas G. Masaryk, Die philosophischen und sociologischen Grundlagen des Marxismus:

Studien zur sociaten Frage (Vienna: C. Konegin, 1 899)' p' 454'

5 See Moshe Zimmermann, Withelm Marr:The Patriarch of AnÙ-Semft'sm (NewYork and Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 1986)'

6 See Julius Carlebach, Karl Marx and the Radicat Critique of Judaism (London and Boston:- noutieOge & Kegan Paul, 1978); pp.438-99; Gérard Bensussan,,,Die Judenfrage ¡n den

Mar:xismLn," Das Argument, No' 167 (1 988)' pp. 76-83'

7 Dagobert D. Runes, Karl Marx:AWorldWithoutJews(NewYork: Ph¡losophical Library, 1960),

p.xl.

8 Robert Mis rahi, Marx et ta question iuive (Paris: Gallimard, 19721' p' 62'

10

Nevertheless, Iess biased authors have also offered harsh critiquesof 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 manifes-

tation 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 Marx-ism largely avoided the issue. Very rarely have genuine experts on

Marx engaged this complex and potentially controversial subject mat-

ter. 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 Finan-

ziudentum 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-Marx-ist in 1985, nevertheless produced one of the most thorough, sources-

based study and analysis of Marx's thinking on the Jews. Silberner's

I10

11

'12

to

14

tc

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.

ArnoldKünzli, Karl Maa: EinePsychographie(Vienna: Europa-Verlag, 1966),pp.205ff.

Hans Lamm, Karl Marx und das J ude ntu m (Munich : Max Uber Verlag, 1 969), pp. 30, 60

Léon Poliakov Geschichte des Antisem¡tismus, Vol. Vl (Worms: Heintz, 1987),p.22a.

Theodor Lessing, Der jüdische Selbsthaß119301, (Reprint: Munich: Matthes & Seitz, 1984).

David Rjazanov, Karl Marx and Friedr¡ch Engels(NewYork: lnternational Publishers, 1927),o.35.

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, Kom-munisten zur Judenfrage: Zur Geschichte von Theorie und Praxis des Kommunismus (Opla-den:WestdeutscherVerlag, 1983), pp. 16-42.

1,1

to

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 non-

Marxist Marx scholars. A case in point is Robert wistrich, who argued

that ,,the Marxist, like the liberal, analysis of the Jewish question as-

sumed that anti-Semitism was a temporary and secondary phenome-

non: with its dissipation the lasr factor encouraging the 'illusory' na-

tional 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 Marx-

isrs 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 fu-

ture, i.e. the restoration of God's kingdom on earth' Yet' Traverso also

emphasized that Marx never consciously drew on such structural simi-

l"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' advo-

cated with moral pathos rhe union between philosophy and the prole-

17 Roberts.wistrich,,,MaxismandJewishNationalism:TheTheoretical Rootsjfconffontatlon,"

io", (ed.), Ihe t"ft egãinìü zor: communism, tsrael, and the Middle East (London and

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 latterengaged in a polemic with Bruno Bauer. Bauer supported Jewish eman-

cipation, while conceptualizing this emancipation only in terms of an

emancipation from the Jewish religion. Marx's rhetorical strategies,

uis-à-uis Bauer, show the conceptual innovations as well as the ulti-mate limitations that developed within the horizon of the Jewish revo-

lutionary from the Rhine region.

Zur Judenfragein the Intellectual Develooment of the Youns Marx

'Marx's father Heinrich, who was baptized at the latest in 1819, decid-

ed¡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 accultura-

tion and were directly exposed to anti-Semitic undercurrents then typi-

cal of Central European Christianity. He frequently derided his politi-cal 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 correspon-

dent of the Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung, a ,,convert," drawing un-

necessary âttention to the latter's Jewish origin, though Marx did not

know him at that time.za Similarl¡ late as 1885, Friedrich Engels pub-

18

Totowa: Frank Cass, 1 979), P. 1 .

Kart Löwith, Meaning in History:TheTheological tmptications of the Philosophy of History(cht'

cago: Univers¡ty of Chicago Press, 1949), p. 44.

ArnoldToynbee,llhistoire: lJn essai d'interprétation (Paris Gallimard, 1951), pp.439_-40, as

;;;i; ì; á;riaverso, The Maxists and the Jewish Question: The History of a Debate,

ieqs-tsaT( rÀ^nticHighlands, N.J: Humanities Press, 1994)' p' 13'

19

20 lbid."P:14.

Werner Blumenberg, Karl Maa m¡t Selbstzeugn¡ssen und Bilddokumenfen (Reinbek: Rowohlt,1 989), p. 57.

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),pp.409-22.

Silberner, ,,Max," pp. 1 3-14.

Karl Manr, ,,Der Kommunismus und die ,Augsburger Allgemeine Zeirung'," Maa-Engels-Werke(cited hereafteras MEW,Vol.1 (Berlin: Dietz, 1956), p. 106.

13

23

24

licly referred to his and Marx's former comfade Stephan Born as Simon

Buttermilch.25young 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 polit-

ical 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 Parlia-

ment 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 empha-

size how ,,repugnant" Jewish faith was to him.26

Despite the intensity of his feelings on the subject, Marx's only sub-

srantive 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 nei-

ther 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 necessi-

ties 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

25 Friedrich Engels, ,,Preface" (to the 3rd edition of Max' ,Enthüllungen über den Kommunisten-proze1zu Kéln), MElill, Vol.21 , p.219. Buttermilch was Born's former Jewish name.

26 Karl Max,,,Leüerto Arnold Ruge," 13 March 1843, MEW,Vol.27'p'418'

27 ldem,,,ZurJudenfrage," MEW, Vol. 1, p.372. English translation: Man<-Engels-collectedworks,

vol. 3 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1 975), pp. 1 69-1 70.

conclusion is based on the notion that it is supposedly a specific Jewishtrait to equate one's own rights and interests with those of property.Marx, of course, realized that it was not just Jews who had internal-ized 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 ofthe Jew is the emøncipation of society from Judaism."?8

Several scholars, including critical Marxists, have pointed out thatMarx did not fulfill his own objective of rigorously analyzing the Jew-ish'question. He utilized the dialectical materialistic method ,,purelylogically", but approached his topic disconnected from the historicaland social conditions of Jewish life during his age.2e Marx's quest forthe ,,practical, real" Judaism was indeed in keeping with his material-

ist analysis. Yet Marx's answer) which linked ,,true Judaism" with the"conditions and form of capitalism) was still caught within the frame-

work of then-contemporary misconceptions and prejudices. It seems

that Marx was captured by unique and very specific historical circum-

stances, which he generalized and applied erroneously to the situationof all Jews throughout capitalist Europe.

The well established Íact that the majority of Jews, even in nine-

teenth-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 privateownership of the means of production and capitalist competition3l; yet,

such an approach was hardly appropriate or analytically useful in sharp-

ening understanding of capitalist society.32 Marx saw in money and trade

28 lbid., p. 174.

29 Blumenberg, Karl Marx, p. 58; Rosemarie Leuschen-Seppel, Sozialdemokratie und Antisemi-tismus im Kaiserreich: Die Auseinandersetzungen der Pañei m¡t den konservativen und völ-kischen 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).

31 Joachim Höppner, ,,lntroduction" to: Karl Marx and Arnold Ruge (eds.), Deufsch-französischeJahrbücher (Leipzig: Reclam, 1 981 ), p. 53.

32 See Leuschen-Seppel, Sozialdemokratie,pp.20-21;Wolfgang Fr¡tz Haug,,,Antisemitismus in

maxistischerSicht," HeôertA. Strauss and Nortert Kampe (eds.), Anflsemitismus:Von derJuden-feindschaft zum Holocausf (Bonn: Bundeszentrale für Polilische Bildung, 1 985), pp.234-55.

15

the essence of Judaism which had crystallized in the nature of bourgeois

society. Enzo Traverso considers this not only to be a distorted under-

standing of Jewish life but also the reflection of a ,,pre-Marxist concep-

tion 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 appropri-

ate, 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 South-

ern Slavs. The obvious shortcomings of Marx's treatment in Zur luden-

frage 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-

terpiece of wit and analysis. Nothing would have prepared early readers

of Zur Judenfrage for Marx and Engel's 1848 publication of the Commu-

nist Manife.s/o, a classic text of socialist aspirations. Especially when

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 so-

ciety 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 oro-gram.

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 DutchProtestantism were culturally very conducive to the development ofcapitalism, given their focus on frugality and unproductive consump-tion.3a Marx thus realized that any further development of his thinkingon the Jewish question excluded the mere continuation of his old viewsof 1.843. In fact, any genuine development of 'Marxist' analysis wouldrequire a break with those 'pre-Marxist' views. The urgent need forsuch a break came into sharp focus for the socialist movement in theyears immediately following Marx's death, with the growth of anti-Semitism as well as the Jewish working-class movement. The receptionof Márx's essay on the Jwdenfrage remained a marginal issue in those

debates and confrontations. Karl Kautsk¡ for example, did not men-

tion this piece in his'1,91"4 brochure Rasse wnd ludentum, for he wantedto discourage any possible connection between Marxism and anti-Semit-ism - given that the latter had acquired a much more aggressive tonethan the anti-Jewish sentiments during Marx's life.35 In addition, Kautskydid 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 Jewswere much more the pariahs than the agents of modern capitalism.'Within institutional German Social Democracy the influence of Marx'sessay remained limited as well, although excerpts and even the entirepiece was re-printed in the newspapers Sozialdemoþrat (1881) and Ber-

liner Volþsblatt (1890).

HoweveE one key idea that linked Marxism and Liberalism waspresent 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: GreenwoodPress,1972).

17

the way up to Hitler's rise to power was the assumption that Jewish

emancipation had to happen through assimilation or the givíng up of a

discernable Jewish ia.rrtìiy. The difference between liberal and Marxist

currentsofthoughthereliesinthedestinationofthatassimilation.LiberalswantedJewstoassimilatefullyintobourgeoissociety,whileMarxists advocated Jewish assimilation into the general revolutionary

movement, which wáold eventually achieve a future socialist state and

thereby quasi-automatically solve the 'Jewish Question' as well' Marx's

,ssuy Zw Judenfrage is part and parcel of this hope and this illusion'

Between Solidarity, Indifference' and Reiection:

Marx and the Jews after 1844

It is no easy task to summarize Marx's opinions on the Jews after he

wrote Zur ludenfrage. ìHis comments are too fragmentaty and con-

tradictor¡ especially if one compares his public with his private utter-

ances. On one hand, it "t-' tlt"' that the rare sequences that touch

upon Jewish themes suggest at least partial emPathy for the discrimi-

nated-against Jewish po!"olutio"' Yet the texts that were not published

during ilur"', life and especially his letters to Engels reveal a strong

antip;hy toward Jewish f"opl"' Equalty disturbing is Marx's seeming

indi?ference to the beginnings of the Jewish working-class movement'

which is particularly L"ioo' in light of the fact that Marx otherwise

noted the emergence of even the most obscure socialist groups with

great interest' commenting on them extensively'

WhenthefirstvolumeofDasKapitalappearedinl'867'Marxhaddeparted from his prejudices of L843 that the Jewish identity was a

manifestation of ""piálist values and behavior' FIe referred to them

onlysporadically.oneoftheserarebutnevefthelessdisturbingexam-pt., ."n be found in chapter four' wherein Marx mentions' in the con-

text of the transformatiãn of money into capital, that all capitalists

know that all exchange commòdities are "in essence money and arc

thus in their true n",,'it circumcised Jews"' despite their perhaps lesser

appearance or smell.36 A similar example is Marx's metaphor that the

18

amount of goods circulating cannot be increased through any modifica-tions in their distribution, ,,just as a Jew cannot increase the amount ofprecious metal in any one country by selling a Farthing from the age of

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

Jewish population in Jerusalem.3s In May 1859, Marx condemned, inanother essay for the New York Daily Tribune, anti-Jewish riots on the

part of the Viennese mob, stating that these ,,primitive rufniks" wouldprovide a taste of what one should expect through the way they hadabused 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 grasp-

ing praxis only in its ,,dirty Jewish appearance."a0 In his correspondence

ivith qngels, Marx frequently referred to the Jewish background of thirdpeÌsons in a derogatory fashion. Marx also did this in the case of fellowMarxists, such as Leo Fränkel or Eduard Bernstein. His particular antip-athy 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

|',.@th a ,,Nigger." Marx links a Lassalle's ,,Jewishness and Germanness

ulated that perhaps Lassalle's mother or grandmother may have slept

a negroid basic ingredient" that was ,,doomed to produce some-

strange. 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 völligklar, daß er [Lassalle], wie auch seine Kopfbildung und sein Haarwuchs beweisl, - von den

19

FriedrichEngels'statementsonLassallewereofsimilarquality.Hewrote to Marx on March 7,1'856 that Lassalle was "a true Jew from

the Slavic border" and ',always ready to exploit anybody for his pri-

vate designs and pretending party-political obiectives' The addiction to

posh oneself into polite societ¡ de paruenir, even if only in appearance'

in order ro covef the scheming Jew from Breslau with all sorts of make-

up and powder, was always disgusting'"43

It is unlikely that Engels would have phrased his critique

le's real or supposed shortcomings in quite this way could he

upon the agreement of his friend Marx'

HasitbeentrulyoverstatedthatMarxwasembarrassedofhisJew-ish roots? In any event' it seems certain that he did not want to be

reminded of them. He reacted thus when his son-in-law Charles Longuet,

in the obituary of Jenny Marx in 1881, mentioned that' prior to her

marriage, racial stereotypes had to be overcome' given Marx's Jewish

extraction. Marx responded, in a vetY angry letter to his daughter

Jenny Longuet, that there was no racial prejudice that needed to be

overcome and that ,,Mr. Longuet" would do him a big favor by not

mentioning his name again in public'aa

Referring to the parts of Marx's correspondence' which are "often a

torture to read," 'Süerner Blumenberg observed that Marx's anti-Jewish

affects can be read as the historically contingent reaction of a highly

sensitiveperson'whohadinternallybrokenwithhisJewishidentity.asThisreactionmustbeunderstoodwithinthelargerframeworkofmain-stream society's hostility toward all things Jewish and is itself a prod-

uct of anti-Semitism; Blumenberg and other scholars noted that even

such a strong and flamboyant personâlity as Marx could not overcome

Negernabstammt,dies¡chdemZugdesMosesausÀgyptenanschlos:9ify:l"nichtseineMutter odef oror¡ruttãr-ulï;àt";i"h;; seire sich mTi êinem nigger kreuzten. Nun, diese

Verbindung von Jro"nìim'rno e eimanentum mit der neqerhaften Grundsubstanz mússen e¡n

sonderbares proorn Ëääitttg"". o¡ã 2roringlichke-it des Burschen ist auch niggerhaft "

of Lassal-

not count

this during his life. Marx himself must indeed have experienced this as

a personal weakness, which did not derive from his general philosophi-cal outlook. How else could one otherwise explain the charged state-

ments that he confined to his private correspondence, which he reason--ably expected would remain private. After all, his sardonic commentsand 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 move-ment of his age, would have been irreparably damaged had those dis-tasleful comments been leaked. Marx may have sensed this and thusrefrained from commenting on the emerging Jewish working-class move-

mçnt in London's East End or in the Russian Empire. He did not want toendanger 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

43

44

See MEW, Vol.29, P' 31'

M EW, V ol. 35, PP. 241 - 42.

Blumenberg,KarlMarx,p.53;seealsoRobertS'Wistrich'RevotutionaryJewsfromMarxtoIrotsky (Loñdon: Haf rap, 197 6), pp' 42- 43'

otherwise inclusive and extensive coverage of socialist developmentsand organizations. At times these developments happened directly athis doorstep, such as in his city of residence in 1875-1876.

- Thus far, no one has managed to locate even the briefest commentby Marx on the beginnings of the Jewish socialist movement in Eastern

Europe, although Russian-Jewish socialists were among the first to se-

riously read Marx's main work, Das KapitøL Marx's daughter EleanorAveting 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, thatqay Father was a Jew:'o' Marx himself would have deeply resented

, MaxBeer, FiftyYearsof lnternational Socialism(London: Allen&Unwin, 1935.Reprint: Gen-t,,, eva: Minkoff, 1976), pp.69,72-73.

47 QuotedinWilliamJ.Fishman, EastEndJewishRadicalslSTS-1914(London: Duckworth,1975), p. 1 97.

)1LL

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 situa-

tion? 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

not want to be reminded of his Jewish heritage.

His political opponents, of course, were aware of this. Michail Baku-

nin 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-Semit-

ic 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. Baku-

nin's anti-Jewish (and anti-German) prejudices were strongly reinforced

by his dealings with Marx. Jews were, according to Bakunin, 'rone

ex-

ploiting sect, a bloodsucking people, a unique devouring parasite close-

ly and intimately bound together not only across national boundaries,

but also across all divergences of political opinion." Bakunin empha-

sized 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 fore-

shadows 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.

of Marxism as well. Marx's death in 1883 spared him from seeing thesedevelopments unfold with his own eyes or reconsidering his comments inthe light of the dooming catastrophes of the twentieth-century.

Conclusion and A Look Ahead

Ma.rx's numerous anti-Jewish invectives, voiced in his private corre-spondence, are of lesser significance than his ignorance of the impor-tance of the Jewish question, as it came into focus during his life. Itwould be a distortion to claim that Marx established an ,,anti-Semitictradition of modern Socialism"50; attempts to suggest this ultimatelyfatl 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 fic-titious and advocated full Jewish assimilation. Modern capitalism would,according to Marxist positions, make complete assimilation inevitable,disintegrating the foundations of Jewish particular and ,,caste" exist-ence. This would lead to the disappearance of any separare Jewish lifeand culture, as the title of the Marxist book TJntergang des Judentums(Downfall of Judaism) by Otto Heller indicates.sl During the WeimarRepublic Heller was a highly respected Communist authority on Jewishmatters. He wrote, shortly before Hitler's rise to power, that ,,a genu-ine Jewish Question exists today only in Eastern and Southern Europe,in those areas with a backward societal development."s2 Heller, likemillions of others, paid the ultimate price of his own life for his tragicerror. His friend Bruno Frei wrote decades later that seldom has a

historical misconception been so tragically refuted.s3

t^

51

ldem,,,Man<", p. 52.

Otto Heller, Der Untergang des Judentums: Die Judenfrage/thre Kritilúlhre Lösung durch denSozialismus (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 Judenfra-ge (Berlin: Ullstein, 1932), p. 259.

53 Bruno Frei, ,,Maxist lnterpretations of the Jewish Question," Wiener Library Bul/efin, Nos.35-36, 1975, p.4.

23

The modern barbarism of Fascism, culminating in the Nazi murderof European Jewr5 forced Marxists to reconsider their axiom affirm-ing the discontinuous but, in the long run, inevitable progress in histor-

ical development. In his literary treatment of Rudolf Höß (comman-

dant of the Auschwitz concentration camp) the French Marxist writerRobert 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-

,10ners.

Many Marxists considered the systematic and well-planned annihi-lation of European Jewry a product of capitalism and noted with dis-

tress its irrational dimensions. Several East German scholars have thus

inquired into an Oþonomie der Endlösung, an Economics of the Final

Solution.5s The Holocaust survivor and Trotskyist Ernest Mandel pointed

to a tendency of reproducing Nazi-like conditions, which has led tounintentionally de-emphasizing the uniqueness of this bureaucraticallyand technologically organized genocide.56 As mentioned earlier, Isaac

Deutscher has also argued, for some time, that the Marxist analysis ofthe 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 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

Robed Merle, La mort est mon métie r (P aris:. Gallimard, 1 952).

For an early controversy between East German h¡storians (Eberhard Czichon, DietrichEichholtz, Kurt Gossweiler) and the British ManxistTim Mason see Mario Kessler, Die SED unddie Juden - zwischen Repression und Toleranz: Politische Entwicklungen bis 1967 (Berlin:Akademie Verlag, 1 995), pp. 1 28-29.

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 to swallow him up as well, WalterBenjamin coined the image of the

angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Iü/here we perceive achain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage

. .- upon wreckage and hurls it in fronr of his feet. The angel would like tosta% 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 stormirre_sistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, whilethe pile of debris before him grows skyward. This srorm is what we call

progress " 5s

J4

33

56 Ernest Mandel, Der Zweite Weltkr¡eg (Frankfurt-Main: lSf 1991), p. 224.

The Marxist Walter Benjamin was compelled to radically revise Marx.Instead of playing the role of the ,,locomotive of history" rhe revolu-tion had to function as an ,,emergency brake".se

Translated by Axel Fair-Schulz

57

58

lsaac Deutscher,,,The Jewish Tragedy and the Historian," ldem, The Non-Jewish Jew,p.163.Walter Benjamin, ,,Theses on the Philosophy of History," ldem, Illuminations, ed. with anintroduction by Hannah Arendt, translated by HanyZohn (NewYork: Schocken Books, 1969),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 aboutthe causes and effects of the hostility toward Jews? Did Engels, posi-tion on Anti-Semitism reflect the then existing stage of the threat to the

$ews? In Engels' lifetime the alternative was emancipation or segrega-tion, not emancipation or annihilation, although, as will be indicated,yoices began tò appear that referred to 'the Jews' as simply raciallyinferior and unfit to live. Engels witnessed the appearance of the firsta.pti-Semitic mass pagties, and he advised the socialist left to lead a

systematic struggle against these parties. As yet to be determined is thefollowing: How representative was Engels' position for the course ofthe international socialist discussion of this problem, and how did En-gels-influence this discussion?1

Two clearly distinct periods in his position can be observed, wherethe polemic by Engels against Eugen Dühring forms the break betweenthe two, even though his criticism of Dühring's anti-Semitism was rath-er incidental. To be noted is the fact that anti-Semitism and hostilitytowards Jews were not central themes either in the writings of Engelsor in the workers' movement as a whole in the 19'h century.

A German version of this essay: ,,Friedrich Engels' Haltung zum Antisemitismus," was publishedin:Theodor Bergmann et al. (eds.), Zwischen Utopie und Kritik: Friedrich Engets - ein'Ktas-siker'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 sys-

tematically, 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 na-

tions 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 oppo-

sition 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 oc-

casionally mentioned the situation of the Jews in Eastern Europe. on

June 6, 1848 he wrote rhar the Germans and the Jews attempted ,'to

make use of [Poland's] present situation to gain mastery."5 On August 9,

he noticed the ,,unexpected sympathy and recognition which Polish Jews

have received lately in Germany. Engels continued: ,,Maligned wherev-

er the influence of the Leípzig Fair extends as the very incarnation of

haggling, avarice and sordidness' they have suddenly become German

brethren; with tears of joy the honest German presses them to his bo-

som, and Herr srenzel6 lays claim to them on behalf of the Germans

who want to remain Germans."T

Engels' irony was aimed at the anti-Jewish prejudices of the Ger-man philistine, not against the Jews. Nevertheless one must concurwith the critical appraisal of Roman Rosdolsk¡ who wrote of ,,thetasteless anti-Jewish dispatches of this paper" - the Newe RheinìscheZeitung. According to Rosdolsk¡ it was

see Roman Rosdolsky, Engets and the,,Nonhistoric" Peoptes:The National Question in the

Revolution of 1848 (Glasgow: Critique Books' 1987)'

Friedrich Engels, ,,Ein Fragment Fouriers über den Handel," Maa'Engels-Gesamtausgabe,vol'

lV,p.437.

ldem, ,,Government and opposltion in France," Karl Marx and Frederick Éngels, collected

Wárls'(tvtos"o*: Progress Þublishers), Vol.6, p.62 (quoted hereafter as Cl4r)'

Engels, ,,4 New Partition of Poland," CW,Yol.7, p'65'

A hlstorian from Breslau and member of the Frankfurt Parl¡ament'

the polyphony of'popular opinion' that confronts us in these dispatches.

This popular opinion for the most parr reflected the legitimate indignationover 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 re-marks \ry'as not at all progressive; instead of equal rights for Jews - an

important heritage of German enlightenmenr - the paper called fortheir segregation.e This becomes quite clear in the contribution of Edu-ard von Müller-Tellering, the correspondent of the Neue RheinischeZeitung in Vienna, all published as far as is known without objection bythe responsible editor, Karl Marx.10 From among many, let us crte twoexamples: 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

o

Engels, ,,The Frankfurt Assembly Debates the Polish Question ," CW,Vol.7, p. 971 . Emphasisin 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. 243-59.

On Müller-Tellering see Ernst Hanisch, Der kranke Mann an der Donau: Mam und Engels ubetOsterreich (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,

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 provoca-

tions. 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 criti-

cism of the ,,German-Jewish haters of the Poles".1a On January 13,

1849 Engels wrote that, in Hungar¡ exâctly like the Saxons of Trans-

11 Quoted from: Rosdolsky, Engels and the,,Nonhistoric" Peoples,p.194. Emphasis in the origi-

nal.

sylvania, the Jews ),ate an exception and stubbornly retain an absurdnationality in the midst of a foreign land."ls He did not explain rvhartheir real nationality was, rather than the ,,absurd" one. Engels did norrefrain, 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 atmost only through its lust for profit, could [it] have any relation ofkinship with the Frankfurt Jewish bourgeoisie.,,16

In a parody based on a poem by Ernst Moritz Arndt, Engels jokedabout the language of the Easrern Jews:

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, partof an infantile ,,disease of the workers' movement,,.1s as Roman Ros-dolsky wrote' ór were they proof of an ,,anti-semitic tradition of mod-ern socialism,'(1e as Edmund silberner maintained? Several treatisesh-ave been written about this, and I will limit myself to the conclusionthat in the history of socialism two components appeared soon enough:flirting with utterances inimical to Jews and determined struggle against

12

13

lbid. Emphasis in the original.

Quoted f rom: Edmund Silberner, Kommunisten zur Judenfrage: Zur Geschichte von Theorie

und Praxis des Kommunismus (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1983)' p' 327.

14 Engels,,,ANew Policy in Posen," CW,Vol.7, p. 105'

30

,,,¡tþe discrimination imposed upon Jews. The latter, however, took prece-i'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 charac-

teristic of evolving Marxism. It rested upon a certain premise of thei 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. 1 , p. 52; ldem,Kommunisten zur Judenfrage, p. 42.

31

es 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 re-

search 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 rev-

olutionaries and also by Marx and Engels. According to Engels' British

biographer Henderson, both saw

these unimportant principalities [such as Transsylvania] as remnants of a

past era and were of the opinion that they must be abolished so that natio-

nal 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 strength-

ened 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 oftheir 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 orwould not deny their origins were frequently objects of ridicule or laugh,ter-in the correspondence between Marx and Engels, that is to say rnnon-public remarks. The correspondence, for example, contains a num-ber-of tasteless and derogarory remarks about Lassalle. Engels callsLassalle variously ,,Jüdel Braunr" ,,Ephraim Gescheit,., ,,Itzig,, (,,JewBrownr" ,,Smart Ephraim," ,,Izzy") and after Lassalle's tragic death,,Itzig Selig" and ,,Baron Itzig" (,,Blessed lzzyr,, ,,Baron lzzy,,)3z In hispublic pronouncements he avoided such expressions. The few times thathe mentioned the Jews before the mid-1870s, he communicated norhingof substance.

' rn a series of arricles wrirten by him in 1851-1852, but published in

20

21

William O. Hend erson, The Life of Friedrich Engels, Vol. l, (London: Frank Cass, 1976)' p. 146.

Gustav Mayer, Friedrich Engets: Eine Biographie, vol. I (Frankfurt-Main: ullstein, 1975), p. 308.

Marx'ô name, Engels wrote of the Eastern European Jews that ,,if theybelonged to any narionality, (they) are in these countries certainly rath-er Germans than Slavonians," although their ,,mother tongue is a hor-ribly corrupted German".23 Apart from this appraisal, Engels seemsimplicitly to have considered here the exisrence of an independent Jew-ish nationality. In the Brochure po and Rhine, first published in 1g59.

(r Engels referred to the Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung,,,for all its ha-itred-of Jews and Turks," as a ,,Christian-Teutonic paper., that wouldorather see itself circumcised than the 'German' region oÍ Italy."z4

- On April 6, 1,866 Engels wrore concerning the atirude of the work-ing class towards the Polish national movement: ,,poland has alwaysåeen extremely liberal in religious maters; wirness the asylum the Jewsifound there while they were persecuted in all other parts of Europe.,.2iSive 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 zurJu-::,, denfrage, p. 47.

Engels,,,Revolution and Counler-Revolution in Germany,,, CW,Vol. 11, p. 44ldem, ,,Po and Rhine," Ct4l, Vol. 16, p. 216.

ldem, ,,What Has the Working Class to do with poland,,, CW,Vol.20,p.16O.

:

&

ffi'74JJ

democratic Volksstaat he wrote about the short bloom of the Founders

period of 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 chancel-

lors 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.

Engels' Polemic with Political Anti-Semitism After 1878

Towards the end of the 1870s racially oriented political anti-Semitism

increasingly replaced religiously motivated anti-Judaism. The term 'anti-

semirism, 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 (Strug-

gle 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 political 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

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 up-

swing.28

But it was above all the appearance of the Berlin economist EugenDühring and of his massive hostile artacks to the Jews that promptedEngels to refine his own views. In Engels' extensive polemic from theyear 1,878, we read:

26

27

;.. even the hatred of Jews, exaggerated until it becomes ridicuious. which

ldem, ,,On the Company Swindle in England," CliV' Vol.23' p.35.

see Moshe Zimmerman, wilhelm Man:The Patriarch of Anfi'-sernlf,sm (NewYork and oxford:

Oxford University Press, 1986).

Zg See e.g. peter G .Z.Pulzer, The Rise of Potiticat Anti-Sem¡tism in Germany and Austria' 1867-

l9l4(ñewyorkJohnW¡tey&Sons, 1966),reprinted1988;AlbertS.Lindemann, Esau'sTears:

Herr Dühring parades at every opportunit¡ if it is not a specifically prussian,

is yet a specifically East Elbian quality. The same philosopher whosovereignly looks down on all prejudices and superstirions, is himself so"deeply immersed in personal whims, that he calls the popular prejudiceagainst the Jews, which has been handed down from the Middle Ages, a

,,natural judgement" resting on ,,natural reasons,,. and soars to the pyra_midal assertion that ,,socialism is the sole power that can offer oppositionto conditions of population with stronger Jewish inrermixrure " (conditions

" with Jewish intermixture! 'What natural language!). Enough.

Ðühring ,,cannot bring about his philosophy of reality without obtrud-ing his repugnance 'against tobacco, cats and Jews, as a law having¡rniversal force for the whole rest of mankind, Jews included..,2e

,:.-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-

In his preface to the republication of his work in 18g5, Engels wrore:

'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 ,,ra-

ãal characteristics." He demanded that Jews be singled our under emer-y 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: cambriogeUniversity Press, 1997), chapter g.

Engels, Herr Eugen Dühring's Revolution in science (chicago: charles H. Kerr, 193s), pp.112-13.

lbid., p.6,

F_orthisandtheotherquotat¡onsseesilberner, KommunistenzurJudenfrage,p.50; alsoidem,"Friedrich Engels and the Jews,', p.332.

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)'3lEngels 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 agita-

tors." A subsequent resolution adopted by the assembly took a position

,,against any curtailment of the civil equality guaranteed constitution-

ally to Jews."32In November 1882, in connection with another matter' Engels re-

marked ,,that the so-called 'anti-Semitic movement' has the Social Dem-

ocrats 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 accommodat-

ing the instincts of the workers."3a Five months later, on November 22,

he reported that anti-Semitism in Vienna ,,has assumed colossal dimen-

sions ... 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

employee and social Democrat, Isidor Ehrenfreund, that outlines sum-marily his position on anti-Semitism, which he took very seriously. Ehren-freund 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 propagandaagainst 'Jewish capital'. Engels' exrensive reply was published in theArbeiter-zeitung on May 9 with permission of author and addressee.

At the beginning of the letter Engels warned the social Democratsnoi 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 anti-semitism is something I would ask you to consider. For anti-semitismbetokens a retarded culture, which is why it is found only in prussia and'"' Austria, and in Russia roo. Anyone dabbling in anti-Semitism, either rnEngland 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 inanti-semitism, while both in Prussia and Austria a vociferous chorus rs

provided by those whom competition from big capital has ruined - thepetty bourgeoisie, skilled craftsmen and small shop-keepers. But in as muchas capital, whether Semitic or Aryan, circumcised or baptized, is destroyingthese 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 toimpel the present-dây level at which all the old social distincrions resolve

themselves in the one great antithesis - capitalists and wage-laborers. onlyin places where this has not happened, where there is no strong capitalistclass and hence no strong class of wage-laborers, where capital is not yetstrong enough to gain control of national production as a whole, so that irsactivities are mainly confined to the stock Exchange - in other words, whereproduction is still in the hands of farmers, landowners, craftsmen andsuchlike classes surviving from the Middle Ages - there, and there alone, rscapital mainly Jewish, and there alone is anti-semitism rife.

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,

1955), p. 125.

35 lbid., p. 159.

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

he would be aware that, thanks to ânri-semitism in eastern Europe, and to

rhe spanish inquisition in Turke¡36 there are here in England and in America

thousands upon thousands of Jewish proletarians; and it is precisely these

Jewish workers who are the worst exploited and the most poverty-strik-

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 Hei-

ne 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 Bern-

stein, 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

ultimate goals of the then current anti-semitism ro a common denomi-nator. with imposing emphasis he warned against any flirting withanti-semitism. Engels not only pointed to a precise social-theoreticalmodel of explaining the continued effects of anti-Jewish prejudiced inthe present of the then existing societ¡ but also located the main vic-tims of the anti-semitic campaigns: rhe doubly (economicaily as well- as politically) oppressed Jewish workers.

The weaknesses of Engels' exposition are equally apparenr. Herewe have to agree with Enzo Traverso, who noted that Engels did not atall-consider ,,the possibility of a modern anti-semitism, fed by rhe con-tradictions of an advanced capitalist society."38 Engels undertook withthis letter a notable step in sensitizing the workers' movement to thedangers connected with the growth of the anti-Semitic movement. Heúanted the socialists to make the struggle against anti-semitism rheir'1cwn struggle; yet Engels' statements inadvertently contributed to theillusioir that thanks ro the continued development of capitalism, anri-

' Semitism would disappear, so to speak, of its own accord.

For the time, strong as well as weak poinfs are

Engels' argument. His exposition reduced causes'

36 Engels referred to saloniki, then a part of the ottoman Empire, where an important class-

divided Jewish community existed.

37 Ëngels,,,On Anti-semitism (from a private letter to Vienna),' CW,Vol'27 ' pp' 51-52'

one can hardly reproach Engels for a lack of sensitivity ro the poren-tiality of crises contained within imperialist policies. on January 4, 1Bgg,in a very impressive passage Engels had described hypotheticaily theramifications of the future geo-politics of Imperial Germany:

Germany will have allies but Germany will desert its allies and its allieswill 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

equally apparent

class content and

Enzo Traverso, The Marxists and the Jewish euestion:The H¡story of a Debate, 1g4s-l g4g(Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1994), p.26.

39

¡

1

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

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

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

be ruined and the victorv of the Þroletariat is either already won or

inevitable.3e

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 bar-

baric desire voiced by Eugen Dühring, and very soon by many others'

to exterminate the Jews was for Engels hardly more than the sick imag-

inings 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 consid-

ered 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 Engels, ,,,lntroduction'to pamphlet by sigismund Borkheim, zur Erinnerung für die deutschen

Mordspatrioten 1 806-1 807," CW,Vol. 21, pp. 35off.

40 ldem,,,OnAnti-Semitism,"p.50.

'4e

Edouard Drumont, journalist and author of La France juive, pub-lished in 1886, was the founder of radical anti-semitism in France. Inthe 1880s the Blanquisr socialist Albert Régnard wrore quire favorablyabout Drumont in the Réuue sociøIiste.al The fact that especially so-called socialist opponents of Marxism in France resorted to anti-Semit-ic stereotypes in order to diminish Karl Mark could hardly have es-' caped Engels' attention. This had a long tradition that reached back as

far-as the 1840s. Marx' and Engels' old comperiror pierre-Joseph

Proudhuon had already inroned:

'!7e must demand [the Jews'] expulsion from France, except for those

. - married to French women; the religion must be proscribed because the Jewis 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 translatedletter of Engels to Ehrenfreund on July 3, 1BB2 and on April g, 1,Bggseems to have changed this very little.a3 This image of the enemy arleast partially explains the surprise and initial indifference, if not themalicious joy, of many French socialists regarding the Dreyfus affairafter 1894. The eventual recognition by Jaurès that anti-semitism, anti-socialism and enmity toward.the Third Republic coincided was exacrlylike that of Engels, and Jaurès succeeded in mobilizing many of theFrench socialists for the defense of Dreyfus against the reacion.aa

See Francois-Georges Dreyfus,,,Antisemitismus in der Dritten Französischen Republik,,,BerndMartin 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 dufasclsme(Paris: Payot, 1978), p. 187.

Edmund silberner, western European socialism and the Jewish problem (1g00-1914: ASelective 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 pseudo-

socialist demagog¡ there was another important Íactot that kept En-

gels' attention attuned to anti-semitism and the situation of the Jews.

This factor at the same time nourished his optimism about the continu-

ing growth of the socialist movement: the activities of the Jewish prole-

tarians in London, Engels' home city.

Founded on March 20, 1'876 by Aron Liberman and Lazat Golden-

berg, the Hebrew Socialist Union was the first Jewish socialist organi-

zation in London. Engels appears to have been acquainted with Liber-

man 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

struggle.a8

In the middle of the 1870s, through rwo orher Jewish acrivisrs, GrigoryGuryevich and Maxim Romm, Engels had contact with a socialist groupin Berlin, the lewish section. Engels referred to Guryevich in a letter toLav.rovae and to Romm in letters to Friedrich Adolph Sorge.io

Around 1890 Engels wrore an introduction for a yiddish edition of'"the communist Manifeslo and senr it to New York. The mail was lost

but-Abraham Cahan, the American writer, reports that Engels was veryinterested in the publication of the Manifesto in yiddish. Engels sur-prised Cahan when they mer in London with his knowledge of the yid-dish language.sl Engels also wrore to his friend Sorge (who lived in theunited States) for news about the Jewish socialist Joseph Barondessafter 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. Rus-

43

46

Engels,,,Speech at Karl Marx' Funeral," CW, Vol' 24' p - 469.

See Bruno Frei and Hans Adamo, Anarchist¡sche lJtopie -Terrorismus (FrankfurUMain: Mar-

xistische Blàtter, 1978), p.94.

47 See Jack Jacobs , Kautsky on the Jewish Question, Ph.D.Thesis (NewYork Columbia Univers¡ty,

1983), p.39.

4g euote from John Bunzl, Klassenkampf in der Diaspora: Zur Geschichte der iüdischen Arbeiteúa uegung (Vienna: Europa-Verlag, 1 975), p. 50'

sian, German, Austrian, Polish, Spanish and British workers.sa The fol,lowing year he sent'a number of books to the Russian-Jewish Free Li-b-rary in London at their request.ss Engels was in contact with Jewishgroups in Europe, including Russia.56 ,,N7hatever he wrote on the Jewsafter 1890 is only casual but nonetheless permeared with a new spirir,"as Edmund silberner correctly concluded.sT Despite all this. there are

49

¡il,Jtl:a:..,

51

Engels,,,Letter to Lavrov, Seplember 1 b, 1 876," CW, Vol. 45, Ð. 1 47 .

See MEfV(Berlin: Dietz, 1956ff.), Vols. 37, p. 479, and BB, pp. 12, 32. See Also Jacobs, Kautskyon the Jewish Question, Ð. 42.

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 AvivUniversity, 1 980), pp. a93-96.

Jacobs, Kautsky on the Jewish Question, o. 46.

silberner, ,,Friedrich Engels and the Jews," p. 336, and idem, Kommuniéten zur Judenfrage,p.52.

43

remarks now and then in Engels'

Iast years of his life, in which the

is commented uPon ironicallY.

Thus on December 22,'l'894 Engels wrote to

himself Jewish, that Max Beer is "a very green

Galician-Talmudic spectacles."5s In December

that one must be careful of the great number

over to socialism. He wrote:

One knows that we are becoming a ,,Íactor" in the state "' and since the

Jews are more intelligent than the rest of the bourgeois, they notice it quicker

- especially under the pressure of anti-Semitism - and they are the first to

join us. They can only be welcomed by us but because these folks afe smar-

ter and because of century-long pressure had to rely and were trained in

self-serving methods, one must be more careful'se

private correspondence' even in the

Jewish extraction of certain socialists

Engels, in 1890, still called

year later he wrote to Paul

Victor Adler, who was

youth in England with1891 Engels remarked

I am beginning to understand the French anti-Semitism when I see how

these Jews with Polish origins and with German names infiltrate

everywhere,takeeverythingandpushaheadeverywhereuntiltheycontrol

the public opinion of the City of Light of which the simple Parisian is so

proudandwhichhethinksisthehighestpowerintheuniverse.6i

This private remark is in contrast to his high public position: ín 7894

tng.l, warned the French socialists about the anti-semites in the Newe

Zeit: whoever follows them will find out soon enough "what comes of

of Jews that are coming

the Polish Jews a caricature

Lafarguel.

these glittering phrases and what melodies the violins will play thathang in the anti-Semitic sky."62

Engels was still alive when, ar the Cologne Congress in October1893, the SPD put a special point on the agenda about the struggleagainst anti-Semitism. The main speaker, August Bebel, declared thatanti-Semitism comes from

the dissatisfaction of certain bourgeois layers who feel threarened by the

capitalist development and are in part destined ro economic ruin by thisdevelopment, but misunderstanding the real causes of their situation directtheir struggle not against the capitalist economic system but against one of

. . its aspects as it appears in this development that makes their competitivestruggles 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

59

60

Ðå

Engels, ,,Letter to Victor Adler, December 22,1894," MEW'Vol' 39' p' 353'

ldem, ,,Letterto Bebel, December 1 , 1891 ,' MEW,Vol.g8,p' 228;Jacobs, KautslE on the Jewish

Question,P.48.

Engels, ,,Letter to Paul Ernst, June 3, 1890," MEW,Vol'37 ' 412'

ldem, ,,Letter to Paul Lafargue, J uly 22, 1892," MEW,Yol'38' 4o3'

of Jews6o and a

small farmers agitated by anti-Semitism against the Jewish capitalists mustcome to the recognition rhat their enemy is nor just the Jewish capitalistbut the capitalist claès as a whole and that only the establishment of socialism

can liberate them from their misery.63

rSocial Democrac¡ in other words, is against anti-semitism, but it will.not ,,split" its forces by fighting against a phenomenon ,,that will standrand-fall with bourgeois society".6a Engels had been very much in ac-cord with Bebel's endeavor to counter anti-Semitism even a year earli-er;65 Bebel on his part emphasizedthat the letter by Engels to Ehrenfre-und had reinforced his standpoint.66 The parry congress in Colognereflected Engel's views.

ä2

ældem,,,Die Bauernfrage in Frankreich und Deutschlan d," MEW,Vol. 22, p. 501.

Protokoll über die Verhandlungen des Parteitages der Sozialdemokratischen Partei Deutsch-lands. Abgehalten zu Köln a. Rh. von 22. bis 29. Oktober 1893 (Berlin: Buchdruckerei Vorwàrts,1893), p.223.

lbid.

Engels, ,,Letter to Bebel, November 19, 1892,' MEW,Vol.38, p. 518ff.

"Bebel to Engels, July 9, 1892," werner Blumenberg (ed.), August Bebets Br¡efwechset mìt

Friedrich Engels (The Hague: Mouton, 1965), p. 562.

45

':,3r

.tr,,,,

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 mobili-

zation of the socialist movement against anti-Semitism. FIe presented

in his analyses the potential, barbaric consequences of imperialist na-

tional policies. But he also believed in the timely transformation of

capitalist society into a socialist one. The grolvth of racist anti-Semit-

ism 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

Translated by Ed Kouacs.

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 thisparadigm 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 historicalprogress towards the inevitable triumph of socialism.

The Russian Revolution and theJewish ìTorkers' Movement

Among the Jeus of Eastern Euroþe the feeling tbat only the

ouertbrou.t of Tsardom by øay of reuolution could relieue thediscrimination and oþþression to which they uere subjected, be-

came almost uniuersal; and Jews played a uery prominent partin the reuolutionary mouement. But when tbe reuolution didcomè, the sudden transformation of society had also ø painfuland 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 exist-

Isaac Deutscher (1,964\1

The Russian revolutions of 1917 gave rise to a practical question: couldthe socialist transformation of Eastern European societies solve its Jew-ish problem? In Eastern Europe the question whether an erhnic-reli-gious minority should assimilate or whether it needed irs own nationalterritory was particularly complex. Since the turn of the century theidea of national-cultural auronomy as propounded by the Jewish

'!lork-

ers' 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. 67-68.

47

Socialist organizatíon, had gained considerable support. However, the

Bolsheviks and most of the Jewish Socialists in the two Polish worker'sparties2 dismissed this way of solving the Jewish question. Neverthe-less, from the turn of the century onwards all Socialist parties had toturn their attention to Socialist-Zionist organizations which were pre-

senting 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 open-

ing 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 limitingthe civic rights of the Jewish population were abolished.a On the other

hand, Jews at first remained somewhat mistrustful of the October Rev-

olution. The Soviet decree that distributed land to the peasants had

little interest for a largely urbanized group disconnected from agricul-

ture. In June 1918, elections to the Jewish community organizationsconfirmed the relative dominance of the various Zíonist parties and of

the Jewish'S7orkers' Bund, which at its eighth National Conference inDecember 1.91.7 had expressed its opposition to the October Revolu-

tion.s The January 5, 19L8 dissolution of the Constituent Assembly by

'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 Iew-

These were the Pol¡sh Socialist Parly (slnce 1906 the PPS Left) and the Social Democratic Partyof the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania.

A German version of this essay: ,,Die Russische Revolution und die jüdische Arbeiterbewe-gung,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 Kom-m u n i s m u s- Fo rsc h u n g (Hamburg : VSA, 1 999), pp. 221 -35.

lish-labor movement at that time. The Jewish political scene in 1.91.7-

4 SeeLeoTrolzki,Geschichtederrussischen Revolution,Vol.2 (Frankfurt-Main: Fischer, 1982),

1918 was dominated by three main tendencies: (1) various Zionist par-

ries; whose 'bourgeois' mainstream was more or less closely linkedwith the Constitutional Democrats; (2) a Social Democratic tendency

p.723.

Fbrthe attitude of the Bund towards the October Revolution see Aryeh Gelbard, Der iüdischeM¡fu¡nd im Flevolutionsjahr 1917 (Viennai Europa-Verlag, 1 982).

o#.*T-t:*i"'' 'iln'tii*it*'ii ;ii:ilivld I

which was dominated by the Mensheviks (left wing Zionist parties as

€.9. the Poalei Zion and also the Bundists, despite their sharp opposi-

lron to all forms of political Zionism); (3) non-Zionist groups of Ortho-dox or Territorialist orientation, i.e. parties who saw the future of the

Jèws inside Russia and favored a program of national or cultural au-

ionomy 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 withor active in Jewish life."6

- 'SØell aware of this fact, the newly established People's Commissari-

at of National Affairs, presided over by Stalin, established a Jewishsection, headed by Simon Dimanstein. To make up for the lack of Com-

munists 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, DerEmes (the Truth) raised numerous problems because of the lack of na-

tive Yiddish speakers among the Bolsheviks. The Communist Party es-

tablished special branches for its Jewish members, the Jewish Sections

(Yeusektsia. i.e. singular form of Jewish Sections of the CommunistParty).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:TheJewish Sections of the CPSU (Princeton, NJ: Princelon University Press, 1972).

49

The October Revolution did in fact initially improve conditions con-

siderably for the Jews. The new government not only granted them and

all other national minorities - Soviet Russian Jews counted as a sepa-

rate nation - the legal equality ensured by the February Revolution. Italso required all state organs to oppose anti-Semitism. In an announce-

ment published in Izuestia on July 27 (August 9), 1,91.8, the Council ofPeople'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 rein-force 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

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

DekrcU sovetskoi v/ast; Vol. 3 (Moscow: Gosizdat, 1964), p. 93. English translation in: HymanLumer(ed.), V.l.LeninontheJewishQuestion (NewYork: lnternational Publishers, 1974),pp.14142-

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 Jewsthere 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 S7ar, the armies of Denikin and 'Wrangel 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 2,000po$roms. The direct loss of Jewish lives was enormous, easily exceed-

ing 50,000. Together with those who died later from wounds the num-

ber 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 Redr'%.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 there-

;, fore gradually 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

J

10

lbid., p. 135.

SeeGitelman, JewishNationality,pp. 16G-63; SaloWBaron, TheRussianJewsunderTsarsand 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.

For Lenin's attitude towards the Bund see Mario Kessler, Antisemitismus, Zionismus und So-zialismus: Arbeiterbewegung und jüdische Frage im 20. Jahrhundert (Mainz: Decaton, 1993),pp.102-15.

51j,

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 Com-

munist Party. In }y'r;ay 1'91'9 these two organizations combined as the

Komfarband (Communist Alliance), which was accepted into the Com-

munist Party of Russia in August of the same year.

Developments were much the same in Belorussia. A Jewish Commu-

nist 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 Com-

munist 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. Original-

Iy, 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 Geor-

gia were associated with the Russian party. At Minsk in 1'920 the con-

gress of the Bund passed a resolution to this effect'

A strong minority, however, opposed any association with the Rus-

sian CP and the Comintern. The minority's spokesman, Rafail Abram-

cvjch. warned that such a move would sound the Bund's death knell,

since the communist Party was not prepared to accept any independentJewish proletarian political organization. The Bund's attitude to thenational 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 thefuture 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 thisw4rning. Before entering into negotiations to join the Russian Commu-nist Part¡ the Bund insisted on setting up a commission to safeguard itsmember'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 threemonths. Dissolution, however, needed the agreement of the Bund, whichv/as to be obtained at a conference in February 1921.The Russian partoJ the Bund voted 47 to 29 to disband itself.1s

Smaller groups of Bundists did not srop insisting on narional andcultural autonomy under socialist conditions, and continued ro resisrthe victorious regime. As a result, in February 1921 the Bund's Moscow- clubrooms were searched twice, its leading members arrested, and allmaterial found was confiscated. In the same month there were massariests of Bundists in Kiev, Kharkov, Rostov on the Don, Odessa andvitebsk. By the end of March all the Bund's existing organizarions andgroups 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 wasdear to every Bundist".

. 14 Quoted ¡n Bernard K. Johnpoll, The Politics of Futil¡ty: The General Jewish Worker's Bund ofPo I an d, 1 I 1 7-1 943 (lhhaca, NY: Cornelt Un¡versity press, 1 967), p. 1 02.

15 See ibid., p. 103.

16 See ibid.

53

. ft..,..ÊeeÃ4osseilRafes, Ocherki poistoriiBunda(Moscow: Moskovskij rabochij, 1923)'pp.284-ffiq&ìrd[Àgurski, Evreiski rabochiivkommunisticheskomdvìzhenii 1917-1921 gg.(Mos-w ã&*ovskij rabochij, 1 926), pp. 98-1 07.

-*-_----^-"-----n

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 left-

wing 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 Bolshe-

viks adopted to a considerable extent the projects of national autono-

my thar the Austro-Marxisrs and the Bund had elaborated at the begin-

ning of the century and that Lenin had supported aftet 1,9'1.7.18 ,,The

early Bolshevik leaders", Robert \Wistrich wrote' ,,showed proof of

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 cultural-

narional autonomy while outlawing the Bund and other Jewish Socialist

fas well as bourgeois] parties as obsolete remnants of the ancient re-

One temporary consequence of this policy was a flourishing SociaS-

ist Jewish culture. This meant an improvement of the status of theYiddish 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 srarusof an official language in the Ukraine and in Belorussia. At the begin--ning

of the 1930s, there were 339 Yiddish schools in Belorussia and 831in the Ukraine. In Kiev, a Jewish university institute was created. yid-dish literary production began to flourish: 238 titles were published in1928, 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 1920swas on the whole untainted with anti-Semitism. Propaganda againstthe Jewish state was largely left in the hands of Yevsektsia functionar-

"ies. In favor of promoring Yiddish, the Yevsektsia was often responsi-ble for closing down Hebrew schools and publications. By repressingreligion and building a ,,socialist Jewish nation", Jewish tradition andhistory would largely be removed from the public sphere. But plans tocJeate a territorial base for Jewish national existence on an enclosedareain the crimea or in Biro-Bidzhan in the Far East ignored the socialaspirations and spontaneous feelings of Soviet Jewry.21 The cultural lifeof Soviet Jews was directed ,,wirh merhods that resembled those of anenlightened despotism rather than Soviet democracy", as Enzo Traver-so summarized this process.22

A detailed survey of the Jewish policy of the stalinized Communistparty of the Soviet Union lies outside the rank of this brief study. Itshould be noted, however, that Sralin's policy did not officially breakwith the early Soviet hostility towards anti-Semitism.

Vallentine, Mitchell, 1979), pp.273-74. For a detailed discussion see Matthias Vetter, Antise-miten und Bolschewiki: Zum Verháltnis von Sowjetsystem und Judenfeindschaft 1917-1 939(Berlin: Metropol, 1 995).

20 see Enzo Trave rso, The Marxists and the Jewish euestion:The History of a Debate, 1g4s-1943 (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1 994), p. 1SS.

2'l Seee.g.AllanL.Kagedan, TheFormat¡onof JewishTerritoriat tJnits, l924-19S7,ph.D.The-sis (NewYork: Columbia University, 1985); Vetter, Antisem¡ten und Bolschewiki, pp.140-44.

22 Traverso, Maq¡sts, p. 155.

17 lsaac Deutscher, The Prophet outcastTrotsky, 1g2g-1940 (NewYork and oxford: oxford

University Press, 1980), P.514.

18 one of the very few soviet publications of the 1980s which can be regarded as scholarly'

impl¡citly ac¡nowledged this iact. See L.Ya. Dadiani, Kritika ¡deotog¡¡ ¡ praktiki social-sion¡zma

(Moscow: Mysl, 1986) p. 99, and pass¡rn.

19 Robert s.wistrich, ,,Anti-Zionism in the ussR: From Lenin to the soviet Black Hundreds," ldem

é1.1, rn" ten against Zio,n: communism, tsrael and the Middte Easf (London and Totowa, NJ:

--l

55

The fractional struggles within the CPSU of the yeats 1'926-1'927,

when Stalin employed anti-Semitic undertones against Trotsk¡ Kame-

nev 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 pseudo-

Socialist 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 prejudic-

es created by decades of propaganda from Czarist officials and the

Orthodox Church which still ran rampant among the population. Rus-

sian and Ukrainian peasants viewed with undisguised distrust the Jew-

ish 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 Bol-

sheviks, organized in the Yevsektsia' had mounted a particularly in-

tensive and intolerant campaign against Zionism, religion and He-

brew culture, they soon enjoyed a reputation as intolerant careerists.

At the same time taking up such avant-guard forms as Futurism, Jew-

ish intellectuals caused ill-feeling among those Russian colleagues who

clung to cultural traditions 'grown on Russian soil.' Specific disagree-

ments between Jewish and non-Jewish Communists were mixed withgeneral issues. The distrust of every 'alien' was, after all, only a re-

flex 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. yuriLarin 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-Semitismamong trade union members concluded:

Anti-Semitic feeling among workers is spreading mainly in the backwardpart of the working class that has close ties with the countryside, and among

. woman.2s... Many facts reveal the presence of Youth organization and partymembers 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 whohad-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, there-fore, hardly accessible for the vast majority of 'Western readers. A fewyears later the Austrian communist otto Heller wrote Der (Jntergang

'des ludentums, which was marred by the author's unconditional alle-

giance to stalinism. Because this book was translated into French andPolish, it influenced 'Wesrern opinion to a greater exrent. The Jewishquestion had been solved once and for all in the Soviet Union, Hellerwrote.

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

n lsaacDeutscher,TheProphetunarmed:Trotsky, 1921-1929(Newyorkandoxford: oxfordUniversity Press, 1980), p. 259.

24

25

:¿8

Yu. O. Larin, Evrei i antisemitizm v SSSB (Moscow and Leningrad: Gosizdat, 1929), p. i 33_

lbid., p.238.

lbid., p.239.

,l

i

57

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 autono-

mous activities were suppressed. The ideology of 'socialism in a single

country' no longer had any need of the support of culturally indepen-

dent, 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 or-

ganizations were made responsible for this failure to build a Jewishnational homeland. Many of them disappeared in the 'purges' of. L937-1.938.28 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"*The October Revolution caused a marked shift to the left among rele-

vant sections of the Socialist Zionists, organized in the 'Slorld-'llide

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 revo-

lution in the countries where Jewish workers were living, but simulta-

neously encouraging them to emigrate to Palestine and found a Social-

ist 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

27 Otto Heller, Der lJntergang des Judentums: Die Judenfrage/lhre KritiUlhre Lösung durch denSozialismus (Berlin and Vienna: Verlag für Literatur und Politik, 1931), pp' 173-74-

and in Belorussia, perperrated by the 'SØhites, changed the situationfundamentally.'when counter-revolutionaries launched anti-semiticpogroms, the Bolsheviks came to look like saviors of the Jews. Theleading 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 withgreatü force that the destruction of the capitalist sysrem carries with ittheir civil and national redemption... Even Jewish capitalists prefer Leninto Kolchak. Lenin may deprive them of their property but Kolchak willsplit their heads open.3o

The October Revolution and the Civil '$Øar in Russia led to a diver-gènce of political orientarion between the bourgeois General Zionists'ãnd the majority of the Zionist-Socialist parties, among whom the pZ

28

29

See Mario Kessler, Antisemitismus, pp. 1 16-32.

Forthehistoryof thePoaleZionbeforel9lTseeDavidVital, Zionism:TheFomativeYears(New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 'l 982).

was the most important force. one purpose of the Balfour Declarationof November 2, 1917, was to weaken the Marxist elements among theRussian Jews by srrengthening Zionist rendencies. Christopher Sykesal:gues,

in the last phase, before November 1,9t7, it was believed that open Britishsupport for Zionism would detach Russian Jews from the Bolshevik partyand 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 hismemoirs that, besides British aspirations in the Middle East, anorherreason for the adoption of the Balfour Declaration was the belief

30 Quoted in: Anita shapira, ,,Black Night, white snow: Att¡tudes of the palestinian LaborMovement to the Russian Revolution, 1917-i9,. yonathan Frankel (ed.), Studies incontemporaryJewry. 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 bourgeoi-

sie and of misguided intellectuals. The Comintern criticized the illusion

that Palestine was an unpopulated countr¡ only waiting for Jewishimmigration, and anticipated bloody conflicts with the Arabs. It char-

acterized Zionism as a tool of British colonialism and saw Poalei Zion-ism as a petit-bourgeois political movement under a Socialist disguise.33

As a result of these conflicting pressures the Poalei Zionist Party ofRussia, the most important part of the 'SØorld-'SØide Association, began

to split 1.91.9.The 'right'wing under Zeev Abramovich, which included

with Abrahmam Revutsky and Salomon Goldelman two former mem-

bers of the anti-Bolshevik government of the Ukraine, continued todefend the idea of Jewish settlement in Palestine as the only territorywhere a Socialist Jewish state could be established. The left wing under

Alexander Khashin emphasized the necessity of Jewish participation inthe construction of a Socialist society in Soviet Russia as the primaryaim 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 ofjoining 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 Inter-

national 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: Aka-demie-Verlag, 1 994), pp. 1 1 4-23.

Labour and Socialist International (LSI). The remaining left-wing ma-jority converted the \7orld-Wide Alliance PZ into the Jewish Commu-nist IØorld-'SØide Alliance PZ and commissioned Michael Kohn-Eber tonegotiate 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 constitutedbodies. Therefore, Kohn-Eber was accepted only as the representativeof a afflliated organizatíon, the Alliance's Palestinian regional section.3s

He was granted a consultative function at the Second Comintern Con-gress, which took place in Moscow during the Summer of 1920.

Kohn-Eber's rousing speech at the congress, which defined Zionists€ttlements in Palestine as a part of the ,process to productivize the

Jewish masses" and called upon the Comintern to support the ,,possibili-ty of free emigration to Palestine",36 provoked loud objections. Some'Helegates of Jewish origin also criticized Kohn-Eber's skepticism con-cerning the revolutionary potential of the Palestinian Arab national move-ment and his reluctance to agree that the Jewish quesrion could only be

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 JewishState 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

60

See Mario Offenberg, Kommunismus in Palästina: Nation und Klasse in der antikoloniatenRevolution (Meisenheim: Anton Hain, 1975), p. 95. Kohn-Eber survived the Holocaust. After1945 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 inMoskau (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 rela-

tionship 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 mem-

orandum 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 Comin-

tern 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 colo-

nization of Palestine and should accept the famous 21 conditions of

admittance to the Comintern.al Referring to the specific historical condi-

tions of Jewish life in Eastern Europe, the ECCI demanded that each

regional PZ branch should ioin the Communist party as its Jewish sec-

tion, without disputing that party's organizational cohesion.a2 In a circu-

lar letter the PZ leadership misinterpreted this as a fecognition of itsown 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

39 Joel Beinin, ,,The Palestine Communist Party 1919-1948,' MERIP Reorts, No. 55 (March 1977),

p.5.

40 See Allweltlicher Jüdischer Kommunistischer Verband Poale Zion (ed.), Dokumente zurAnschtussaktion an die Kommun¡st¡sche lnternat¡onale (Vienna: FreieTribüne, 1921), pp.54-55 (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'

spokesman Hersch Nagler.aa Because the PZ's ECCI representative, Isi-dore Saar, had used his position as a Consulrative Member ro supporrthe 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 offwhen, at a Danzig conference in June 1922, the majority of the Alliance

- iejected the comintern's condirions for admission. After that decisionthe.comintern issued a proclamation requiring all communist partiesto support the PZ minority which had accepted the demands of theComintern unconditionally. In the future, the PZ would be consideredas a part of the class-enemy.a6 Only in Palestine, a case which cannotbe discussed here, a substantial part of Left-wing Poalei Zionists joined,after years of internal conflicts, the Communist side. Most of theseCommunists remained in Palestine and formed the Palestine Commu-hist Party. Another part decided ro go to the Soviet Union and to parric-ipate in what was known as the 'Building-up of Socialism.' Unforru-nately, only very few of those migrants survived the Stalinist terror ofthe 1930s.a7

- The main reason why it was impossible to reconcile Communismwith Left-wing Zionism was a fundamenral clash of values. \While Com-munists were concerned with international causes, Left-wing Zionistsgave primacy to national aspirations. However, at the beginning of the

- 1.920s, it was axiomatic for Communists ro believe that the approach-ing Socialist revolution would also solve the Jewish question, since the

44 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; HerschNagler, ,,Die Kommunist¡sche lnternationale und die jüdische Arbeiterbewegu ng," tnternatio-nale Pressekorrespondenzllnprekorrl, 1922, No. 1 05, pp. 735-36.

+l

42

See Die Kommun¡st¡sche lnternationale,l 921 , No. 1 I, p. 1 86'

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 lnternalionale, 1922), pp.53, 147-48.

Dokumente,pp.ST-92.43

45

46

47

See Bericht íiber die Tätigkeit, pp. 1 1-'t2.

See lnprekorr, 1 922, No. 148, p. 954.

This was the case with those activists who formed lhe Labor Brigade in order to work in Jewishsettlements 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 inPalestine,Vol.l (Tel Aviv:Tef AvivUniversityPress, 1975), pp. l27-SS.Asmall pZgroupwasallowed to exist in the soviet union until 1928. see Guido G. Goldman, Zionism under sovietRule, 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

The Labour and Socialist International (LSI), founded in May 1923,'ivas the international organization of the Social Democratic partiesuntil tire Second'!Øorld !Var. From the very beginning the LSI was con-fronted with numerous problems. The problem of Jewish emancipationhad been one of the main issues addressed by the international labormovement since the late-nineteenth century. As a radical revolutionarypart¡ the General Jewish'SØorker's Bund of Poland had no choice but tojoin the LSI, since the Bund's conception of national emancipation ofthe Jews was incompatible with the 'assimilationist' perspective of theContmunist International. 'ùüithin the LSI, the Bund was also confront-ed with the activities of left-wing Zionists. All these constellations led

to debates and conflicts.

The Bund and the LSI: Proletarian Emancipation and

National Emancipation

From the time of its founding în 1897 the Bund (at this time operatingin the territories of Russia, Russian Poland, and Lithuania) was con-cerned 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

Socialist International

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. Itsstrength lay in the search for a dialectical synthesis between proletari-

an internationalism and the defense of an oppressed national culture.

,,The Bund's militants," as Enzo Traverso summed up, ,,placed theirinternationalism in a Jewish national tradition; they considered it pos-

sible and necessary to struggle for the liberation of the Russian [andPolish] 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. There-

fore, the Bund left the Second congress of the Russian Social Demo-

cratic'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, delegates ofthe Bund formed the largest single bloc within the Russian delegation.z

Four years later, at the Amsterdam congress of the International, theRSDWR the Social Revolutionaries and the Bund sent their own dele-gations to the congress. Each party demanded to be given one of thetwo votes accorded to the Russian section. The Bund refused ChaimZhitlovsky's proposal to establish an independent Jewish secrion, as irdid not define itself as a represenrative of a world-wide Jewish narion,but rather as a Russian Jewish parry, deserving of a vore within theRussian section. Therefore, it requested the International Socialist Bu-reau (ISB) to grant a third vote to the Russian section.

'This request was denied by the ISB, and the Bund therefore claimedthe seat within the Russian section which had also been claimed by theSocial Revolutionaries. A minority of the ISB members, like Victor Adler,supported the Bund's demand. Even after the Bund's merger with theRSDWP 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 theother parties represented in the International, and had some impact onmatters of direct concern to it, such as the debates within the Interna-tional on emigration and immigration. Respecr for the Bund, and thelong standing ties it had already established with other socialist partiesin the International by 1,907, also played a role ... when rhe Interna-tional was confronted with requests for admission from other Jewishsocialist parties i. e. the Zionist Socialist nØorker's Party ... , the JewishSocialist'\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

Enzo Traverso, The Marxists and the Jewish Question:The History of a Debate, 1843-1943(Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1994), p. 100.

See Ezra Mendelsohn, ,,The Jewish Socialist Movement and the Second lnternational:TheStruggle for Recognition," Jewish Social Studies, Vol. XXVI (1964), No. g, pp. 131-4b; MarioKessler, Zionismus und internationale Arbeiterbewegung 1894 b¡s 1933 (Bertin: AkademieVerlag, 1994), pp. 85-100;Jack Jacobs, ,,Die Sozialistische lnternationale, der Antisemitismusund die jüdisch-sozialislischen Parteien des Russischen Reiches", Wladislaw Hedeler/Ma-rio Kessler/Gert Schäfer (eds.), Ausblicke auf das vergangene Jahrhundert: Die potitik derinternationalen 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 tothe same rights as proletarians of other nationalities. The Bund react-

ing 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, con-

cerned only with ,,political" issues, disregarding national interests. Noextraterritorial 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 therebygained 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 Interna-tional, demanding national representation for the Jewish proletariatwithin the framework of an independent section. FinallS in 1911, the

Poalei Zion and the two other parties, the Zionist-Socialists and the

Jewish Socialist 'SØorker's Part¡ addressed a joint appeal to the ISB

that emphasized the national character of the Jewish people, and itshistorical and psychological unity. The appeal was not successful be-

cause of the position taken by the Bund and because of the ongoingrefusal of the International to accept extraterritorial parties.T

See W. Medem, ,,Ein national¡siischer Vorschlag," Die Neue Zeit,Vol. XXVlll/2 (1910), pp. 748-51.

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 demisère: thistoire du mouvement ouvrier juif en Europe, Vol. 1 (Paris: Maspéro, 1984), pp.229-30.

See Mendelsohn,,,Jewish Socialist Movement," p. 144.

Opposition to Zionism and to Bolshevism:

The Bund and the International Social DemocraticMovement Between the'Sflorld'ìlars

The Bund belonged to those segments of the International which op-posed the war in 1,91,4. lt continued to oppose Zionist representationwithin the ISB to which the Poalei Zion was admitted in 1.91.6.8In De-

cember 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

" same elementary rights of tolerance, freedom of residence and trade and

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 Jewsto 'return' to Palestine and to the character of the 'Free State' which itendorsed, was essentially favorable to Zionism and constituted the firstofficial support of Zionist aspirations given by a British political party.

The Bund reacted promptly. Its spokesman, Henryk Erlich, protest-

ed sharply during a meeting with British Labour politicians against this

passage of the so-called Henderson-'Webb Declaration. He underlinedthe Bund's demand for equal rights for the Jews and emphasized thatthe party ought to add guarantee of national-cultural autonomy. Theestablishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, as Erlich pointed out, would

Io

See Tartakower, ,,Geschichte," No. 1 1 , p. 642.

Quoted from Gideon Shimoni, ,,Poalei Zion: A Zionist Transplant in Britain (1 905*1 945)," Pe-rerY. Medding (ed.), Sfudles rn Contemporary Jewry,Vol.ll (Bloomington: University of lndia-na Press, 1986),p.232.

69

mean that the Arab majority there would fall under the domination of a

handful of Jewish chauvinists. The statement of the Labour Part¡ Er-

lich pointed out, had an imperialistic odor. Moreover, a Jewish state in

the Middle East would endanger the Jewish struggle for equal civilrights 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 reallymeant.10

The Bund's rejection of the plan to re-establish the Second Interna-

tional after the First'Víorld rùlar did not surprise anyone. The bulk ofthose Bundists who remained outside the Soviet Republic after 1'91'7

eventually opposed even more strongly the Bolshevik project of estab-

lishing a Third, Communist International. Inside Russia, the majorityof 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 mur-

derous pogroms, many Russian and Ukrainian Jews saw in the Red

Army their sole hope of salvation, and began therefore gradually tomove 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 de-

struction 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 success-

ful.11 The Bund in Poland also split. The pro-Soviet minority constitut-

ed itself as the Kornbund (Communist Bund) and, together with the pro-

Communist offspring of the PoaleiZíon, joined the Comintern between1921 and1923.

The Jewish llorker's Bund of Poland decided not ro join the LSIwhich was founded in May 1.923 in Hamburg as a successor ro theSecond International. Thus, unlike most of the forces, which until thenwere united in the Vienna Union (the so-called Second-and-a-half-Inter-national), the Bund remained independent of both of the two majorcamps in the international labor movement in the 1920s: the Commu-nist and the Social Democratic Internationals. Very few other worke¡'sparties, of which the Norwegian \Øorker's Party was the most influen-tial, adopted a parallel stance. Nevertheless, the Bundist leaders com-mented critically on the policy of the LSI.

The two central issues on the LSI agenda which we¡e of concern rothe Bund were the attitude of the international labor movemenr ro-'ivards Zionism and the prospects of the Jews in Palestine. As in theyears tefore 1.91.4, the Bund was in strict opposition to Zionism ingeneral and to the Poalei Zion in particular. This attitude was clearlysummed up in a letter by Henryk Erlich to Friedrich Adler, rhe secre-

tary 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, theBelgian Socialist, and the Frenchman Léon Blum.12 Vandervelde was a

member of a delegation of prominent LSI representatives who tried toinform the International about the situation of Polish workers underthe Pilsudski regime. Erlich criticized Vandervelde, ,,who held the man-date of the International as a whole," for having thought ,,it possible toset himself in blunt opposition to the Jewish working class of Poland,"and for acting against the expressed will of the Polish secrion of theInternational. the PPS.

AryehGelbard, DerjüdischeArbeiterbundBußlandsimRevolutionsiahrl9lT(Vienna: Eu-ropa-Verlag, 1 982), pp.65-66.

See the essay,,The Russian Revolution and the Eastern European Jewish Workels Move-ment" in this volume.

70

---------1

li

'12 All quotat¡ons from Erlich's letter to Adler, dated September 24, 1929, are from: ArchiwumLewicy Polskiej (ALP), Warsaw, ll Miedzynarodówka, Sygn. 150/lV-25 h, pp. 169-72. TheGerman version of this letter can be found in: lnternationaal lnstituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis(llSG), Amsterdam, LSI Archives, No.356, pp.3-7.

71,

Knowing that Vandervelde had expressed his support for Zionism ingeneral and for labor Zionism in Palestine in particular,l3 Erlich, accom-

panied by Mieczyslaw Niedzalkowski, said to Vandervelde right afterhis arrival in Warsaw:

It is very 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'Warsaw to have a friendly discussion with us in a closed meeting we are

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 withyour pro-Zionist demonstration. In Poland there is no other Jewish Socialism

than the 'Bund'. \7e represent the great majority of the Jewish workingclass of Poland. Anything in the ranks of the Jewish workers means anti-

Zionist. The so-called'Jewish Socialists' (Poale Zion), who are affiliated to

the Socialist International are an absolute cipher in Poland.

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

same time. 1ü7hat would you say if a prominent member of the Internatio-

nal were to come to Brussels and take part there in a demonstration infavour of the Liberal or the Catholic oartv?

At the time the Bund and the PPS had formed a bloc for the local elec-

tions in Tarnow. ,,It was precisely at this time," Erlich continued, ,,thatComrade Vandervelde thought it reasonable, in spite of the Polish So-

cialist Party and the 'Bund', to give in effect an invitation to the Jewish

as he had reported to Adler, insisted to Vandervelde:

bourgeois politicians, and to announce publicly his enthusiasm for Zi-onism."

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] as-

s,rred that the Rabbis and the Jewish money-bags that they could fullycount upon the support of the Socialist International ... A greâter insultto 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 Pales-

tine, 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

ïor ye-ars.

In an appendix to the above-mentioned letter, Erlich asked:

'llho is to blame for all of these tragic events? It is certain that British

- Imperialism which has exclusively followed its own interests in Palestine,

is playing an 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 Jewishcolonization in Palestine a scapegoat, a lightning conductor for the anger

of the Arabs.

He concluded:

'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.

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 enPalestine (Paris: Rieder, 1929), German ed.: Schaffendes Palástina(Dresden: Carl ReissnerVerlag,1930).

73

This characterization of the August events was quite similar to the firststatements made on this issue by the Palestinian Communist Party. The

outbreak of the disturbances came as a complete surprise to the leader-

ship 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 imperialistprovocation, and indicated that Britain, afraid of the possible unity ofArab 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 work-ers to stop the fratricide.16 Joseph Berger-Barzilai, the deputy secretary

of the PCP, characterized the events both as a ,,pogrom" and a ,,generaIArab uprising."lTBut only the latter dimension was considered in the

statement on the events of 1,929 issued by the Political Secretariat ofthe ECCI.l8

Unlike the Comintern, the LSI did not issue an official resolutionabout the Palestine events,- but Friedrich Adler made his negative atti-tude 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 inthe Struggle for lnternat¡onalísm (London: lthaca Press, 1979), p. 18.

1 6 See Mario Kessler, ,,Die Augustereignisse 1929 in Palästina, die KP Palästinas und die Kom-mun¡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,No. 86, p.2092.

18 See,,Resolution des Politsekretar¡als des EKKI zur Aufstandsbewegung in Arabistan," /npre-korr,1930, No. 1 1, pp.258-61.

19 See Adler's letter to Marc Jarblum, January 30, 1930, in: ALB 150/lV-26, pp. l0-1 1 ; llSG, LSIArchives, No.355, pp. 32-33.

proletariat outside Palestine, and you should not be surprised if misunder-

standings 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,

-_which stressed ,,the importance of winning over also the Jewish Bund

for close co-operation with the other socialist parties of Poland" andinstructed 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 withyour [the Bund's] opinion." However, they ,,would in no way be isolat-ed. in the LSI." In contrast, the Bund's entering into the International,,would strengthen precisely those parties whose views closely approx-imate to your [the Bund's] own." Adler certainly had in mind his own

þarty, the Austrian Social Democraric ÏØorker's Party (SDAPö¡.zrErlich responded to Adler on November B. He informed him that

Adler's letter arrived just when the Bund's Party Committee was meet-ing. The meeting's agenda included a proposal to call an extraordinaryp.afty conference to decide upon the affiliation of the Bund to the LSI.During this discussion, Erlich informed the Committee of the contenrsof the letters between the two politicians, and a resolution was passed,

which stated: ,,The Central Committee is instructed to place the ques-Ition-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'sleadership demonstrated that it still had to convince significant por-tions of the party membership that afÍlliation with the LSI was desir-able. 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.

20

21

22

Adler to Erl¡ch, October 15, 1929, ALB 150/lV-25 h, p. 13; llSG, LSI Archives, No.356, p.8.

tbid.

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 in-ternational worker's organization which both opposed Social Democ-

racy and Communism while endorsing a left-wing socialist perspec-

tive.23

The relationship between the Bund and the PPS improved consider-

ably when the PPS sent the editor of its daily paper Robotniþ. as itsdelegate 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 todiscuss and to decide the question of affiliation with the LSI. By amargin of 60 to 43 the Bund voted in favor of affiliation. The minority,it was reported, was embittered and refused to accept minority repre-sentation on the presidium.2a

The Bund's resolution on affiliation stated that the Comintern ,,isideologically bankrupt and plays a deleterious role in the labour move-

ment; 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] So-

cialist 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 ma-

jorit¡ declared that an LSI membership would not mean ideologicalcapitulation ,,'Vle remain as much opposed to reformism as to Commu-nism."26 With the exception of only one delegate the minority tempo-

rarily left the conference, but came back soon to prevent a split of the

23 See Peretz Merchav, Linkssozialismus in Europa zwischen den Weltkriegen (Yienna: Euro-pa-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

organization. Erlich repeated that the supporters of affiliation would,,make no effort to create any illusions about the [Labour and] SocialistInternational ... we see all of its errors."27

The Bund confirmed this attitude during the following years. Itspolitical 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 pafi-ner'in the struggle for Socialism. The Bund accepted the dictatorship ofthe proletariat as a temporary stage after the revolution, insofar as itsorgans could be controlled by the masses.28 It opposed the popular frontpolicy inaugurated by the Comintern and emphasized the unity of allsocialist forces. The Bund protested openly and clearly against theMoscow show trials which annihilated the elite of the Bolshevik leader-

ship. It demasked the '!Øorld Congress of Jewish Culture held in Paris*1937 as a Stalinist manoeuvre and a ,,mish-mash" which even includedsome clerical rabbis.2e

Through this radical criticism the Bund became one of the more left-ist parties within the LSI. The revolutionary socialism of the Bund layo-utside the social-democratic mainstream of the late 1930s. The Bundhad obviously much more in common with those radical socialist and

communist tendencies outside the two Internationals, the German exilegroups KPDO (Kommunistischen Partei Deutschlands-Opposition) and

" SAPD (Sozialistische Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands), or the Polish Bolshe-

vik-Leninists, who were strongly influenced by Leon Trotsky and otherMarxist dissidents. All of the parties, segments and fractions of the Jew-ish labor movement in Poland were finally exterminated by the mosthorrible enemy of Socialism and of humankind: by German Nazism which

' brought the history of the Jewish'Worker's Bund in Poland to a bloodyend.

z5

¿o

du Bund: Un mouvement révolutionnaire jurï(Paris: Payot, 1995), pp. 363-64.

Der veker, lX, June 28, 1 930, pp. 1 0-1 1 , quoied in: Johnpoll, Polítics, p.187 .

Quoted ibid., p. 188 (from the same source).

27

28

Nayerfolkstsaßung June 6, 1930, quoted in: lbid., p. 189.

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

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 positionswithin the left and to Trotsky's concern with the national question ingeneral.3

Trotsky's attitude towards the Jewish Question was the same as

that of the majority of the ,,assimilated" Jewish revolutionaries of Rus-

sia at the turn of the twentieth century. At that time the dominantposition was that a worldwide transformation from capitalism to so-

cialism (seen as likely in the predictable future) could eliminate in Rus-

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

Trotsky to Vladimir Medem, quoted in Robert S. Wistrich, Revolutionary Jews from Marx toIrotsky(London: Harrap, 1 976), p. 1 89.

See also my essays:,,Trotzki über Antisemitismus, Zionismus und die Perspekt¡ven der jüdi-schen Frage,"Theodor Bergmann and Gert Schäfer (eds.), LeoTrotzki: Kritiker und Verteidigerder Sowjetgesellschaft(Mainz: Decaton, 1993), pp.307-12, and ,,Leon Trotsky's Position onAnti-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 prac-

tical 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 itwas 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 con-

cept that the Jewish Question could and would be resolved in those

countries where Jews were presently living and nor in Palestine. Thusthe emigration proposed by the Zionists could not be a substitute forthe struggle for Jewish emancipation within their respecrive counrries.

The Young Trotsky and Political Zionism

Leon Trolsky's general attitude towards the Jewish quest¡on has been d¡scussed by JosephNevada, Trotsky and the Jews (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America,1972)iYech¡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:ZurGeschichte 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 topariy 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).

From the point of view of all its socialist critics in 1903, the fundamen-tal differences within the Zionist movemenr would soon provoke a de-

cisive crisis. At the time of the Sixth Zionist congress in Basle therewere sharp contradictions between the majorit¡ who saw Palestine as

the only territory that could bring about a ¡esolution to the JewishQuestion, and a minorit¡ who saw alternatives in British East Africaoi in Argentina. Although Trotsky was never a Bundist he agreed withthe 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: thereactionary dream, here referring to Theodor Herzl as of a ,,shamelessadventurer." Trotsky'wrote: ,,IHerzl promised Palestine but he couldnot deliver it fto the Zionists]." The effect of the proposal at rhe Zíon-ist congress would plunge the movement into a crisis from which itcould not recover. ,,It is impossible," Trotsky pointed out, ,,to keepZionism alive by this kind of trickery. Zionism has exhausred its miser-able contents ... Tens of intriguers and hundreds of simpletons may yet

f' continue to support Herzl's adventures, but Zionism as a movement is

already doomed to losing all rights ro existence in the future." ForTrotsky this was ,,as clear as midday."s

However, a Zionist left, Trotsky predicted, would inevitably find itsway into the revolutionary movement. For the rest of Zionism the Bundwould become its political home. Trotsky felt that the Bund, althoughanti-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 bequite 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 fore-see the factthat a future Zionist left, specifically the Poale Zion, wouldchallenge the Bund's position of anti-Zionism and 'Diaspora national-ism.'

Blind Allevs and the Consequences

Three decades later Trotsky was to pay similar atrention to Zionism.Until that time he was only occasionally involved in specifically Jewishproblems: as during the revolution of 1905,6 during the anti-Semiticriots in Rumania in 1.91"3,7 and with the Beilis affair (in which a Jewishhandyman wâs accused of ritual murder in Kiev) in the same year.Trotsky depicted the affair as being reminiscent of a medieval trialcourt presided over by monarchist reactionaries in an atmosphere ofpogromist nationalism. The atavistic prejudices and medieval supersti-tions revealed to him the immediate fall of the Czarist regime.s

As architect of the October insurrection Trotsky paid little atten-tion to anti-Semitism and Jewish matters. However, the question arosewhen Lenin offered him the post of Commissar for Home Affairs in thefirst Soviet government. Trotsky declined on the grounds that this wouldplay into the hands of the anti-Semitic counter-revolutionaries. Lenin'sangry reply, as recorded by Trotsk¡ was to say: ,,Iüe are having a greatinternational revolution; of what importance are such trifles?" But he

backed down and accepted the idea that Trotsky should head the inrerna-

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 him-self with the administrative aspects of the Jewish question. Trotskysaw that Jews were conspicuous as local Commissars and secret police-

men. He favored a greatü number of them at the battle front to counter

chauvinist agitation within the Red Army:

I suggest that the Jewish battalions enter those regiments where there are

also battalions of other nationalities. In this way we can avoid the chauvin-

. 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 ofa new anti-Semitism in Soviet Russia.l2 He was shattered, therefore,when in 1.926 the first intimations reached him that his Jewish originhad 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-

6 For Trotsky's impressive description of the pogroms see his , Rußland in der Revolution' (Dres-den, 1905), pp. 111ff.; 2nd ed.: Die russische Revolution 1905 (znd ed. Bertin: Verlag derKommunist¡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

9 See idem [Leo Trotzki], Mein Leben: Versuch einer Autobiographie (Frankfurt-Main: Fischer,1 981 ), p. 295.

10 SeeSilberner, Kommunisten zurJudenfrage,pp. 103-4.

1 1 Quoled in: Wistrich, Revolutionary Jews, p. 199.

12 See Leo Trotzki, Fragen des Alltagslebens (Hamburg: Hoym, 1 923). Reprinted Berlin: Droege,'1997, pp.65ff.

13 ,,Jews were in fact conspicuous among the Opposition although they were lhere together withthe flower of the non-Jewish intelligentsia and workers. Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Sokol-nikoq Radek, were allJews." lsaac Deutscher, The Prophet Unarmed:Trotsl<y 1921-1929(NewYork and London: Oxford University Press, 1 959), pp.258-59.

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, Zí-noviev and Kamenev were calumniated as agitating against Leninism.Stalin's servants portrayed them as 'rootless cosmopolitans', as peoplewho, not being 'native sons of Mother Russia', naturally did not care

for socialism in one country, i.e. Russia. ,,This hypocrisy was such thatthe 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 anniversarydemonstrations on November 7, 1,927 oppositionists were jumped andbeaten. In a letter to the Politburo of the Communist Party Trotskydemanded an immediate and rigorous investigation of the ,,nLrmerousirregularities, brutalities and pogromist actions" committed during the

demonstrations.lT ,,Most often such attacks were accompanied by BlackHundretist shouts, more specifically, shouts of an anti-Semitic nature -regardless of the nationality of the person being beaten. In a point-by-point repetition of what was seen in JuIy L9L7, when Bolsheviks werebeaten on the streets of Leningrad,ls the most energetic and determinedbehavior was shown by the most Black Hundretist elements."le

It was in defeat and exile that Trotsky was confronted with therising tide of anti-Semitism on a world-scale. Following the riots ofAugust 1929 in Palestine and then, particularly after the establishmentof Fascism in Germany and the new wave of Jewish immigration to

14 The letter is translated ¡n Leon Trolsky, The Challenge ot the Left Opposit¡on, 1926-27, ed.byNaomi Allen and George Saunders (NewYork: Pathfinder Press, 1980), p, a6. Emphasis in theoriginal.

Palestine, the ,,Jewish Question" took on new dimensions. Trotsky was

forced to face these as well as the various proposals, including Zion-ism, 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 whichtheie were head-on clashes between Arab and Jewish militants, repre-sented an uprising of the oppressed Arabs. Trotsky replied that he didnot'know enough about the situation to determine to what extent ,,ele-ments such as national liberationists (anti-imperialists)" were presentand to what degree ,,reactionary Mohammedans and anti-Semitic po-gromists" were involved. Trotsky was also asked as to what extent the

anti-Semitism of German Fascism should compel a different approachto 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 Jewryas 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.

Trotsky emphasized:

t3 See Stephen F. Cohen, Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution: A Political Biography, 1888-1938 (New York: Vintage Books, 1975), pp. 239-40. Bukharin's general criticism of anti-Semitism is not mentioned in a more recent biography, see Wladislaw Hedeler and RuthStoljarowa, Nikolai Buchar¡n: Leben und Werk(Mainz: Decalon, 1993).

lsaac Deutscher, ,,The Russian Revolution and the Jewish Problem," ldem, The Non-JewishJew and Other Essays (London: Merlin Press, 1 981 ), p. 75.

Quoted in Allen (ed.), The Challenge of the Left Oppos¡tion, p.467.

Then Petrograd.

Quoted in Allen (ed.), The Challenge of the Left Opposition, p.469.

to

17

18

19

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 ofworld 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:,,OntheJewishProblem."

85

Hitler's ,,zooIogicaI anti-Semitism" was for Trotsky ,,a chemically puredistillation of the culture of imperialism."2l

After his arrival in Mexico in January 1,937, Trotsky made a num-ber of statements on Zionism, the Palestine question and Jewish affairsunder conditions of the worldwide growth of anti-semitism. In an inrer-view with various Jewish newspaper correspondents he said that

During my youth I rather leaned toward the prognosis that the Jews ofdifferent countries would be assimilated and that the Jewish question wouldthus disappear in a quasi-automatic fashion. The historical development ofthe last quarter of a century has not confirmed this perspective.22

Trotsky added that no nation could normally exist without a commonterritory. Zionism would spring from this very idea. But the facts ofevery passing day would demonstrate that Zionism is incapable of re-

solving 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

that the Jewish question can be resolved within the framework of rottingcapitalism and under the control of British imperialism.23

In July 1,940, one month before his assassination, Trotsky noticed that,despite the growing anti-Zionist policy of the British administration inPalestine:

The attempt to solve the Jewish question through the migration of Jews toPalestine can be seen for what it is, a tragic mockery of the Jewish people.

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 ldem [Leo Trotzki], ,,lmperialismus und Antisemitismus [1940]," lr¡ng Fetscher (ed.), Marxisten

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 Jewishpeople 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 bu-

rea:uc:racy) as the most regressive and reactionary social force' wouldprofit and benefit from the darkest prejudices, including anti-Semitism.

In searching for a scapegoat the bureaucracy would follow the way ofthe 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 anti-

Semitic moods?"25 He wrote:

" 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

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

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

upsurge was not accompanied by the most unbridled chauvinistic passions,

anti-Semitism among them.26

22

23

gegen Antisem¡t¡smus (Hamburg: Hotfmann & Campe, 1974), pp. 189-90.

lrolsky, On the Jewish Question, p.20: ,,lnterview with Jewish Correspondents."

tbid.

86

24

25

¿0

lbid., p. 12: ,,Fragment."

lbid., p. 27 :,,Thermidor and Anti-Semilism."

lbid.,p.26-27.

87

This essay remained unpublished in Trotsky's lifetime - mosr likely todeprive the Nazis of an opportunity for a triumphant propaganda bar-rage.

Trotsky's Prediction of the Holocaust

Much earlier and much more clearly than any other socialist, with thepossible exception of August Thalheimer and Fritz Sternberg,2T Trotskysaw the class nature and deadly destructiveness of Hitler fascism.2sAfter the so-called Kristallnacht he noted in a remarkable and movingpassage 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 Holo-caust. By this time Trotsky favored the migration of the Jews fromEurope, from a continent more and more falling under the shadow ofthe bloody swastika. Even then he criticized as utopian and reactionarythe Zionist program for resolving the Jewish Question although he hadslightly modified his arguments. By now he considered there to exisr a,,Jewish nation" which still lacked a territorial base.30 Palestine ap-peared to him, however, ,,a tragic mirâge", Birobidjan [the Soviet 'Jew-ish Autonomous Region' in the Far East] ,,a bureaucratic farce."3l 'llithin

a socialist federation, however, as he wrote in Thermidor and Anti-Semitism, a Jewish migration could be possible.32 At the time the pros-

pects for assimilation remained open to question for Trotsky. His darkperspective 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

of 'World \War II. Despite its inherent antagonisms it remained power-

ful, more powerful than its opponents could ever have predicted. The

new state of Israel became an example of expanding and growing cap-

italism in the Middle East, with the Kibbutz experiment as a ,,socialistmicro-cosmos in a capitalist macro-cosmos."33 'Within the context ofthe 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-so-

cialists, for those who oppose any form of anti-Semitism and ethnic

discrimination and for the world at large at the beginning of the twen-

ty-first century.

See Jürgen Kaestner, D¡e pol¡tischeTheorie AugustThalheimers(Frankfurt-Main and NewYork: 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.1 981 ).

See ErnestMandel, LeonTrotsl<y:AStudy¡ntheDynam¡cof H¡sThoughf (London:Verso, 1979);also Robert S. Wisltich, Ttotsky: Fate of a Revolutìonary (London: Harrap, 1 976).

Trolsky, On the Jewish Question, p. 29: ,,Letter to American Jews menaced by Fascism and ant¡-Semitism." Emphasis in the orioinal.

30 lbid., p.29: ,,lnterview w¡th Jewish Correspondents."

88

lbid., p. 29: ,,Appeal to American Jews," and ibid., pp. 18-19: ,,Reply lo a Question AboutBirobidian."

lbid., pp. 28-29: ,Thermidor and Anti-Semitism."

Theodor Bergmann, ,,The Replicabil¡ty of the Kibbutz-Experience," Klaus Bartölke, TheodorBergmann, and Ludwig Liegle (eds,), Integrcted Cooperat¡ves in the Industrial Soc¡ety:TheExample of the Kibbufz (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1980), p.227.

89

п

oö

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 in7'927, and then became famous as a tireless writer. His books on the

rise and decline of the 'Weimar 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 politi-cal 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

Heretic between the CampsArthur Rosenberg:

A German version version of this essay: ,,Arthur Rosenberg (1 889-1943): Geschichie und Politikzwischen Berlin und NewYork," was published in: Sachor, Vol. Xl (2001), pp.79-97, and wasreprinted in: Klaus Kinner and Mario Kessler (eds.), Zwischen den Lagern: Linkssozialistenin Deutschland, 1918-1933 (Leipzig: Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung Sachsen, 2003), pp.127-53.

There are several works on Rosenberg, see Helmut Schachenmeyer, Arthur Rosenberg alsVertreter des Historischen Materialismus (Wiesbaden: Harassowilz, 1964) (a pioneeringstudy); 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 fewon the role of social and economic processes

ian character of German Þolitics."3

An Intellectual Life in Imperial Berlin

Arthur Rosenberg was born on December 19, 1,889 into a Jewish mid-dle-class family. His father Georg Henr¡ a salesman, and his motherHelene, both came from the Austrian region of Rosenberg (nowRu.omberok, Slovakia). Both were assimilated, and Arthur and his sis-

ter 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.aIn 1.907, he graduated from the Askanisches Gymnasium, one of Ber-lin's elite schools, with top marks. From 1907 to 1.91.L, he studied an-

cient history and philology at Berlin's Friedrich-rü(/ilhelms University,then the most prestigious institution of higher learning in Germany andCentral Europe.5

Rosenberg became a close associate of his teacher Eduard Meyer,an internationally respected authority on the social history of the an-

cient 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 WolfgangMüller and Gert Schäfer (eds.), Arfhur Rosenberg zwischen alter Geschichte und Zeitgeschich-te, Politik und politischer Bildung (Göttingen and Zürich: Musterschmidt, 1986); Gert Schaefer,,,Arthur Rosenberg: Verfechter revolutionärer Realpolitik," Theodor Bergmann and MarioKessler (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 epolitica (Milano: Franco Angeli, 2000).; Mario Kessler, Arthur Rosenberg: Ein Historiker imZeitalter der Katastophen (1 889-1943) (Cologne etc.: Böhlau, 2003).

3 Georg G. lggers, The German Conception of H¡story:The NationalTraditíon of Histor¡calThoughtfrom Herdertothe Present(Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1983), p.273.

4 The materials of the Guslav Levinstein Foundation are located in the Askanische Oberschu-le Archives.

5 See Humboldt-Univers¡tät zu Berlin, Universitätsarchiv, Akten der Johann-Gustav-Droysen-Stiftung, and Personalakte des nichtbeamteten a. o. Universitätsprofessors Dr. Arthur Rosen-Derg.

6 Rosenberg's letters to Eduard Meyer are located in Meyer's papers at the Archives of the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin.

92

historians who,,focussedin molding the authoritar-

dissertation on U ntersuch ungen zur r ömis cb en Zenturienu erfas sung (In-vestigations into the Roman Centuriate Constitution). In its expanded

version, the thesis was awarded the prize of the Gustav Droysen Foun-

dation 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 multi-volume 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 Etrusþ-

er (The State of the Old Italici: Constitution of the Latini, Osci, and

Etrusci), in which he investigated the forms of government, that pre-

vailed 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 inthe'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 Historyof Alexander the Great, for which he wrote an introduction.e Like many

Germans, Rosenberg became disillusioned with the old social order, whichhad culminated in four years of mutual killing on the European battle-

fields and in the trenches. And like many of his generation, he turned

from German nationalism to socialist internationalism.

7 For Rosenberg's work on ancient history see Volker Losemann, Nationalsozialismus undAntike: 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: Altertumswissen-schaften 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).

8 Some biographers stated that Rosenberg joined the extreme right-wing Vaterlandspartei in1917, to remain a member until the end of the war. See e.g. Francis L. Carslen, ,,Arthur Rosen-berg: Ancient Historian into Leading Communist," quoted from idem, Essays in German H¡stoty(London: Secker & Warburg, 1985), p.296. Rosenberg, however, emphasized, that,,up toNovember 10, 1918, I belonged to no political party or organization." Arthur Rosenberg, /m-perialGermany:The Biríh of the German Republic, 1871-1918(Boston: Beacon Press, 1964),o.Vll.

9 Johann Gustav Droysen, Geschichte Alexanders des Großen, introduct¡on by Dr. Arthur Rosen-berg, with a preface by Sven Hedin (Berlin: R. v. Decker's Verlag, 1917).

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 revolutionarySocialists, [who were] not satisfied with a democratic republic andwished 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 Par-

ty (KPD). His speech at the conference, which marked the unificationof the left wing of the USPD with the KPD, was full of revolutionaryenthusiasm. He exclaimed:,,Comrades! The world-revolutionary situ-ation today is such that the wave is reaching Central Europe. Italy and

Germany are becoming ripe for the decisive battle, a decisive battlethat will have to be waged by us with similar tactics in both coun-tries."11 He stated that the Italian government had not dared to attackthe 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 Stud-

ies 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. InAugust 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 ArthurRosenberg,TheHistoryof theGermanRepublic(NewYork: Russell &Russell, 1965),pp.4-5.

1 1 BerichtüberdieVerhandlungen desVereinigungsparte¡tagesder USPD (Linke) undder KPD

March Action of 1921 and had led to a catastrophe for the Germancommunists, who were largely isolated from the majority of the work-ing people in Germany thereafter. Even the subsequent defeat of the

German communists in the fall of 1923 could not shake his opinion thatGermany was ready for a communist revolution. Thus, he was among

,those who constituted the left opposition around Ruth Fischer and Ark-adij 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 dis-trict. In the same year, he became a member of the Central Committeeat 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 presidi-um. He published extensively in the communist press on problems ofinternational relations.

'SØithin the part¡ Rosenberg was, together with Ruth Fischer and-SØerner

Scholem, one of the main speakers of the ultra-left faction. Insecret sessions at Rosenberg's home the ultra-leftists reported on the

workers' situation in Russia. They asked the Berlin organization tocóntinue to fight with all its energy against state regimentation, thestate party, and the degeneration of Communism, and to build up itsleft wing as independently as possible. Ruth Fischer reported muchIater that ,,the underground organization had certainly delivered ample

reports to the Russian Politburo."laIn 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 inthe,,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 (Cam-bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press., 1948), p. 182.

95

(Spartakusbund¡ (Leipzig and Berlin:Frankes, 1921), pp. 14344.For this part of his activities see his ,,Die Reform des Geschichtsunterrichts," Die neue Erzie-hung,Vol.ll (1920), No. '17, pp.405-10. See also Mario Kessler, ,,Polit¡sche Bildung als'Weg-weiser der Menschheitskultur': Arthur Rosenberg zwischen Universität und Arbeiterbildung(1919-1923),"ManfredWeissbecker(ed.), Rot-roteGespensterinThüringen:Demokratisch-sozialistische 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

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 linewith the Comintern leadership, a ,,relative stabilization" of the capi-

talist world order.16

Rosenberg held his ultra-left position until the f.all of 1.925. Fromthat point, he became gradually more moderate. In the climate of sta-

bilization during the mid-1,920s, he realized that there was no room forrevolutionary 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 ofproletarians; the majority would follow the social democrats, the Cath-

olics, 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 notdeveloped an appropriate political strategy. The malority of the work-ing people would consider the party ,,a herd... of rowdies and put-schists. " 18

15 Rosa Meyer-Levine, lnside German Communism: Memoirs of Party Life in the Weimar Republic(London: Pluto Press, 1977),p.74.

1 6 The critique of Rosenberg, Katz and Scholem of May 3, 1 925 can be found in the Foundationforlhe Archives of the Parties and Mass Organizations of the German Democratic Republic underthe Federal Archives of Germany, Befin (SAPMO-BArch), RY 111213165, pp. 5-€. Forthe contextsee Siegfried Bahne, ,,Zw¡schen 'Luxemburgismus' und 'Stalinismus': Die'ultralinke'Oppositi-on 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 derWeimarer Republik: Sozialgeschichte e¡ner revolutionären Bewegung (Darmstadt: Wissen-schaftliche 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 Realität, VoL 1 : Die Weimarer Zeit (Berlin: Dietz, 1 999); Ben Fowkes, Communism in Germany underthe Weimar Republic (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1984), pp. 129-31 .

17 Rosenberg, The History of the German Republic, p.260.

18 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.

This kind of criticism and self-criticism brought Rosenberg in con-

tact with the faction led by Ernst Thälm ann) a transport worker fromHamburg and one-time supporter of the ultra-left, who now seemed torepresent a more pragmatic current within the KPD membership. Rosen-

berg, 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 dominatedthe"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 distributedbread free to the poorest. He offered his adversaries in the debate atutorial on ancient histor¡ when one of them pointed out that the Em-

þeror,A.ugustus had introduced the turnover tax.1e

Rosenberg's most significant parliamentary activity was his partic-ipation in the work of the committee appointed by the Reichstag toinvestigate the causes of Germany's 1918 defeat. Membership in the

eommittee of Investigation, the fourth committee charged with thistask, 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 De-

cember 2, 1925 on the causes for the collapse of the German army. He

refuted the allegations, which were put forward by naval officers, thatthe Independent Social Democrats had undermined the navy by theiranti-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 ofthe German front. Rosenberg demonstrated that the USPD was far frombeing the revolutionary party depicted in the conservâtive press, butwas rather a mixture of radical and moderate elements. The Spartakus

Group, the radical wing, had no influence on the outbreak of the revo-

lution 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-

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 longerpossible in November 1,91,8, for the people were exhausted and thefront lacked reserves. No government could have changed this state ofaffairs.2o Some time later, the conservative archivist Erich Otto Volk-mann, Rosenberg's counterpart on the committee, claimed that in Ber-lin a revolutionary committee had been formed in October 1918. Rosen-

berg countered that this committee had been unable to act due to itsinternal differences and had been overtaken by events, on which it had

not been able to exercise any influence. He again pointed out that itwas not the revolutionary upheaval that had caused Germany's break-down, because the war had aheady been lost at that time.z1

On April 26, 1,927, Rosenberg left the KPD. In a formal letter, ad-dressed to the party leadership and published in the SPD press one daylater, he made the Communist defeat in China and the subordination ofthe various communist parties under the tutelage of Moscow responsi-

ble for his break.22 He remained an independent deputy of the Reicbs-

tøg. Rosenberg now criticized German communists for their ,,romanticphraseolog¡ which does not constitute the slightest real threat to theexisting political order... Through this romanticism millions of work-ers are prevented from pursuing their interests in a realistic and factualway. The fight against romanticism causes the other tendencies andgroups 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: ,,Thepeculiar nâture of the political development in Germany has caused

empty political claptrap, illusions, and improvisations to play a muchgreatü part here than with other nations. If I am able to help my readers

20 See Dre Ursachen des deutschen Zusammenbruchs im Jahre 1919,Zweite Abteilung, Vol. lV(Berlin: Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft für Politik und Geschichte, 1928), pp. 91 ff.

21 lbid., Vol. V pp. 215 ff.

22 Seehis,,Austrittserklärung,"Vorwärts,April2T,l92T,Thenote,,RosenbergsAbgang,"DieRoteFahne, April28, l927, and the commentary,,Der'parteilose Sozialist'Rosenberg," ibid., April29,1927.

23 Verhandlungen des Re¡chstags. Stenographische Beilchte, Vol.393, p. 1 1 81.

98

in their battle with these fantasies I shall have achieved all that I set

out to accomplish in this book."2a

Historical and Political Writing at the

End of the 'SØeimar 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/olf-

gang, he became a high school teacher at the Köllnisches Gymnasium.This school was influenced by the progressive school reforms undertak-en. by the SPD government of the State of Prussia and by the city coun-cil of Berlin.25 At the same time he also continued to teach as Priuat-dozent at Berlin University. Among his students were '$Øalter Markov,hrkadij Gurland, and Arthur Lehning.26

Besides his teaching, Rosenberg established himself as a writer ofcontemporary 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 republicand a Marxist-influenced pamphlet on democracy and class struggle inancient times. He also published a textbook on Roman history.2T Howev-er, he gained international recognition with his books on the birth of the

German republic and on the history of Bolshevism, which he published in1.928 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 Jahr-hundert 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 - dieTauchaer Straße!": Be¡träge zur Geschichte der ,,Leipziger Volksze¡tung"(Leipzig: Rosa-Luxem-burg-StiftungSachsen, I997),p.300;BertAlena,,,Nachruf:ArthurLehriing(1899-2OO0),1999,No.1,2000, pp.220-24.

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 rö-mischen Geschichte (Betlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1 921 ).

99.:..;|

r,l,':l:|t

::.,7

-;l

Rosenberg's book on the origins of the 'SØeimar Republic was verylargely an outcome of his work in the Committee of Investigation ofGermany's 1,91,8 defeat He rejected the conventional wisdom of boththe right and the left and attempted to develop his own understandingof historical phenomena. For example, he developed a unique theory oftwo ,,revolutions" that took place during the war. He argued that the

first was the establishment of the Hindenburg-Ludendorff de facto mili-tary 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-revolutionaryGerman middle-class which sought to abolish the monarchy. But it was

the actions of the 'Slorkers' and Soldiers' Councils that opened the wayfor the birth of the German republic. A majority within these councils

wanted to combine parliamentary democracy with socialism.It could hardly have surprised Rosenberg that his book was fiercely

condemned by a majority of his colleagues. His former supporter Edu-

ard Meyer, who had turned into an ardent enemy since Rosenberg's

turn to the left, was primarily responsible for blocking Rosenberg'spromotion to a full professorship at Berlin University. With the notable

exceptions of Friedrich Meinecke, Hermann Oncken, Fritz Hartung,and Hans Delbrück, the historical faculty was outspokenly hostile tothe unconventional outsider. Delbrück and Rosenberg had established

quite a good relationship since their cooperation in the parliamentaryCommittee of Investigation, and in 1,929 Rosenberg wrote a remark-able obituary for Delbrück, whose books on military history he consid-

ered ,,an important treasure for socialist proletarian research."28 Afterseveral vain attempts, the social democratic Prussian minister of edu-

cation succeeded in 1930 in promoting Arthur Rosenberg to an extraor-dinary professorship at the universit¡ against the opposition of the

vast majority of the historians.2e

28 ldem, ,,Hans Delbrúck, der Kritiker der Kriegsgeschichle," Dre Gesellschaft,Vol.Y l/2 (Septem-ber, 1929),p.252,reprintedin: ldem, DemokratieundKlassenkampf,pp. 193-20'..

29 See the well-researched study of Andreas Wirsching, ,,Politik und Zeitgeschichte: ArthurRosenberg und die Berliner Philosophische Fakultät 1 914-1933," Historische Zeitschrift,Vol.269 (1 999), No. 3, pp. 561 -602, esp. pp. 582 ff.

100

Rosenberg's History of Bolsheuism, the first serious academic treat-ment of the subject, was based on his political experience as a leadingGerman communist. Nevertheless, he made it clear that he had ,,notwritten this book to please any Party or group," and that he was ,,notconscious of any desire to make 'revelations' or to 'settle accounts'. Those

whó hope to find in this book anecdotes about Stalin and the 'torturechambers' 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 foreach member of the society - through the political action of the mass-

es. 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 privileg-es of the newly aggrandized middle class no less than that of the oldTeudal nobles."31 Democratic ideas were at first purely political, butsocialism 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 revo-

lutionaries. Rosenberg considered the Bolsheviks' doctrine and actions tobe 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 edu-

cated 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 ofgovernment. In the course of time, however, the impossibiliry of entrusting

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 ,,objectivehistorian," armed with ,,counterrevolutionary" aruows, a Russian émi-gré historian saw the book as a propaganda work filled with ,,positivejudgements of the Bolsheviks about themselves."33

Rosenberg was aware that the Soviet leadership, despite its revolu-tionary rhetoric, was sacrificing the cause of the European proletariatfor the state interest of the USSR. He nonetheless regarded Stalin as a

,,well-educated Marxist," as the American visitor Sidney Hook wrotein his memoirs.3a

The rising tide of hatred against Jews in the early 1930s, not least atGerman universities, led Rosenberg to explain the historical roots ofanti-Semitism in Germany. ,,The enmity toward the Jews, which was

aheady characteristic of a large section of German academics beforethe 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. Itdid not need such an ideological buttress."35 Rosenberg ignored the

f.act that a relevant part of the German Jwnkers had favored and spon-

sored the Nazi party since the 1.920s, before it became a politicallydecisive factor in German politics.36

32 lbid., p p.267-68.

33 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¡tera-turzeitung, Vol. 54 (1 933), pp. 583-93.

34 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, Vol. Vll/2 (July, 1930), p. 82,reprinted in: ldem, Demokratie und Klassenkampf, p. 191.

36 See Francis L. Catslen, Gesch¡chte der preußischen Junker(Frankfurt-Main: Suhrkamp, 1 988),pp.174-78.

1,02

Heinrich von Treitschke, the most influential historian in imperialGerman¡ attacked the Jews because he saw in them the embodiment ofmaterialism and liberalism. Rosenberg contended that significant ele-

ments 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 torqgain an innocent world.37

But he was well aware of the fact that anti-Semitism and anti-so-

cialism would come together to intoxicate German societ¡ making itripe 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 profes-

sor at the University of Breslau that Leon Trotsky be granted asylum.

Rosenberg supported this case, writing that ,,the same forces that wantto liquidate academic freedom in Germany today, demonstrated last

year in all clarity fby introducing emergency laws] what they intend todo with all the other rights of the German people, especially of German

working people."38 Just before these lines were published, Hitler be-

came 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'sGermany very soon. On March 30,1,933 he left Berlin with his family.

Traveling via Konstanz, where his wife's relatives lived, he went toZuich. 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

37 Rosenberg,,,TreitschkeunddieJuden,"p.33; idem, DemokratieundKlassenkampf,pp.l9l.

38 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-revolutionarycapitalist, 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 infairness be expected of Cuno that he should pursue a Socialist poli-cY." oo

Rosenberg's History of the German Republic was one of the best

books of any German historian in exile. He emphasized the lack of a

democratic tradition as the main reason why the 1918 revolution did

not succeed:

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

Thus the masses of the German people were totally lacking in practical

experience of managing their own affairs in a responsible manner'

Bureaucratic control of public affairs rested upon a tradition of centuries.

It appeared hardly conceivable that it should be vanquished by a

Historikus [i.e. Rosenberg], Der Faschismus als Massenbewegung(Karlsbad: Graphia, 1934),o.75.

Rosenberg, The History of the Weimar Republìc, p.178.

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 allover Germany in November 1918, hoped to introduce a true democra-cy to the masses along with important economic reforms. Rosenbergwrote,

the enthusiasm for Socialism wâs not the cause but a result of rhe Novem-

. ber Revolution,. . It is true that there was considerable difference of opinron

as to what was to be understood by socialization. On one point, however,

every one wâs agreed: that any form of planned or communal economy' could only be successful if it mobilized the productive masses for active co-

operation. And the organizations by which planned or communal economy

was to be put into force were the Councils.az

But the Majority Socialist officials did not rcalize that Councils andBolshevism were in no sense identical. They felt threatened and dis-turbed by the activity of the Councils among the workers. The Indepen-dent Socialists, however, recognized the significance of the Councils.They wished to establish some form of connection between the Coun-cils and the National Assembly. They would have been content to move

carefully towards socialization, beginning with the nationalization ofthe mines. Rosenberg paid particular attention to Kurt Eisner, Indepen-dent Socialist and head of the short-lived Bavarian Republic.

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

41

42

+0

tbid.,p.22.

lbid., p.24.

lbid., p.28.

105

The militant wing of the German workers' movement, the SpartakusGroup, was largely isolated even within the movement. The Spartakus

leaders, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, had no illusions aboutthe character of the revolution. Unlike most of their adherents theyrealized that the great majority of the German people 'ü/as satisfied forthe 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 ofthe KPD would never have permitted themselves to be used as the tools ofRussian state policy.aa

Confronted with the uprising by the Spartakists, who rejected Luxem-burg's warnings, Noske, Ebert, and Scheidemann suppressed them withthe help of the right-wing paramilitary Free Corps. This was their ,,fa-tal mistake," as Rosenberg pointed out. They could have done so with-out the reactionary troops. The possibility of raising a democratic armywas lost.

The officers of the old army were continually raising further Free Corps,

the nuclei of the democratic forces were left to atroph¡ and very soon the

German Republic had a counter-revolutionary almy led by former imperi-

al officers.as

For Rosenberg, there was not a shred of evidence to prove that theMajority Socialist Representatives of the People desired or agreed tothe murder of Liebknecht and Luxemburg.

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 fanat-

ic nationalist, ,,the German Revolution, and the German Socialist work-

ing class especiall¡ lost the only constructive statesman who had ap-

peared 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

of the working class was carried out systematically and with the greatest

thoroughness by the officers. On the other hand, the volunteer army under

-. the command of former professional officers gre\M more and more extensi-

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, 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

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

general armament of the people would have nipped in the bud any danger

of individual coups, would have secured the eastern frontier against the

44

45

lbid., pp.85-86.

lbid., p.83.

106

46

47

48

lbid., p.86.

lbid., p.93.

lbid., p.89.

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, con-tested by a variety of contemporary writers and is still disputed.so

Rosenberg started writing this book when he was still in Switzer-land. He finished it in 1935 in Liverpool, whose university appointedhim as a lecturer in modern history. ,,In these chaotic days," as Rosen-

berg wrote thankfull¡ the University of Liverpool showed ,,that it is

determined to remain faithful to the fundamental truths of Science andKnowledge without regard for 'race' or political opinion."51 But theuniversity could not give him a tenured position. After his three-yearcontract had ended, Rosenberg left Britain for the United States, thelast stop of his itinerary.

,,Democracy and Socialism":Rosenberq in the United States

Rosenberg visited the United States first in 1935, when he participatedin the Annual Conference of the American Historical Association inPhiladelphia. His colleague Hajo Holborn, like Rosenberg a refugeefrom 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 low-

paid. Rosenberg would, however, be supported by the Emergency Com-mittee in Aid of Displaced Foreign Scholars as well as by the CarlSchurz 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 ofsocial 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 dis-

tinguished between ,,socialist" and ,,bourgeois" democracy. '$Øhile the

first was still nothing but a program, the latter had gone throughdifferent stages. France under Robespierre and the United States un-

der Jefferson were, in Rosenberg's words, formed as ,,social democra-

tiesr",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 underDisraeli stood for the first, the Scandinavian states and Switzerlandfor the second variant. Rosenberg considered the United States untilL890 and the British Dominions as examples of a third form, that ofcolonial democracy. Liberal democracy would successfully reconcileclass antagonisms and would prefer peaceful agreements between the

social forces to violent conflicts.

49

50

lbid., p. 105.

For a supportive position see Francis L. Carsten, Revolution in Central Europe (Berkeley andLondon: University of California Press, 1972), for a contrary position see Heinrich-AugustWinkler, Von der Revolution zur Stabilisierung: Arbe¡ter und Arbeiterbewegung in derWeima-rer Republik 1918 b¡s 1924(Berlin and Bonn:J. H.W. Dietz, 1984).

Rosenberg, The H i story of the Ge rm an Republ ic, p. lX.

Personal communication with Professor Robinton, July 22,2000. ln the late 1930s, severalrefugees from Germany and CenÌral Europe were appointed at Brooklyn College, among them

51

52

108

Hans Morgenthau, Hans Rosenberg, and Feliks Gross. See Munay M. Horowitz, BrooklynCollege:The First Half-Century (NewYork: Brooklyn College Press, 1981), p.75.

The papers of the Emergency Committee are located in the NewYork Public Library Manuscriptand Archives Division (NYPL, MAD), those of the Carl Schuz Foundation atYlVO lnstitute, NewYork. See also Stephan Duggan and Betty Drury, The Rescue of Science and Learning: TheStory 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 excludedfrom 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

In France, Rosenberg pointed out,

an unbroken revolutionary tradition existed only from 1793 to t87t.Thefall of the Commune was also the end of revolutionary democracy. As soon

as this political movement ceased to lead a concrete existence, the political

and historical writers found it difficult to comprehend it. The politicians of

the French bourgeoisie regarded the Commune as an atrocity. The workers,

to be sure, honoured the memory of the Communards as their class

comrades, but when the French labour movement again revived around

1880, it no longer carried on the tradition of the past...

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 ofthe movement of 1848 was still recognized; with inadequate means ând

without success the men of 1848 had aimed at the same goal, which Bis-

marck 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,

not forget that the June struggles of 1848 as

the Commune of 1,871, had taken olace withbly elected by general suffrage:

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 radical labour groups doubted that it would

55 Arthur Rosenberg, Democracy and Socialism: A Contribution to the Political History of the Past150 Years (New York and London: A. A. Knopf, 1 939), pp. 21 8-21 9.

110

ever be possible to defend the true interests of the working people with the

help of general suffrage. In so far as democracy and general suffrage were

considered as necessarily associated factors, this period marks the beginning

of a shalloq vapid interpretation of the concept of democracy, accompanied

by its decline, which has continued up to the present. Democracy was no

_ longer regarded as active self-government by the labouring masses for the

purpose of effecting their political and social emancipation, but only as a

form of political organizatíon, which is characterized by the existence of a

parliament elected by general suffrage, but which otherwise has no positi-

ve value for the masses.56

As a consequence, democracy lost its prestige. The growing antago-

nism between socialism and democracy led to an isolation of the work-ers from the peasants and the middle-class, which was one reason forihe political immobility of the German Social Democracy in August'1.91.4.s7

Marx and Engels had been conscious of the growing divergence be-

tween Socialism and democracy. ,,Marx had demanded a definitive es-

pousal of republicanism from the labour movement in Germany as an

expression of revolutionary opposition to the ruling system of the Ho-henzollerns. Nevertheless during the period of the Second Internationalthis serious problem degenerated to petty questions of tact: whether itwafpermissible for a social democrat to converse with an archduke, toaccept his invitation, or even to attend his funeral."s8 'S7hile Marx and

Engels carried on a ,,realistic revolutionary polic¡" the ,,radicals ofthe Second International abandoned a popular revolutionary policy fora policy more directly concerned with the economic interests and pro-tests of the industrial workers."se

the radical workers couldwell as the suppression ofthe approval of an assem-

co

57

lbid., p.220.

On another occasion, Rosenberg wrote: ,,The contradiction between the practical activity of theSocialist pariies and ultimate Man<ist goal is the basis explanation of the-vacillafions, dissentionsand ditficulties with which the history of the parties down to 1 91 4 is replate." Arthur Rosenberg,,,SocialistParties," Encyclopaed¡aof theSocial Sciences,Vol.XlV(NewYork: Macmillan, 1934),o.215.

ldem, Democracy and Socialism, p. 294.

lbid., pp.294-295.

1,1,r

Òö

b9

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 ofnational 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 misunder-

standings, to say the least, in the mind of both friend and foe.60

But even Marx and Engels ,,failed to recognize that... they were notdealing with individual mistakes within the socialist parties but ratherwith a new type, ând that the average European labour party was basi-

cally different from revolutionary Marxism."61Rosenberg's minor writings of this last period of his life are also

worth mentioning. He advocated a dialog of Marxist and non-MarxistGerman historians in exile.62 After the expected end of the Nazi re-gime, Rosenberg envisaged ,,common efforts" of émigré historians ofall kinds ,,in order to display the new, positive principle of Germanfuture. " 63

After the outbreak of the Second World 'S7ar, Rosenberg wrote an

essay entitled ,,The Soviet-German Pact and the Jews". He pointed outthat ,,the German-Soviet treaty has done an extraordinary service toall the friends of Labour and Democracy as well as to the Jews in thatit has broken the united front of their enemies," by which Rosenberg

meant Nazism, but also British imperialism which favored the Arab

60 lbid., p.295.

61 lbid., p.297.

62 Forthesocial contextseeMarioKessler(ed.),DeutscheHistorikerimExil 1933-1945:Aus-gewählte Studien (Berlin: Metropol, 2005).

63 Arthur Rosenberg,,,Die Aufgabe des Hislor¡kers in der Emigration," Emil Julius Gumbel (ed.),Freie Wissenschaft: Ein Sammelbuch aus der deutschen Emigration (Strasbourg: SebastianBrant, 1 938), p. 21 3.

tL2

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 capitalismand.fascism," between Hitler and ,,the conservative Lords and the bank-ers of the City of London." Chamberlain and Daladier would nov/ re-gard Hitler ,,as the traitor to their class and as the accomplice of Sta-

lin."6a Rosenberg tragically underestimated Stalin's assistance to Hitler'swar efforts, which enabled the Nazi regime to conquer large territorieswhere they persecuted and murdered masses of Jews.

In 1940 Rosenberg's health began to deteriorate rapidly. He suf-fered from cancer. He planned to write a social history of the ancienrNear East and he even started to learn old oriental languages.6s Rosen-

berg 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 ofGerman Communism.ln L940 Rosenberg, Boenheim and Alice Rosen-

feld, the wife of the Socialist politician Kurt Rosenfeld, founded anunabhängige Gruppe deutscher Emigranten (Independent Group ofGerman Emigrants).6ó Rosenberg cooperated with the American Guildfor German Cultural Freedom, one of the refugee organizations.6T Be-

sides that, he established contacts with the left-wing Zionist studenrs'

. federation Auukah (the Torch), and taught history at its summer camp

in Lrbert¡ NY.68

64 ArthurRosenberg,"TheSoviet-German PactandtheJews,"Jeøbh Frontíer,Vol.Vl (1939), No.I, p. 14.

65 For these and the following information see lhe materials at NYPL, MAD, Emergency Committeein Aid of Displaced Foreign Scholars, Box No. 30. His colleague Samuel J. Hurwitz wrote thatRosenberg was,,engaged in the study of Babylonian and Assyrian history. He had an excellentcommand of foreign languages and knew how to decipher cuneiform hieroglyphics." SamuelJ. Hurwitz in his ,,lntroduction" to Rosenberg, A History of Bolshevlsm, p. XlV.

66 See Rosenberg's letters to Kurt R. Grossmann, November 28, 1 939 and January 2, 1 940, andthe circular (Februay|940) in Hoover lnstitution Archives, Sianford, eA, Kurt R. GrossmannCollection. Box No.7. Folder I D: Boenheim.

67 See Deutsches Exilarchiv 1933-1945, Frankfurt-Main, American Guild for German CulturalFreedom/Deutsche Akademie im Exil, F¡les Arthur Rosenberg and Hermann Borchardt (letterRosenberg's to the American Guild, October 24, 1938).

68 See,,Arthur Rosenberg and Avukah," Avukah Student Act¡on,May,1943.

t13

a

t

!,

.Å

':å

.,:"#:tttlt

',,1a&'',:Å.::Å

On June 22, 1941, Rosenberg gave a lecture in which he articulatedhis changed view of Soviet Russia. ,,The totalitaritially the same as the Russian system today," he said, ,,and whether ornot 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 abandonedclass analysis. ,,The position of the capitalists within the state differsfrom 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 economyhas a dictator on the top." From this he argued that the task and dutyof the Jew today is ,,to engage in politics. First, national politics inPalestine, and secondl¡ world politics, to fight fascism - because fas-

cism and totalitarianism are the worst enemies of human principles,especially Jewish principles." In Palestine, the ,,democratic front is rep-

resented by labor, the Histadrut, the Kibbutz. On the other side wehave a nucleus of fascism, the Revisionists... The Revisionists ate an

enemy among us who would undermine the democratic forces amongthe Jews and open the gate to the enemy whenever possible."6e

The next day Rosenberg lectured again. In the meantime, he hadbecome aware of the consequences of the German attack on the Soviet

Union. He did not underestimate the Soviet side. ,,Certainl¡ the Ger-

man economy is very good. On the other hand, the Russian army is notso bad." Rosenberg said that Hitler could not attack the symbol ofworkers' power and at the same time make grandiose promises to the

German workers. ,,Russia had to be attacked as a state, not as a philoso-phy. So in his war proclamation, Hitler does not proclaim against Bol-shevism. 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

69 Arthur Rosenberg, ,,Why Should Jews Have a Political Program," Avukah Cooperative Sum-mer School, Summary of lecture. Unpublished manuscript in NYPL Jewish Division.

70 ldem,,,The War Situation," lb¡d.

't14

ltartan system ls essen-

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, onwhich he still was depending, had not been renewed. In a moving letterto Betty Drur¡ the secretary of the Emergency Committee, he explained

that his ,,situation had turned worse. During the last months, I began tohave pains in my hips and to limp on my right leg. As the pains contin-ually increased, I went to a specialist, and was told that one of mybones 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¡ inspite of my illness to go on with my academic duties as much as possi-

ble. 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 thistreatment, 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 Rosen-

berg managed to get a death benefit of $2,000 for the family fromBrooklyn 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 thatthe students ,,always loved" Arthur Rosenberg ,,and flocked to his classes

and-lectures. He was always a friend and a scholar. He made history aliving subject."73

In his last published essay, ,,'What remains of Karl Marx?," Rosen-

berg 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, BoxNo.30.

Ibid.

Brooklyn College Vanguard, Vol. XXI I (1 943), No. 1 , pp. 1 and 8. For other obituaries see TheNewYorkTimes, February9, 1943; NewYorkerStaats-Zeitung und Herald, February 10, 1943;Avukah Student Action, May 'l 943; Aufbau, February 1 9, 1 943 (Hans Rosenberg).

115

72

supported peaceful reforms within capitalism, if this improved the situationof 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 drawconclusions 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

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 failureof Marxism.Ta

On another occasion, he wrote: ,,The future of socialism thus rests withthe democratic and intellectuallv indeþendent Dartíes of the west."75

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.

The Resistance of Small Socialist Groups

1,1,6

The German Communist Part¡ the KPD, like many of the Comintern,sections, was wracked by factionalism throughout the 1920s. 'When

after 1925 the party was headed by Ernst Thälmann (a transport work-

er from Hamburg), the Swiss Comintern functionary Jules Humbert-

Droz described him as ,,a leader made in Moscow" and an ,,ideal exec-

utor of Russian policy in Germany."2 By the Sixth Comintern Congress

in 1.928, three currents were left within the party. 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 Thalhe-

imer, and became the KPD-Opposition. Between the Thälmann and right-

ist 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 revo-

Iutionary wave' was underway both in Germany and throughout the

world. They also opposed the designation of Social Democrats as Sozial-

faschisten (Social Fascists).3

1 Jointly written with Theodor Bergmann.

2 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

3 See Hermann \Neber, Die Wandlung des deutschen Kommunismus: Die Stalinisierung derKPD,2vols., (Frantdurt-Main: Europäische Verlagsanstalt, 1969); Ossip K. Flechtheim, Die KPD

1,1,7

Against German Fascism'

The Fratricide of the German Labor Movemenr Before 1933

This new theory of 'social Fascism' fell on fertile ground, particularlybecause of the enormous amount of suffering that virtually every socialstratum was subjected to by the Great Depression of the early 1930s.This created widespread desperation and a readiness for violent solu-tions to social problems. The political armosphere, with its deep, grow-ing despair and wild revolutionary illusions, also provided a suitableclimate 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 mostnotorious example of which occurred on Labor Day (May 1) of 1929.|thad been customary in Berlin, on May first, to gathï workers togetherin one big demonstration under the auspices of the trade unions. Thatyear, however, the head of the Berlin police (an SPD member) had for-bidden the demonstration, though the KPD ignored rhe resrriction. Thedemonstrators and the police clashed head-on, and the police fired onthe workers, killing thirty-two and wounding several dozen. The SPD

defended the hard line and did not reprimand the chief of the police.sThe repercussions were very serious. Up to this point, the KPD had

always attempted to draw a line between SPD leaders and rank-and-

¡n der We¡marer Republik (Frankfurt-Main: Europäische Verlagsanstalt, 'l976, f¡rst published1948); Eric D. Weitz, Creating German Communism, 1890-1990: From poputar protest toSocialist 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 Weltkriegzum Bürgerkrieg? Pol¡t¡scher Extremismus in Deutschland und Frankreich 1918-1933/39:Berlin und Paris im Vergleich (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1999); Klaus Kinner, Der deutsche Kom-munismus: Selbstverständnis und Realität,Yol.1: DieWeimarerZeit(Berlin: D¡elz, 1999);ina larger context see David E. Barclay and Eric D. Weilz (eds.\, Between Reform and Revolu-tion: German Socialism and Communism from 1840 to 1990 (NewYork and Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 1998), cited hereafter as Between Reform and Revolut¡on.

4 See Thomas We¡ngartner, Stalin und der Aufstieg Hitlers: Die Deutschlandpolitik der Sowjet-union und der Kommunistischen lnternationale(Berlin: de Gruyter, 1970); Siegfried Bahne, DieKPD 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 Berli-ner Ereignisse von 1929 (Berlin and Bonn: J.H.W. Dietz, 1988). For similar incidents see alsoEve 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 mem-

bers' views more or less agreed with the policy of the leadership, re-

sulting in the new theory that every membef of the Social Democraticparty and every member of the sPD-dominated trade unions were ac-

tive enemies of the cause of the proletariat and the socialist fevolution.

Open conflict with these 'elements' (the maiority of workers and so-

cialist 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 govern-

ment (formed by the SPD and the moderate bourgeois parties of the so-

called '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 fâc-

tories and the Fascists were twins (hence the main enemies of commu-

nisr 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 Commu-

nists as ,,red-varnished Fascists," and believed that the bourgeois de-

mocracy 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 Hein-

rich Brüning, whose government introduced measures openly detrimen-

tal to the conditions of workers and the growing unemployed masses.

6 Forthe SPD policy see Heinrich AugustWinkler, DerWeg in die KatastrophejAlle¡ter und Ar-

be¡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 theReichstag, the German parliament, was dissolved. The new elections inSeptember were a surprising triumph for Hitler. His party won 18.3 percent of the votes and brought 107 Nazi deputies into the Reichstag.TheCommunists 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 Fahnejubilantly declared, ,,but the so-called electoral victory of the Nazis is

only the beginning of their end." A few weeks later, the same newspa-per stated that ,,the '1,4'h of September was the high watershed of theNational Socialist movement in Germany - what follows now can onlyebb and decline."T The Chancellor, Heinrich Brüning, whose govern-ment was largely tolerated by the SPD, was supposed to be fascist. TheKPD slogan of. Volþsreuolution (People's Revolution) was advanced as

the chief strategic slogan of the party - an attempt to ourdo the Nazisin nationalist demagoguery.

When, in the summer of 1931., the Nazi pafty promoted a referen-dum to dismiss the Social Democratic government of Prussia, the larg-est German state, the KPD supported the move, calling it the RoterVolksentscbeid (Red Referendum) and did its best (unsuccessfully as itturned out) to destroy the government in circumstânces where the onlyalternative was a right-wing government including the Nazi party.

In March 1,932, the SPD felt obliged to supporr Field Marshall Paulvon Hindenburg, the reactionary military leader and loser of \ùØorld'War I, in the runoff-election for President. The party justified this mea-sure as the supposed last protecting trench against Hitler. Only eightmonths later, the same Hindenburg made Hitler the chancellor of theGerman Reich in a formally legal coup d'etat.

In November 1.932, on the eve of the Nazi's seizure of power, theKPD found itself in a bloc with the Nazis in supporr of an unofficialtransport worker's strike in Berlin. In some districts, communists andNazis were standing arm in arm collecting money for the RGO (Rezo-

lutionäre Gewerkschaftsopposition or communist trade organization)and the NSBO (Nationalsozialistiscbe Betriebszellenorganisation ortrade union organization of the Nazis). The strike quickly collapsed,

and the KPD was even more politically isolated. In fact, the KPD policyhad strengthened the position of the SPD leadership among the working

- masses. '$7hile the KPD had short-term growth in membership, they did

not grow in political influence or social prestige. Most of the newcom-

ers were no longer steeped in the internationalist and radical demo-

cratic tradition of the pre-war labor movement but were, rather, polit-ically 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 ofNazi ideolog¡ especially its anti-Semitic dimension. The KPD had al-

ïays oppored any kind of anti-Semitism, despite some anti-Semitic feel-

ings among its rank-and-file, and the KPD was sharply critical of Nazi

anti-Semitism. However, in 1930, KPD leader Hermann Remmele wrotea booklet entitled Sòwietstern oder Haþ.enl<reuz? (Soviet Star or Swas-

tika?), in which he wrongly asserted that Nazi anti-Semitism was notgenuine and that Hitler and his accomplices would make a great show

of anti-Semitism but in the long run would amend agreements with

_. Jewish and non-Jewish capitalists alike. \X/hile a number of press re-

ports supported this interpretation, this view did not stop the KPD (main-

ly through the German section of International Red Aid) from helping

victims of anti-Semitism, who were mostly Jewish immigrants fromEastern Europe.e On a few occasions, however, the KPD included anti-

Semitic slogans among its appeals to nationalistic radicals. The SPD

paper Vorwärts reported that Communist delegates on Berlin's CityCouncil had joined with Nazis in shouting,,[o]ut with the Jews!" to

8 See the impressive biography by Wilfr¡ede Otto, Erich Mielke - Biographie: Aufstieg und Falleines Tschekisten (Berlin: Dietz, 2000), pp. 16-17.

9 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. Jahrhun-dert(Mainz:Decaton, 1993), passim; alsoThomas Khaury, An¡rlsemitismusvon links: Kommu-nistische ldeologie, Nationalismus und Antizionismus in der frühen DD,9 (Hamburg: Hambur-ger Edition, 2002), chapter 5: ,,Die KPD in der Weimarer Republik."

121,

Both quotations from lsaac Deutscher, The Prophet Outcast:Trotsky, 1929-1940 (Oxford andNew York: Oxford University Press, 1 980), p. 1 30.

t20

:a.

l)..a/!

,*t;:¿

a:ï

prevent members of the bourgeois parties from being heard.1o 'Slhen in

August 1.930 Die Rote Fahne printed a denunciation of ,,Jewish stock-market jobbers,"11 the SPD accused it of competing with Hitler in the

anti-Jewish fervor.Lz The next day the KPD organ expressed regret forwhat was called a misprint: instead of ,,lobber fuden," it should have

rcad ,,lobber, luden" (stock-market jobbers and Jews) - asserting itscommitment 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 inFrance, Czechoslovakia, and elsewhere, new groups had been formedthat were close to the platforms of Trotsky and of Brandler-Thalhei-mer. The groups were small, but their influence could not be ignored. Inthe international arena, they had briefly forced Stalinism onto the ideo-logical defensive. However, in the Soviet Union the German politicalcatastrophe strengthened Stalin's hand. The establishment of Nazi rulegave new impetus to the Stalinist trend, and the Communist Interna-tional remained loyal and obedient. More than ever, the overwhelmingmajority of Communists saw in Stalin's rule a guarantee against Hit-ler'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 smallleftist groups like the KPD-Opposition (KPDO), SAP (Sozialistische

Arbeiterparlel; Socialist 'SØorker's Party), LO (LinÞe Opposition; LeftOpposition), and the ISK (Internationaler Sozialistiscber Kampfbund;International Socialist Fight's Union).14 To fully understand the impor-

tance and impact of the small leftist groups' active resistance to Ger-

man fascism, one has to look at the early stages of Fascism's rising

wave in the late L920s.

August Thalheimer's Analysis of Fascism

Tie- first full Marxist analysis of German fascism was written by Au-

gust Thalheimer in 7928. He saw in Fascism a qualitatiuely new form

of bourgeois rule. Already in 1.929, four years before Hitler's ascent topower, 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 ofbourgeois-parliamentary democrac¡ but would destroy the same de-

mocracy when in power. In the same year, when the Nazi party was but

a tiny group in the Reichstag, Thalheimer clearly described the obiec-

tives 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]

advocates general disarmament in order to obtain equality in rearmament

15 Gegen den Sf/'om, September 14,'l'929, p.37, quoted from: Martin Kilchen, ,,August Thal-heimer'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

Vorwärts, 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 (BatonRouge, La.: Louisiana State University Press, 1971), p. 'l80.

,,Rotes ABC," Die Rote Fahne, August 27, 1930.

N iewyk, Socrallst, Anti - Se m ite, a n d J ew, p. 1 80.

,,Ein Fehler, ,, Die Rote Fahne, August 28, 1930.

For more recent publications on two of these groups see Theodor Bergmann, ,,Gegen denStrom:" Die Geschichte der Kommunistischen Partei Deutschlands (Opposition),2nd ed.(Hamburg: VSA, 2001); Helmut Arndt and Heinz Niemann , Auf verlorenem Posten? Zur Ge-schichte der Sozialistischen Arbeiterparte¡ (Berlin: Dietz, 1 991 ).

11

12

tó

14

122,

:,7ti¿

4

for itself. Bur it can realíze Íallimperialist rearmament and participation ina new distribution of the [coroniar] world only as a consequence of a newimperialist war. German imperialism prepares for a new imperialist war.17

Thalheimer also analyzed the dual social character of the Fascist move-ment: its mass base consisted of the declassed parts of the middle andworking classes, or the Lumpenproretariat, whire its leaders pushed forthe long-term aims of German imperialism. This combination of inter-ests was achievable only via extensive use of social demagoguery.

Similar Marxist analyses were made somewhat r"t., bf Fritz Stern-berg and Leon Trotsky.lB Trotsky inrerprered the giganiic growth ofNazism as a consequence and response to two central factors: ,,a deepsocial crisis, throwing the petty bourgeois masses off balance, and thelack of a revolurio nary party that wourd today be regarded by thepopular masses as the acknowledged revolutionary leader.,,1s frkeadyin 1929, Thalheimer had warned against the rising wave of Fascismand proposed a strategy of unified struggle for alr working crass orga-nizations, which would attîact the insecure, wavering, and intermedi-ate social layers. Since the KpD readers instead took ih, ,,easy road ofmaking propaganda against the spD, and since the Right wing socialistleaders mistrusted the power of the proretariat and preferred the .less-er evil,' no such united socialist fighting front came into existence,..wrote the Marxist historian Arthur Rosenberg. ,,Arthough the workingclass comprised three-quarters of the entire nation, they were unable tounite either upon their political ideals or their political tactics.,,20

The Surrender of 1-933

The dominant German labor organizations were in total disarray, hav-

ing produced political illusions and ignored the real threat. Both the

large workers' parties fought a bitter internecine struggle for the ideo-

logiôal and organîzational dominance of the working class. They had

rejected all calls by the smaller leftist groups and known leftist individ-

uals to organize a united front. The workers were waiting, in theirusual discipline, for the call from leadership to begin the fight against

Fascism. Labor's surrender, almost without resistance, led to confu-

sion, 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 some-

what to the new rulers. Thus when Hitler declared Labor Day a nation-

al holida¡ Trade Union leaders called upon their members (on April1.9) 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 ofthe 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 ex-

ile in Prague. Others remained and voted for Hitlert ,peace plan" inparliament 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 (Ger-

man Working Front) was proclaimed under Nazi leadership. Employers

were installed as leaders of the Betriebsgemeinschaft (enterprise com-

munity), and the workers were the Gefolgschaft (followers); this was

1,25

17 lbid., p. 19.

18 The best colrections of sternberg's and rrotsky's wr¡tings on Fascism are: Fritz sternberg, Fúrdie Zukunft des soziar,rl_r9, 99. ¡e1oa qeniás eial aBonn, J.H.w. o¡åìr, iòããil iäo r,otrr¡,schriften übet Deutschtand, ed. Herñrur oan¡iei et aì., zvots. lrranrtuir-'r,rrãN,tiiopai."n"vertagsanstart, 197i ); partiar Engrish transration: tãon rrotst<y, inà è;i*ggi" ääåråt Fascismin Germany (London: pluto presi, 19ZS).

19

20

lbid., pp. 13-14.

Arth.ur Rosenbe rg, A History of the German Repubr¡c(Newyork: Russe, & Russer, 1965), 906-07, rirst German edition: Geschichte ¿er ¿euticiàn Þ"prøi* lkuir.oä0, ci"pñ¡ä, 'iæ"di.

s""the essay on Rosenberg in thls volume.

in fact a compulsory organization with zero democratic influence bythe workers. Any negotiations about wages and working conditionsceased.21

This defeat, after so much boasting, paralyzed the big labor organi-zations for quite a while. Only the small groups had understood the

real dangers of Fascism, had prepared their organizations for the fore-

seeable 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 aboutthe political objectives of the Nazis, i.e. describing the fast adaptationto armaments production and the significance of this change: ptepara-tion 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, unit-ing workers of all leftist parties and groups.

One development illustrates the full confusion of the KPD. From1.928 to 1933, the KPD had tried to establish its own Red Unions, com-pelling 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 Deut-sche Arbeitsfront, however, the KPD called its members to join thisentirely undemocratíc organization, which had openly and explicitlydeclared its hierarchical structure. KPD members were asked by theparty to work inside the Deutsche Arbeitsfront and try to conquer lead-

ing positions.

The Nazi Regime erected immense daily hurdles against the under-ground struggle. The control of all public life, via spying and organizedterror, were intensified daily. Immediately after the semi-legal coupd'état of January 30, 1933, concentration camps were established allover German¡ and Hitler's storm-troopers became auxiliary police-men. It was difficult to purchase large quantities of paper, stamps, or

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:CambridgeUniversity Press, 1 995).

t26

typewriters - 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 informa-

tion and communication between exiled leaders and the underground athome. Trusted members settled in adjacent countries and transmitted

,political information from the borders via publications and letters. Some

internationa| organizations supported the underground work, particu-larly the International Transport'SØorkers' Federation under secretaryEdo Fimmen. However when the Nazis occupied the Netherlands in1940, they arrested Fimmen and executed him.

The left-wing groups maintained their political program which in-cluded the revolutionary overthrow of Fascism, the expropriation ofthe capitalist class (which was labeled responsible for the rise and es-

tablishment of Fascism and co-operation with the Fascists), and speak-

ing out in favor of a socialist society. In the case of war, they wouldwork toward defeating their 'own' government - whose demise wouldopen the way for revolutionary change.

The Resistance Begins

Soon after Hitler came to po\À/er, a minority of communist resistance

fighters cooperated with non-communist workers. The most notableoutcome of these efforts was the clandestine organization Neu Begin-

nen (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 workingclass may securely enjoy the fruits of political democracy, while the reality

of power remains in the hands of the possessing class.22

22 Miles (i.e. Walter Loewenheim), Socialism's New Beginning: A Manifesto From the Under-ground Germany (NewYork: League for lndustrial Democracy, 1 934), p. 5. For the conten seeJan Foitzik, Zwischen den Fronten: Zur Politik, Organisation und Funktion linker politischer

1.27

i,t,;

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,: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 inde-pendent Marxists, like those led by Walter Markov in Bonn and by ErnstEngelberg in Berlin. Markov and Engelberg, who became famous histori-ans 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 aimedfor a Sowietdeutschland (Soviet Germany) - a somewhat unusual andunpopular slogan. However in 1935, they decided to establish a popu-lar front together with all non-fascist social forces in and outside ofGermany. The German bourgeoisie was said to include a non-fascistsection that should become a partner in this popular front. All revolu-tionary goals were explicitly discarded: a parliamentary bourgeois de-mocracy became the KPD's official aim. Nevertheless, these progres-sive and democratic capitalists could not be found, neither in Germanynor abroad. The German Popular Front Committee, established in Par-

is, soon dissolved in a quarrel, since some leftists wished to inviteTrotsky's followers, while the KPD labeled them the agents of Fascism.

The KPDO, under its exiled leadership of Heinrich Brandler andAugust Thalheimer, criticized the Moscow show trials of 1936-1938,during which the whole Bolshevik old guard was liquidated. The KPDOalso protested against the Stalin-Hitler-Treaty of August 1.939, explaíningit 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 generalaccount see Hartmut Mehringer, Widerstand und Emigration: Das NS-Regime und seine Gegner(Munich: dtv 1997).

23 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 BaecklnstituteYear Book XLlll (London: Secker & Warburg, 1 998), pp.339-49.

24 On Markov see his memoirs: Revolution im Zeugenstand,ed.lhomas Grimm, ([East] Berlin andWeimar: Aufbau-Verlag, 1989); also Sven Heitkamp, Walter Markov: Ein DDR-Historiker zwi-schen Pa¡leidoktrin und Profession (Leipzig: Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung, 2003); on Engelbergsee Mario Kessler, Exilerfahrung in Wissenschaft und Politik: Hemigrierte Historiker in derfrühen 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 internationalpolitical strategy.

The KPD and the communist parties of 'Süestern Europe were, once

again, entirely confused after the German-Soviet treaty of eternal friend-

ship of September 30, 1.939. Now, by order of Moscow, they had to

contradict their own earlier anti-Fascist propaganda. Hitler now be-

came a promoter of peace, Britain and France became the war-mon-

ger'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 be-

tween 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

the three Baltic states. These occupations and the 'Winter .SØar against

Finland were clearly strategic preparations for the final confrontation

between Hitler's 'Wehrmacht and the Red Army.

Leftist resistance and underground work was guided by a Marxistpolitical analysis and strategy with revolutionary objectives. But their

technological means and methods could not match and compete withthe 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 num-

ber 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 politi-cally unreliable and criminal soldiers, who were then sent to the mostdangerous places in the war.26 Some of them tried to desert, going overto Yugoslav and Greek partisans.

Underground propagandists had to battle the Nazi ideologues, whichhad disposed of the monopoly of legal media, and thus claimed some

temporary and superficial success. Nazi propaganda influenced the moodof those who had no access to alternative sources and critical analyses.

Thus after the early surprising victories of the ,,invincible" GermanWehrmacht, some reveled, believing in a lasting victory, but were sobered

in the wake of crushing defeats in northern Africa (1,942) and Stalin-grad (1,942-1,943). After these military setbacks, workers' acts of resis-

tance intensified (not at least inspired and conducted by activists fromthe small groups). There were at least three trials in which KPDO mem-

bers were sentenced for the second time. Having been jailed once after1.933, they had to lie low after their release because of police supervi-sion. However, when the military situation changed, they resumed theirclandestine 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 Nazidictatorship.

The KPD remained officially legal until March 1933. The party'sCentral Committee issued on January 30, 1,933 (the day of Hitler's nomi-nation as Chancellor), an appeal to the SPD and Trad.e Unions, callingfor a united response in the form of ,,strikes, mass strikes, generalstrike!"28 The KPD recognized that its inability to quickly mobilizeresistance to Hitler's regime was a major defeat, revealing the failureof the ultra-left line of the years prior to 1933.

But this appeal was issued too late and convinced neither the non-Communist workers nor anti-Fascist intellectuals.

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-rankingfunctionaries. The leadership, with the exception of Ernst Thälmann,managed to escape.

, The Nazis were confident that the German labor movement couldnever 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 officiallybanned, as M/as the SPD two months later.

. The building of an illegal network involved decentralization, forwhich the KPD was not prepared. Therefore, political actions, particu-larly by anti-Fascist propagandists, started quite late, in effect by the

iummer of L933. The KPD established a foreign directorate (Auslandsle-

itung) in Paris and a domestic directorate (Inlandsleitung), that illegal-

ly operated in Berlin. Two years later, the majority of the leadership

moved to Moscow. 'Wilhelm Pieck, the acting chairman of the KPD,reported at the Seventh Comintern congress that, in 1,935, of 422 lead-

ing cadres 219 were in German imprisonment,'1,25 had been forced intoext\e, 4L had left the party, and 24 had been murdered.30

As mentioned, the KPD had changed its political line in 1935, sud-

denly 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 Sta-

lin.

29 See Detlev Peukert, Die KPD im Widerstand:Verfolgung und Untergrundarbeit an Rhein undÆuhr(Wuppertal: Peter Hammer, 1980), pp. 110-12; Heinz Kuhnrich, Die KPD im Kampf gegendie faschistische D¡ktatur 1933-1945 (Berlin: [East] Dietz, 1983), p. 30; Allan Merson, Com-munist Besistance in Nazi Germany (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1985), p. 32. For ageneral account see Michael Schneider, Unterm Hakenkreuz: Arbeiter und Arbeiterbewegung1 933 b¡s 1939(Bonn: J.H.W Dietz, 1999); Peter Steinbach and JohánnesTuchel (eds.), Wl-derctand gegen den Nationalsoziaflsmus (Bonn: Bundeszentrale für Politische Bildung, 1994),especially the essays of Klaus-Michael Mallmann, Hartmut Mehr¡nger, Michael Schneider, andMichael Kissener.

30 See Beatrix Herlemann, ,,Communist Resistance Between Comintern Directives and Nazilerror," Between Heform and Revolution, p.362.

1.3'1.

¿o

27

28

Such units were the Division Dirlewanger and Division 999.

For details see Bergmann,,,Gegen den Strom", passim.

Reproduction of the leaflet in Margot Pikarski and Günther Übel (eds.), Die KPD lebt! (låasllBerlin: Dietz, 1980), pp. 125-26.

130

The SPD had been more passive. Those who did not capitulate and

desert socialism tried to maintain friendly contacts and save them-selves 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 ofconfidence in every respect that in all likelihood it will be impossible to

rescue 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 willregain respect through struggle.3l

In a report dated July 1934, Iü/aldemar von Knoeringen, one of theleaders of the social democratic underground struggle, noted a pro-found 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 thehistorian Gerd-Rainer Horn, ,,have eased the road to unity or prepared

the ideological terrain for unity sentiments to gain ground."33 Accord-ing to a Ì|lday 1935 Gestapo report, pro-unity agitation on the part ofSAP 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 Originsof Unity Sentiments in the German Socialist Underground, 1933 to 1936," Between Reform

united front in the Central German, industrial town of Zeitz, several

Thuringian towns, and in Cologne, Germany's fourth largest city. InHanover, 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 ofreconciliation with Hitler ran parallel with intensifying Nazi terror inthé wake of the war, and by 1,940, the clandestine social democraticnetwork was destroyed by the Gestapo.

Underground Work During the ,ÙVar

Some of the leading SPD politicians became more active ín 1,943; as thebreakdown of the Nazi regime came closer, they joined with the emerg-

ing bourgeois resistance. This resistance groups only appeared shortlybefore the end of the'war. After many hesitations, they made their firstattempt to assassinate Hitler on July 20, 1,944.3s It failed, and most ofthe participants of the military and bourgeois conspiracy were execut-

ed. Not a few of them were conservative, anti-Communist, anti-Semit-ic, influenced by Nazi ideolog¡ and some had even been earlier sup-

porters 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 mil-itary defeat In spite of this late awakening, some historians have set

the date of the beginning of resistance to July L944, ignoring the work-ers' resistance that began much earlier and had, from the start, anti-

32

and Revolutíon,p.343.

Quoted in: lb¡d., p.344.

lbid., p.348-49.

t32

34

iJ5

lbid., p.349.

See, among many other works, the books by the East German historian Kurt Finker, Sfauf-fenberg und der 20.Juli(lEasll Berlin: Union-Verlag, 1967, 7th ed. 1989);idem, Graf Moltke undder 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, andLondon:The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1997).

133

fascist and anti-war objectives. For a long time, for example, the cou-rageous 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 programsand the underground work against Nazism, the small leftist groupsproved to be an important alternative to the ineffective targe organíza-tions of the German labor movement, with their extensive politicalmachinery. The latter had misled German workers into waiting in vainfor orders that were never given to fight against Hitler and his accom-plices. After the war, the SPD and KPD were reconstructed with thestrong support of the four allied powers. Both parties, but particularlythe KPD and the East German SED, ignored the sustained, consequen-tial and heroic underground work of the small groups, despite the factthat their political achievement had been in excess of their size.38 If a

political cost-benefit analysis could be assessed, one would see the effi-ciency of the small groups and, conversel¡ the damage done to theIabor movement by the large organizatíons' sense of superiority andneglect of clear warnings. The small groups proved the usefulness ofnon-dogmatic Marxist analysis and offered socialist alternatives. Onecould even say that they saved the German labor movement's ,,soul,"refuting the arguments of Lord Robert Vansittart and Henry Morgenthauwho claimed, during and after'$7orld !üar II, that all Germans suppoft-ed 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. Seehis book: Carl Goerdeler und die deutsche Widerstandsbewegung (Munich: dM 1964), p. 109,first edition 1954, Engl¡sh translation: The German Resistance: Carl Goerdeler's StruggleagainstTyranny (London: Allan & Unwin, 1958). More moderate in his attitude towardscommunists was Hans Rothfels,lhe olhet doyen of West German historical scholarship afterWorld War ll. See his Die deutsche Opposition gegen Hitler (Frankf urVMain: Fischer, 1969),revisededition o1 TheGermanOppositiontoHitler(Hinsdale, lllinois: HenryRegnery, 1948).

See the self-critical reevaluations of Olaf Groehler, ,,Zur Geschichte des deutschen Widersran-des: Leistungen und Defizite," Rainer Eckert et al. (eds.), Krise - Umbruch - Neubeg¡nn: Einekritische 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: Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung Sachsen, 1 999).

38

The Soviet Style of Power in EasternGermany: 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 Ful-

brook has written.2 ,,The focus on repression is not actually very reveal-

ing. 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 ana-

Iyzed and the following question raised: What conclusions can one drawabout the logic of the Soviet style of power in Eastern Germany by

considering changes in that system's methods of rule, particularly itsblend of repression and tolerance? An examination of the ways thatforms 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 andThomas 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 theGDÆ (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; it was also unique in represenring the frontline of the Cold War.

Repression in Stalinist and Post-Stalinist Societies:

fhe Case of Eastern Germany

The function of repression in Soviet-communist systems is indeed a keyquestion in analyzing these models of power. Stalinist societies, such as

the Soviet Union from 1935 to about 1.956, or post-war Easrern Europeup until 1956-1957, were based generally on state surveillance sysremscreated and used by the communist state party to maintain social or-der. In the Soviet Union, this was preceded by the collapse of the par-ty's social and political base - peasants and workers - that it had wonat the beginning of the 1930s. The gradual switch ro organized rerrorwas made possible only by previous changes in party rule. From itsorigins, the Bolshevik party had focussed on creating a party appara-tus, and after the October Revolution of 1.91.7 it established a nornen-klatura system for party and stare positions.a The highest-ranking mem-bers of the party hierarchy began to build a pafty bureaucracy. Thespecific feature of emerging Stalinism was a concentration of power rnthe hands of a few privileged members of this bureaucracy, which be-

came increasingly independent over time. This was accompanied bythe expansion of the state security service that sought to replace volun-tary submission with absolute obedience.

The history of the Socialist Unity Party (the SED) reflects the largerevolution of East German society. It provides an example of how Sovietsystem, developed under strict party control, was transformed into re-gimes geared to gratifying internal needs. lflhat remained constant dur-ing this transformation was the main characteristic of the system: its

3 lbid., p. 11.

4 Some valuable malerials about the nomenklatutasystem in the Soviet Union can be found in:Michael Voslensky, Nomenklatura: Die herrschende Klasse der Sowjetun¡on (Vienna andMunich: 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 theSoviet regime into its opposite.

compulsive nature. However, as Konrad H. Jarausch has pointed out,

the objectives of post-Stalinist party leaders were fuelled by differentmotives, such as the move to a ,,patriarchal" or ,,welfare dictator-ship", 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 partydisciplinary 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-shevized' party of the later years of the 'SØeimar Republic had already

rid itself of dissidents, and the party's exiled members who had sur-

vived 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 chal-

lenges. 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, ,,thehegemony 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-com-

- munist parties, and particularly for the Social Democratic Party (SPD),

the KPD's main opponent within the labor movement.

It was clear from the outset to the Soviet occupying powers that, iftheir 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 desdeutschen Kommunismus: Die Stalinisierung der KPD in der Weimarer Republik, 2Yols.(Frankfurt-Main: Europäische Verlagsanstalt, 1969); Ben Fowkes, Communism in Germanyunder the Weimar Republic (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1984); Klat¡s Kinner, Der deutscheKommunismus: 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 toSocialist State, 1890-1990 (Ptinceton, NJ: Princeton University Press), 1997.

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 .

L37136

prerequisite. However, the unexpected strength of the SPD in the sec-ond half of 1945 complicated the situation for Soviet and German Com-munists alike, and encouraged the KPD ro seek immediate unificationwith the Social Democrats. Hermann \Øeber argues that cadre prob-lems also forced the KPD to develop a parh that would preserve irsclaims to leadership and control. According ro ìüeber, the KPD founditself short of experienced and capable working-class activists to fillthe administration, local governments, and economic institutions ineastern Germany. The new recruits simply had too little education andadministrative experience to carry out the required tasks. At the sametime, the SPD enjoyed much more continuity with prewar labor organi-zations and represented a potential source of administrative talent forthe KPD.8 But the main impetus towards unity was the Soviet desire tocrush the SPD as an active force in East German politics. Also impor-tant was Kurt Schumacher's intransigent line against the Soviets whichposed 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 broughtunder control. However, the pressure to cleanse the pafty of dissentersin no way matched the potential threat posed by the former GermanSocial Democratic Party. Furthermore, the Soviets and their Germanallies were well aware of another potential for resistance: namel¡ thatof SED members who had belonged, before 1933,to leftist socialisr andanti-Stalinist communist groups, such as the Socialist IØorkers Party ofGermany (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

towns, even before Russian or .Slestern armies liberated these places.

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 par-

ticularly disturbed by this situation. In May 1,946, Sergey Tyulpanovand 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 countermea-

òures.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 fac-

tions, " 13

" The SMAD and the SED leadership were particularly vulnerable toattacks on the Soviet Union from independent-minded Communists us-

ing '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

8

ISee Hermann Weber, Geschichte der DDR (Munich: dtv, 1999), p. 71 .

See Dietrich Slarilz, Die Gründung der DDH: Von der sowjet¡schen Besatzungsherrschaft zumsozialistischen Sfaaf (Munich: dtv, 1 995), pp. 120-21; Norman Naimark, The Russians inGermany: A H¡story of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945-1949 (Cambridge; MA, and Lon-don:The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1995), pp.276-77. Schumacher was theleader of the SPD in the three Western zones of Germany.

For fecent literature on these parties see Helmut Arndt and Heinz Niemann, Auf verlorenemPosten? Zur Geschichte der Sozial¡st¡schen Arbeiterpartel (Berlin: Dietz, ,l991

); TheooorBergmann, Gegen den Strom: Die Geschichte der Kommunistischen Partei-Opposition,znded. (Hamburg: VSA, 2001 ).

10

138

11 Among the literature on these committees see Ulrich Borsdorf, Peter Brandt, and Lutz Nietham-mer (eds.), Arbe¡terinitiative 1945. Ant¡faschistische Ausschüsse und Reorganisation derArbeiterbewegung in Deutschland(Wuppertal: Peter HammerVerlag, 1976); Staritz, Geschich-te der DDR, pp. 100-03, and most recently Jürgen Tubbesing, Nationalkomitee'FreiesDeutschland'-Antifaschistischer Block-Einheitspartei: Aspekte der Geschichte der antifaschi-stischen Bewegung in Leipzig (Beucha: Sax-Verlag, 1996).

Rolf Badstübner and Wilfried Loth (eds.), Wilhelm Pieck: Aufzeichnungen zur Deutschland-pol¡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," Da-vid E. Barclay and Eric D.Weitz (eds.), Betvveen Reform and Revolution:German Socialism andCommunísm from 1840 to 199O (NewYork and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 1 998), p.433.

139

t¿

IJ

14

The Soviet local administrators in Thuringia feared that communistand social democratic criticism of the Soviet Union would merge and

lead to an organized platform within the party. They supposed thatsuch 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 Repub-lic, had written in their Cuban exile a number of pamphlets in whichthey drew exactly that conclusion.15 The Soviet military intelligence service 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 function-ar¡ sought to ,,invigorate" socialism by ,,reviving" Lenin's policies.Schmidt even argued that the Soviet Union had abandoned Leninismthrough the policies regarding the Oder-Neisse line as the new German

borderline to Poland; a clear violation of Lenin's ,peace without indem-

nities" polic¡ in Schmidt's eyes.17 There was even a revival of Trotsky-ist 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 adminis-trative instruments to meet internal Dartv threats had to be created.le

1 5 Most nolable of these pamphlets are: Aldebaran [August Thalheimerl, Grundlinien und Grund-begriffe der Weltpolitik nach dem zweiten Weltkrieg, n. p. n. d. 119451; August Thalheimer, ÐrePotsdamer Beschlüsse: Eine marxistische Untersuchung der Deutschlandpolitik der Groß-mächte nach dem 2. Weltkrieg, n. p., 1945. Both pamphlets were, in fact, co-authored byBrandler.

1 6 One of the most active organizers of KPDO underground act¡v¡t¡es, espec¡ally in Thuringia, wasTheodor Bergmann, who had ¡ust returned f rom Swedish exile. See Theodor Bergmann, /mJahrhundert der Katastrophen: Autobiographíe eines kritischen Kommunisten (Hamburg: VSA,

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-

-rial was forwarded to the Counter-Intelligence Committee by infor-

mants 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

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 administra-

tion."2o According to this system, the PPA had to approve all appoint-

ments 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-

mission (ZPKK). Based on rheir JuIy L948 declaration regarding the

,,Purging of hostile and degenerate elements from the party," SED lead-

ers followed the policies dictated by the Cominform and interpreted

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

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'

chenKo-ntroltorganederSEDinderAraUlbricht(Cologneetc:Bóh'lau'2002).

20 Naimark, The Russians in Germany, pp' 46-7.

21 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

in the service of foreign intelligence agencies." This resolution marked lhe increasing process

of Stalinization of all Óommuñist parties, who had merged with Social Democrats after 1945.

141.

17

18

2000), pp.78-79.

See Naimark,,,The Soviets," p. 433.

See the memoirs of one of the most active Trotskyists, who spent many years in Bautzen StatePenitent¡ary Prison: Oskar Hippe, Und unsere Fahn' ¡st rot. Er¡nnerungen an sechzig Jahre inde r Arbeite rbewegung (Hamburg: Juni us, I 979).

1 9 See in detailThomas Klein, Wilfriede Otto, and Peter Grieder, Visionen: Repression und Op-position in der SED (194e-1989), 2 Vols. (Frankfurt-Oder: Frankfurter Oder Editionen, 1 996);

140

the first KPD documents right after the war and was expounded inAnton Ackermann's famous essay of 1946. This policy was now reject-ed.22 Strict disciplinary measures were the most direct strategies ofStalinist control during the purges of 1949-1951. It should be notedthat most of the victims of the proclaimed battles against 'Tito Fas-cism', 'Trotskyism', 'Social Democratism', 'imperialist spies and agents'and, as we see \ater,'Zioníst conspiracies' were not explicitly attackedfor their dissident activiries, but for alleged crimes. They became hos-tages of Stalinist 'disciplinary measures' due to their political past andbecause of changing Soviet foreign policy inrerests, particularly in EastCentral and Southeastern Europe during the early stages of the Cold\X/ar. The most prominent vicrim in the GDR was SED Politburo memberPaul Merker, who was sentenced to a long prison term.23

Some of the most hard-line attacks against these victims came to anend right after Stalin's death on March 5, 1,953, but it was only afterNikita Krushchev's revelations ar rhe 20,h Party Congress in 1956 thatthe repressive system itself was stopped. Open repressive means wereultimately supplanted by an authoritarian rule which was characterizedby 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 hadto fear being confronted by comrades from within their own ranks, as aresult 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 desZK der KPD, June 1 1, 1945)," Lothar Berthold and Ernst Diehl (eds.), Hevotutionärc deutscheParteiprogramme ([East] Berlin: Dietz, 1964), pp. 191-22. See also Anton Ackermann, ,,Gibtes einen besonderen deutschen Weg zum Sozialismus?," Einheit,Vol.I (1946), No. 1, pp.22-п.

the party. Although East Germany did not experience show-trials like

the Rajk, Kostov, and Slánsky spectacles in Budapest' Sofia, and Pra-

gue, the SED was nevertheless forced to deal with the touchy issue ofpast 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 imple-

mented 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 be-

came 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 consis-

tent course of de-Stalinízation that ultimately aimed at the preserva-

tion of the Politburo's power and authority. This phase of reconstruc-

tion 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 em-

phasis on integration, rather than ideological coercion, and developed

24 The trial of the circle of younger intelleciuals around the philosopher Wolfgang Harich exem-plifies this course. Harich, who had openly called for Ulbricht to be deposed, was sentenced tonine years in Bautzen prison. White olhers around him were sentenced too, prom¡nentintellectuals who had been suspected of supporting Harich, like the economists Fritz Behrensand Gunther Kohlmey, and the historian Jürgen Kuczynski, were not sent to jail, as they probably

would have been before 1 956.

1,43

The literature on this top¡c is vast. For a valuable bibliography, which includes works in EasternEuropean languages, see George Hermann Hodos, Schauprozesse: Stal¡n¡stische Säuberun-gen ¡n Osteurcpa 1948-1954,2nd ed. (Berlin: Aufbau Taschenbuch Verlag, 2001 ), pp.343-353.

1.42

more flexible approaches to meeting real needs, insread of pure indoctri-nation. Proof of this trend toward moderation can be seen in administra-tive measures taken to make the judiciary more independent of directparty control. This was accompanied by more realistic youth and eco-nomic policies, and until 1965, by a relative openness towards 'Western

cultural trends, especially in popular music. All of rhese measures wereintended to create a basis for far-reaching economic reforms within theIegal framework of the system. As soon as it became clear that a rebel-lious and uncontrolled current had arisen among East German youth,who followed'Western Beatnik and emerging Hippie counrer-culture, rhistrend toward líberalization was stopped at a plenary session of the Cen-tral Committee in November 1965.2s Similar fears of spontaneous anduncontrolled developments, which might go beyond the limits of the au-thoritarian model of rule, led the SED leadership to stop economic re-forms by the end of the 1960s.26 The clocks were pur back, but nor ro rhepoint where mass repression became once again the basis of the sysrem.The 'czechoslovak crisis' of 1968 provided a precedent for the success ofa double strategy of reintegrating dissidents while removing any poten-tial for opposition through massive intimidation.2T

It should be noted that a policy of rolerance, ar leasr as it was appliedby the SED leadership, characterized principally pre-bourgeois societies.The Edict of Toleration issued by Emperor Joseph II in 1781 guaranteedreligious freedom to Protestants in Austria, but did not grant the Protes-tant church the same rights as the catholic state church. The toleranceedict issued by King Friedrich 'l7ilhelm IV of Prussi a in 1847 should be

viewed in a similar light - namely as political instrumenr of 'enlightenedabsolutism'. For a broader historical perspective, one should emphasizethat 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 Agd e (ed.), Kahlschlag: Das 1 1. Plenum des ZK der sED. studien und Dokumen-fe (Berlin: Aufbau Verlag, 1991).

26 see Jörg Roesler, Zwischen PIan und Markt: Die wirtschaftsreform l96s-1970 in der DDR(Freiburg and Berlin: Haufe, 1990).

27 For this'double strategy'see Lutz Priess et al ., Die sED und der,,prager Frühting" 196g (Ber-lin: 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

-to Palestine was not outlawed, and Zionist agricultural colonizationpfojects, namely on the Crimea, won limited support.2s

After Stalin's death, the limited freedoms granted by party and state

leaders were not guaranteed and could be revoked at any time - as tn

pre-bourgeois societies. How this tolerance actually functioned can be

seen in changing policies towards various ethnic, social, and culturalminorities - particularly towards minorities who had served as scape-

goats under Stalinism and had suffered accordingly.

Policies towards religious minorities (or the religious majority ofihe po-pulation) varied from continued repression in Stalinist Albania to

more measured oppression, such as in Czechoslovakia, or even accom-

modation, as in the GDR or Hungary. In Poland, the state party recog-

nized the importance of the Catholic church and granted it so much

autonomy that one can almost speak of a 'dual power' within the cul-

tural infrastructure of society.2e

Policies towards social and cultural minorities also encompassed a

variety of different approaches. For example, attempts were made toreduce the Jews to a mere religious group and to assimilate the non-

religious 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 inthe long period between Lenin's death and Gorbachev's rise to power.3o

28 SeeMarioKessler, ZionismusundinternationaleArbeiterbewegunglS9T-1933(Berlin:Aka-demieVerlag, 1994), pp. 106-14.

29 Francois Fejlö, A H¡story ol the People's Democracies: Eastern Europe since Stal,n (Harmonds-worth: Penguin Books, 1974), pp. 436-48 offers an overview of religious inslitut¡ons in Eastern andEast 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 uniquecase in the Soviet Communist world. Scholarly attempts to understandthe Holocaust have focused largely on how the international workers'movement, particularly its communist arm, dealt with the Jewish ques-

tion. Communist approaches have emphasized the political and socialdimensions of anti-Semitism and Jewish emancipation, while payinglittle attention to its ethnic and religious components. The uniquenessand irrational nature of the motives behind Auschwitz have largelybeen underestimated in such analyses.

The GDR's policies towards the country's small population of Jewswere, however, largely determined by the Soviet Union. RepressiveStalinist measures towards the Jews, as carried out in the USSR begin-ning in 1.949, were extended, in considerably milder form, ro the GDRin 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 laternot by the SED but by the Soviet leadership, pur a stop to this process.

The Soviet-initiated campaign against'cosmopolitanism' affected Jew-ish and non-Jewish re-immigrants from the tJØest much more than othersegments of the population.3l

At the end of 1952, the Stasi searched Jewish communiry offices andconfiscated files. This led to great fear among many Jews. Five of eightleaders of the Jewish community and over 400 Jews fled to rhe ìØesr atthis time. SED leaders nevertheless refused to stop financial suppoft rothe religious communities, although the Stasi suspeced them of being'agents of our class enemies'. Following Moscow's polic¡ the SED adopt-ed the anti-Semitic rhetoric of the Prague Slánsky trial while simulta-neously suppressing individual outbursts of anti-Semitism in the popula-tion. The series of internâl party investigations, temporary imprisonment,professional difficulties, and degradations, as well as excommunicationsfrom 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'jüdischeFrage' (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-

bers to join ,,the Jewish community." Ffe was also accused of havingpromoted Zionist views during his years of exile in Mexico, as well as

having urged the compensation of those Jews whose property was sto-

len 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.

The conflicts around June 17,1953 pushed the problem of anti-Semit-

ism 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 warrantyTor 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 ofGermany, and new freedoms resulting from changing Soviet policies un-

der Gorbachev, who was decidedly against any form of anti-Semitism.

To pose the problem in a broader context, one should consider thatpolicies of tolerance proved to be difficult to take back, once estab-

lished. 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 nach1945)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 derSBZDDR und ihre Behandlung durch Partei und Sfaaf (Hildesheim: Olms, 1997).

1,47

erance was formulated by the reformers 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.

1.48

The Case of Paul Merker, 1952-1953'Anti-Semitism against a non-Jew:

The attitude towards Jews and Jewish issues during the post-war yearsmust be carefully examined, especially in the country from which theïestru-ction of European Jewry emanated. In that context initial at-tempts to come to terms with the past were emphasized more stronglyin the Soviet Zone of Germany. This explains for why many Jews, whohad survived in Germany or in exile, opted for the GDR as their futurepJace of residence. The political orientation in the Soviet Zone wasshaped by the pre-1933 traditions of the German working class move-ment, and was dominated by its Communist wing. The Socialist UnityParty (SED), which had been in the process of Stalinization since 1948,also-identified itself with the position taken by the Communisr Inrerna-tional (Comintern) for solving the 'Jewish Question': They believedthat in order to defeat Anti-Semitism Jews should give up their Jewishidentity and assimilate into the Communist movement. This movemenrurged Jews to struggle for a classless and socially just society. It wasassumed that any form of Anti-Semitism would fade away, given thatthe Comintern approach explained Anti-Semitism via economic reduc-tionism, i.e. in a truly socialist societ¡ Anti-Semitism would have noclass basis. Zionism was rejected in all of its manifestations.2

1 The following has been summarized from the author's book: Dle sED und die Jueen - zwt-schen Repression und Toleranz: Politische Entwicklungen b¡s 1967 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag,1 995), chapters 2 and 3.

2 Forthe Comintern's attitude towards Zionism and Jewish issues see JackJacobs, On Socrairsfsand ,,The Jewish Question" after Marx (New York and London: New yo¡1k Universitv press,

t49

During the years that followed, Ieading Communist politicians fre-

quently attributed much responsibility for the crimes of National So-

cialism 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 empha-

sized that ,,in every German the awareness and guilt must burn that the

German people bear a significant responsibility for the war and itsconsequences. It was not just Hitler who was responsible for these

crimes against humanity! Partially responsible are also those ten mil-Iion Germans who freely voted for Hitler in 1,932, even though we

Communists warned 'whoever votes for Hitler votes for war!"'3While this declaration of the KPD did not exclude the genocide

against Jews, it did not mention it in any particular way. This was inaccordance with the Soviet line of viewing the Holocaust as only sec-

ondary to the Nazi regime. Yet, during the first post-war years, butonly 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 dur-

ing its first meeting the Berlin governing council of the Victims of Fas-

cism 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 'Arbeitsuer-

tragssünder'.a But we cannot extend the range of 'victims of fascism' so

far. They all suffered much, but they did not fight [the Nazis active-

ly]."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 andthe Jewish Question:The History of a Debate, 1 843-1943 (Allantic Highlands, NJ: Humanit¡esPress, 1994); Shlomo Na'aman, Marxismus und Zionismus (Gerlingen: Bleicher, 1997).

3 Quoted from: Lothar Berthold and Ernst Diehl (eds.), Revolutionäre deutsche Parte¡program-me: Vom Kommunistischen Manifest zum Programm des Sozialismus ([East] Berlin: Dietz,1964), p.193.

4 Persons who are breaking labor contracts.

5 DeutscheVolkszeitung,July3, 1945.

150

Fascism organization. it was decided to include the ,,racially persecutedin the 'category' of... victims of fascism."6

The East German administration provided essenrial moral supportto the Jewish victims of Nazism. This had several practical resuhsalready in the late '1.940s. First of aII, an Association of Victims ofNazisrn had been created, aimed at supporting those who had suffered.T-Second,

in public meetings officials exposed and vigorously condemnedNazi crimes. Third, the administration turned death camps and othersites of atrocities into hallowed grounds which East Germans, particu-larly schoolchildren, were expected to visit.s Fourrh, officials distribut-ed large numbers of books, brochures, radio programs, movies and artworks about Nazi atrocities and the Concentration Camps.e

After his return from Mexican exile in July 1946,Paul Merker, mem-ber of the SED Central Secretariat,l0 supported Jewish survivors of theÏIolocaust and their cause. He frequently reminded Walter Ulbricht,the party's deputy chairman (and de-facto leader), that the SED hadnot produced any specific guidelines for the compensation of the Jewishvictims of fascism. Merker also noted that, as in 1947 in Thuringia, theLiberal Democratic Party had taken the initiative for such actions.ll Aslate as August '1,947 the Central Committee of the SED rejected Merk-er's arguments. This was based on the statement that any collectivecompensations for Jews would only promote anti-Semitism.12 After a

7

lbid., September 25, 1945.

The Association, orVereinigung derVerfolgten des Naziregimes (VVN), was set up in February1947, but ceased to exist in 1953. See Elke Reuter and Detlef Hansel. Das kurze Leben derVVN 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 Nationalsozialismusim Geschichtsunterricht der DDR," lnternationalTertbook Research,Yot. XXll (2000), No. 1, pp.31-48.

For details see Kessler, Die SED und die Juden, pp.37 et seq.

The SEDs leading body. lt was succeeded by the Politburo in 1949.

See Thomas Schület ,,Das Wiedergutmachungsgesetz vom 14. September 1945,", Jahrbuchfür Ant¡semitismusforschung,Vol. ll (Frankfurt-Main and NewYork: Campus, 1993), pp. 118-1 38.

SAPMO-BArch, DY 3O/2/2O2713O, p.3.The abbreviation stands for the Foundation for the Ar-ch¡ves of the Parties and Mass Organizations of the GDR under the Federal Archives ofGermany.

L51.

I10

11

12

rl

rll

t:

t:

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ì:'2

't¿

,.'É

&

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&.,&

considerable debate within the SED, a new policy was put into practiceon October 5, 1949, two days before the founding of the GDR. Thispolicy focused on the individual situation of recognized victims of theNazi regime and offered the survivors significant social programs. Therewas, however, no official position on the questions of restitution andcompensation.13 As it was, the Soviet military administration had is-sued orders (number 124 and 126), which declared all formerly Jewishcompanies which were of particular interest to the Nazi state should be

confiscated as Nazi property. Thus, these companies were excludedfrom any restitution.14

First contacts between Israeli and German officials were establishedduring the Israeli-Arab war of 1.948, when weapons were being airlift-ed from Czechoslovakia to support the Israeli military forces, the Haga-nah. FoIlowing the request of Chaim Yachiel, Israeli representarive inMunich, Julius Meyer, president of the Jewish Communities in the Soviet

Zone of German¡ arranged a meeting between Yachiel and Otto Grote-wohl, co-chairman of the SED. On this occasion, Grotewohl is said tohave expressed the solidarity of the SED with the struggle of the Jewishstate for its independence. He promised a help to take the Jews fromDisplaced Persons Camps in Germany to Israel, although this kind ofcamp did not officially exist in the Soviet Zone. No concrete actionfollowed, since Grotewohl was obviously not given the necessary Sovi-et support.15

One month after the founding of the GDR, Hermann Matern, chairof the internal SED Central Party Control Commission (ZPKK), sent aletter to the SED Party Control Commissions on the local level. TharIetter specified the objectives and tasks necessary to examine the back-ground of leading figures in the state, the parry and the economy. Nora

1 3 See Angelika Timm, Hammer, Zrkel, Davidstern: Das gestörte Verhältnis der DDR zu Zionis-mus und Staat lsrael(Bonn'. Bouvier, 1997), p.66. Cf. also idem, Alles umsonst? Verhandlun-gen zw¡schen der Claims Conlerence und der DDR über'Wiedergutmachung'und Entschä-digung(Berlin: Helle Panke, 1996) (Hefte zur DDR-Gesch¡chte, No.32), pp. I ef seq.; and MarioKessler, Die SED und die Juden, pp.37 et seq.

14 See Schüler, Wiedergutmachungsgeselz, pp. I 31 ef seq.

15 See AngelikaTimm, ,,Assimilation of History:The GDR and the State of lsrael," The JerusalemJournal of lnternational Relat¡ons, Vol. XIV (1 992), No. 1 , p, 38.

ts2

Goldenbogen, an East German historian, has shown in the case of Sax-

ony that the guidelines specifically mentioned the Jews as a group ofparticular 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 alllisted emigrê organizatíons was noted.16 Matern's letter marked the be-

ginning of a whole range of investigations whose results were forwarded

to the ZPKK as well as to specially created commissions for the sake ofcomparison and analysis.

Jewish Communists were among the first victims of the early waves

of inner-party purges ín 1950-1.951, which propelled the Stalinizationof .the SED: The well-known journalist Rudolf Feistmann was pushed

into suicide, his colleague Lex Ende did not survive the ostracism thatwas 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 importantfactor in the check.ups. 'What mattered was whether one came fromWestern exile, as well as what one did, or supposedly did, while having

escaping the Nazis. One exception to this was the questioning of AIex-

ander Abusch through the ZPKK.18

There was an attempt to show some sort of connection betweenAbusch and Noel Field, the unwitting pawn in these political manoeu-

vres, 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 partic-ular conformit¡ and he also admitted contacts to Erica Slallach, Field's

foster child.

to Quoted from: Nora Goldenbogen,,,Antisemitismus und'Säuberungen' in Sachsen (1 949-1953)," Mario Kessler (ed.), Arbe¡terbewegung und Antisemit¡smus: Entvvicklungslinien im 20.Jahrhundert (Bonn: Pahl-Rugenstein Nachf., 1993), p. 126.

For Feistmann see Wolfgang Kiessling, Partner im,,Narrenparadies": Der Freundeskreis umNoel Field und Paul Merker(Berlin: Dietz, 1994), pp.263 et seq-, and Kessler, Die SED unddie Juden,pp.70 etseq. For Ende cf. ibid., pp.70 etseq.

Abusch was a member of the SED Politburo.

. 153

17

18

The contacts bet"¡/een Abusch and Wallach turned out to be purelycoincidental. Abusch delivered a lemer written by '!Øallach in Prague toher former friend Leo Bauer who resided in Berlin. Shortly afrerwards,on August 24, 1,950, Bauer was taken into custody as an ,,enemy of theparty". He was later transferred to the Soviet Union and condemned todeath. 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 hisfirst 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. MaxSens and Hertha Geffke of the ZPKK put Abusch through an interroga-tion in which they looked into the money he collected ,,from Jewisheconomic emigrants" and from selling passports during his exile inMexico, his membership in the German-Jewish Cultural organizatíonMenorab, as well as the fact that he was not a member of the lüdiscbeGemeinde. Also of interest was Abusch's relationship with Leo Zucker-mann, 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 hademphasized during his interrogation: nor since his 18,h birthday has he

,,been interested in Jewish questions, has never written about it, has noexperience with political work within this realm, and [was] even mar-ried to a non-Jew."23

These facts are not as important as the way Abusch chose to dealwith them. He wrote in a spirit of constant apology that, as a youth, ,,Ihad to liberate myself through bitter domestic feuds from the influenceof Judaism" in order to join the working class movement - as if it woulddisgrace 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 im-prisoned and taken to the Soviet Union, was deemed too brief to war-

rant censure.2s Abusch managed to avoid being thrown deeper into the

whiilpool of the purges. He was expelled from the SED Politburo butnçver imprisoned. Later Abusch experienced some degree of rehabilita-tion, insomuch as he became minister for cultural affairs and deputypresident of the Council of Ministers. Yet, Abusch never returned tothe'inner circle of power - the Politburo.

Paul Merker turned out to be a more suitable sacrificial lamb: un-

like 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 Ger-

many foreveï."26 For Merker, restitution ,,was a matter of simple jus-

tice and decenc¡ but also part of an effort to reconstitute German-

Jewish life in postwar Germany."27 This approach also included those

Jews who did not reside in Germany. He also, however, thought criti-cally about the Communists' role regarding the situation of European

Jewiy. ln 1,944 he addressed the shortcomings of the German labormovement 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 derPartei. Biographische und andere Bestände im Zentralen Parteiarchiv der SED in der StiftungArchiv der Parteien und Massenorganisationen der DDR im Bundesarchiv," Jahrbuch fürKommunismusforschung,Vol.1 , (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1993), pp. 312-23. Abusch's officialmemoirs 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 e6e).

26 Paul Merker,,,HitlersAntisemitismusundwir," FreiesDeutschlan4Vol. 1,No. 12,October1944,o. 11.

27 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

19

¿v

21

22

See Leo Bauer's brief reminiscences, ,,Die Partei hat immer recht," Aus Politik und Zeitge-schichte, July 4, 1956, pp.405-13.

See SAPMO-BArch, DY 30, lV 214/11, pp.9 et seg.

Wilhelm Pieck was the President of the GDR.

lbid.,pp.30 etseq.FotZuckermann'sb¡ographyseeWolfgangKiessling, Absturz¡ndenKaltenKrieg (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

dumb",28 for anti-Semitism was ,,akeady at that time much more thanthat. It was an instrument of extreme reaction to educate the peopleinto becoming dumb." Merker emphasized that it was necessary toemphasize this issue, ,,to fight it in unity with all liberal forces", toattack anti-Semitism,,already within the imperialist-capitalist era",and to make this fight an essential component of the struggle for de-mocracy 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 ofthe 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 thevictory over the Nazis, ,,regardless of all previous principles, consider-ations and prejudices, in accord with the wishes of the Jews." In addi-tion, the full civil rights of Jews must be restored in all countries fromwhich they were expelled. He asserred that the complete narional equal-ity of Jews should be recognized in all these countries.3l ,,Though Merk-er did not say so explicitl¡ such views would require the Communists torevise explicitly the denial of Jewish nationhood enshrined in Stalin'sessay 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 news-paper Neues Deutscbland thar ,,the establishment of a Jewish srate with-in a part of Palestine, with progressive ideas and the Socialist aspirarionsof its working class movement, will not remain without consequences forthe reactionary feudal Arab kings, princes, and muftis." Merker empha-sized that the Soviet Union will ,,even permit the Aliyah, the migrationof Soviet Jews to Palestine. The leaders of Soviet Jewry from now are

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 sym-

pathy and active assistance of all progressive forces. Especially the

democratic forces in Germany are compelled to show their sympathy

,and readiness 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-

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 trialshowed how much the Soviet secret apparatus had infiltrated, as Fran-

cois Fejtö pointed out, ,,the East European Communist parties and gov-

ernments, robbing them of their sovereignt¡ paralysing their nerve

centres, and producing a kind of collective pathological condition, com-

pounded of Íeag mistrust, apathy and self-destructiveness from which

it was to take the leaders and their peoples much time and trouble torecovef. tt 36

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

28 August Bebel defined Anti-Semitism as,,Sozialismus des dummen Kerls".This statement wasgiven in a press interview. See Hermann Bahr (ed.), Der Antisemitismus: Ein ¡nternationaleslntervìew(Königstein/Iaunus: JüdischerVerlag, 1979),p.2a (reprintof the lB94edition).Paul Merker, Deutschland: Sein oder Nicht-Sein?, Vo!.2: Das Dritte Reich und sein Ende(Mexico, D. F.: El Libro Libre, 1944), p. 36.

Paul Merker,,,Hitlers Antisemilismus und wir," p. 11.

tbid.

Jeffrey Herf, Divided Memory: The Nazi Past in the two Gemanys (Cambridge, MA, and Lon-don: Harvard University Press, 1997), p. 50.

30

31

32

1,56

33

34

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 ls-rael prior to 1949 see Martin W. Kloke, lsrael und die deutsche Linke: Zur Geschichte einesschwierigenVerhältnrlsses (FranKurt-Main: Haag & Herchen, 1990);Timm, Hamme¡ Zirkel, Da-vidstern, pp. 81 ef seg., and Kessler, Die SED und die Juden, pp. 47 et seq.

35 See the contribul¡ons of Peter Brod and Arnold Krammer in Robert S. Wistrich (ed.), The Leftagaínst Zion: Communism, lsrael, and the Middle Easf (London: Frank Cass, 1979).

36 Francois Fejtö, A History of People's Democracies: Eastern Europe Since Stalin(Harmondsworth: Pelican Books, 1 974), p. 1 4.

157

complete knowledge of their acrions and demanded a full confession ofguilt, and they were promised that the courr would deal leniently withthem if they made complere confessions. The defendanrs were mal-treated to such an extent thar some of them believed they had falleninto the hands of Fascist torturers.3T

Eleven of the fourteen defendants were of Jewish origin. The orga-nizers tried to show that this was no coincidence, and that the Jewishprisoners were predisposed to become instruments of American espio-nage and of 'Zionist conspiracy'. The restimonies ar the trial providedthe 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, wereplaying a key role in the American conspiracy against the Soviet Unionand her allies. One of the aims of this alleged conspiracy was defined as

,,to destroy the ties of friendship between Czechoslovakia and the SovietUnion, and to turn the country into a new Yugoslavia."38

The Communist allies of the Sovier Union, and her satellites in partic-ular, were empowered to adopt the proclamation of the editorial of RudéPrauo (the Czechoslovak party newspaper) of November 24, 1,952. Thisproclamation stated that Zionism was the ,,number-one enemy" of theworking class. It seems that one of the aims of the organizers of the trialwas to justify the anti-Israeli and pro-Arab switch in Soviet foreign pol-icy. Czechoslovakia, with Russian approval, had supplied the Israeli armywith arms, ammunition, and even fighter planes. However, as oÍ 1,949the USSR realized that American influence had prevailed in Israel overthat of pro-soviet elements. Moreover, Soviet 'Anti-Zionism' served as acover for unacknowledged Anti-Semitism. The Jewish victims of the Slán-

sky Trial remained, through their 'cosmopolitan' background and theirexperience of living in different cultures, a source of potential dissidence

for the Stalinists who sought to transform the party and society inro a

37 See the moving report of one of the survivors. Arthur London , lch gestehe: Der prozess umRudolf Sliánsk¡í, (Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag, 1991) (reprint of the 1970 West cerman edition). Thefilm vers¡on (Laveu) was directed by Kostas Gavras, starr¡ng Yves Montand and SimoneSignoret.

38 Klement Gottwald on a party conference on December 16,1952, quoted from: Fetlö, History,o.18.

158

monolithic body. Slánsky and ten other defendants were subsequentlyexecuted.3e The specific feature of Stalinist anti-Semitism was to neu-

tralize the internationalist tradition within the Communist part¡ includ-

ing the SED.

On December 2, L952, parallel to the anti-Semitic Slánskf Trial and

its associated atmosphere, Paul Merker was imprisoned. The officialjustification was provided by a Central Committee decision to ,,drawlessons from the case against the center of conspiracy".a0 This textdocuments 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 ofthose Jews, whose property was stolen by the Nazis, only in order toallow 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 friend-ship with André Simone (Otto Katz), one of the defendants in Prague.

This indictment cited Merker's intend ,,to contaminate the workers withthe most reactionary bourgeois ideology" and with ,,the poison of chau-

vinism and cosmopolitanism", and the resolution pointed to Merker'spublications in Mexico, his public efforts on behalf of financial restitu-

tion 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 eco-

nomic 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 areKarel 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 andFrantiöek Svátek, ,,Die politischen Säuberungen in der KPC," Hermann Weber and UlrichMählert(eds.), Terror:StalinistischeParteisäuberungenl936-1953(Paderborn:Schöningh,1998), pp. 487-562.

40 The resolution ,,Lehren aus dem Prozess gegen das Verschwörezentrum Slánsk!" is publishedin 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.

41 Dokumente,Yol. lV, p.206.

42 lbid., pp. 203-204.

1,59

emigrants in Mexico were in closest touch." Contacts with wealthyJews in Mexico were the reasons for Merker's support for Zionism.a3

Stalin's death on March 5, 1953 forestalled possible further repres-sion 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 ,,at-titude toward the Jewish quesrion" to the ZPKK. He wrore that hissoviet and German interrogators were convinced that he must havebeen an agent for the United States, Israel or the ,,Zionist Organíza-tion" because he had taken such a strong position on the Jewish cause.He noted that the interrogators found no evidence that he was Jewish.He wrote the they ,,repeatedly said that it was completely incomprehen-sible to them that a non-Jew, such as myself, would become active onbehalf of the Jews unless he was paid by Jewish organizatíons, all ofwhich, in the opinion of these examiners, were without exception, agenrsof the imperialist powers. Therefore, a non-Jew could be active on behalfof the Jews only as an agent of imperialism. For them, my engagemenron behalf of the Jewish people... was by itself a sufficient proof that Imust 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 theefforts of Zionism. I have... occasionally said that among the Jews, after

lbid., p.207.

The judgement is published in Jeffrey Herf , ,,Antisemitismus in der sED: Geheime Dokumen-te zum Fall Paul Merker aus sED- und Mfs-Akten," viertetjahreshefte für zeitgeschichte,vol.XLll (1999), No.4, pp.643-s0.

Documented in Kessler, Die SED und die Juden, pp.1 56-70.sAPMo-BArch, NL102J27, pp.31-82. parts of the document can be found in Kessler, Dæ sEDtl1td die ,1uden, pp. 157-7Ot full text in: Wolfgang Kiessling, paul Merker in den Fängen ders^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 theJewish Question," pp. 645 eÍseq.

43

44

45

+o

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: Hit-ler 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 sen-

tence 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 Ul-bricht replied on July 31., L956, thereby referring to the 2B'h CentralCommittee meeting in July 1,956: ,,The follow-up investigation con-

cluded that most charges against you are political in nature, which do

not warrant a criminal trial... Vith socialist greetings..."" Any furtherdiscussion within the party was usually stopped with the warning ,,noFehlerdisþ.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 toUlbricht and inquired how it was supposed to be understood that his

failings were political in nature, and thus, did not require a criminaltrial including sentencing. .Does the Central Committee maintain its

47 SAPMO-BArch, NL102127,p. 46.

48 lbid., p.73.

49 lbid., p.76.

50 lbid., p. 81.

51 lbid., p.84.

1,61r60l4

Å

,Å

charges against me, and feel only compelled to concede that these charg-es do not justify a criminal trial, which neverrheless has taken place?"52

Merker defended his dignity as a Communist, as he tirelessly insist-ed during and after the trial. He also emphasized that he defended the

,,interests of the party and its leadership against the Beria gang, whichlifted itself above party and leadership, which mistreated and ridiculedme, because I refused to flee to l7est German¡ and, instead, confront-ed them". As a ,,reward", Merker found himself being treated unjustlyand shamefully by the GDR legal system. ,,And now, after this shame-fulness had to be discontinued, I am still being treated as an ourcasr bythe party leadership". The decision at the 28'h Central Committee meet-ing, he claimed, was an attempt not to rectify injustice, but to trivializeit, and to maintain it, albeit in a much reduced form.s3

According to the decisions of the 28'h party plenary meering, Ul-bricht explained that Merker's re-"admission into the party had to be

immediately arranged. Your release was regarded, by the party and thestate authorities, as rehabilitation."5a

This is all the compensation that Merker received. Unless one re-gards 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, profes-

sional difficulties and degradations, as well as excommunications fromthe party intensified during the winter of 1952-1953. The Jewish Com-munities, just recently granted state subsidies, were now regarded as asort of the Fifth Column of the capitalist-imperialist system. At thebeginning of 1953, the offices of Jewish Communities were searched bythe Stasi, members of the Communities were imprisoned and interro-gated, as well as accused of being Zionists, ,,ready and able to workunder orders of the American secret service."55 IØithin this context Merk-er was accused of encouraging the Jewish SED members to join Jewish

52 lbid., p. 85.

53 lbid., p. 87.

54 lbid., p.92.

1.62

Communities. Merker rejected such charges; yet, they were repeated.

Indeed, many East German Jews were materially supported by theUS Joint Distribution Committee; this was, however, well known andtolerated by the SED leadership for a long time. Suddenl¡ this supportwas viewed with suspicion. As early as December 1951, selected Jewswere ordered to the Soviet Control Commission. They \¡/ere questionedabout ,,where do your instructions and directives come from? Do youget.them in a similar fashion as the Catholic Church gets its instruc-tions from Rome? ... Don't you understand why 'Joint' sends its gifts oflove to Germany?"56

From the end of 1,952 the Stasi not only searched Jewish communityoffices but also confiscated their files. This led to great fear amongmany Jews. Leo Zuckermann) who used to be Wilhelm Pieck's chief ofstaff, fled to the apartment of Heinz Galinski, the leader of the Jewishbommunity in r'X/est Berlin. In January 1953 alone, over 400 Jews fledto the West, includíng Zuckermann and Julius Meyer, Ieader of the

Jewish community in East Berlin. Nathan Peter Levinson, an Americanrabbi who resided in Berlin, urged Galinski to call on the Jews of East

Germany to leave for the 'Süest. 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 wenrto the 'West.57 This period of suffering came to an end only after Sta-lin's death. Yet, as eyewitnesses such as Heinz Brandt reported, mis-trust 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 derSBZDDR und ihre Behandlung durch Partei und Staat 1945-1 990 (Hildesheim: Olms, 1 997),pp.53 etseg.

56 Quoted from a manuscript by Rainer Hildebrand,,,Vorbereitungen für gesteuerten Antisemi-tismus?," (Spring, 1953), YIVO Archives, NewYork, FAD-1 , Box 25, also in: Olaf Groehler andMario Kessler, Die SED-Politik, der Antifaschismus und die Juden: ln der SBZ und der frühenDDH (Berlin: Helle Panke, 1995) (Hefte zur DDR-Geschichte, No. 26), p. 16.

57 See Mertens, Davidstern, pp. 54-62.

58 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 Com-munists. But one should be aware of the fact that East Germany did notexperience the excessive anti-Jewish hysteria of the Soviet Union orCzechoslovakia. There were no officially instigated or even toleratedpogroms in the GDR, despite contexrually justified Jelyish fears. Onthe contrary : Neues D eutschland reported on January 29 , 19 53 that theregional courts of Magdeburg, Gera, and Frankfurr-Oder issued prisonsentences, ranging from one to two years, for ,,the propagation of Anti-Semitism and lies about our Jewish fellow cirizens."5e One should alsonote that there were no Anti-Semitic elements connected to the work-ing class uprising of June 1,7,'1.953. Thus, the old Nazi cliche of ,,JewishBolshevism" was not resurrected.60

The conflicts around June 17 pushed the problem of anti-Semitismof the SED into the background. It is indeed ironic that rhe same JewishCommunists, who just six months earlier had feared state power, as

well as the party and securiry appararus, and mosr of all the will of theSoviet dictator, now came to regard the presence of state power as awarranty for their - relative - safety. Not everyone was able to pushaside so quickly what had happened earlier. Alfred Kanrorowicz, whowas in the hospital on June 1.7, recorded in his diary: ,,Why did we,intellectuals and old socialists, not lead this movemenr? \øhat did wedo besides resist passivel¡ complain, or relocate?"61 'Whether the dem-onstrating workers would have listened to state-supporting intellectu-als is a different matter. Ulbricht and his people became even morefirmly entrenched after June 17. This new constellation motivated many

Jews, who remained in the GDR) to âccept the realities and move clos-er to the regime. Afterward the SED was able ro inrroduce a policy oftolerance towards the Jewish community and towards secular Jews.

The memory of the Nazi genocide was disseminated, if somewhat one-

sidedly, throughout society. The Jewish community was expected tocomply 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 over-

tures towards the United States, increased national prestige in the eyes

of !7est German public opinion, and new freedoms resulting from chang-

ing Soviet policies (Gorbachev was decidedly against any form of Anti-Semitism.

However, any attempt to come to terms with the anti-Semitic inter-

lude 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 in-

completely the post.Stalinist state socialist societies were able to cleanse

themselves from this terrible legacy.

59

60

Neues Deutschland, January 29, f 953.

Two months after the Luxemburg Treaty which clarified ihe reparation ¡ssue between lsrael andWest Germany, Neues Deutschlandspoke of ,,a deal between West German and lsraeli bigcapitalists". ,,Reparationen - für wen?", Neues Deutschland, November 25, 1 gb2. The unsignedarticle came out only three days after parts of the Slánski Trial were published in the samenewspaper.

61 Alfred Kantorowicz, Deutsches Tagebuch,Vol.ll ([West] Bertin: A. W. Mytze, 1980), p. A65.

r64 1.65

Exile Experience in Scholarship andPolitics: Re-immigration of Historians

to East Germany

'l,Who would have wanted us here [in lü/est Germany], then?,,1 AlfredKantoiowicz, who had lived for some time in ìØest German¡ asked a'Síestern critic who reproached him for having, in 1946, chosen theSoviet occupation Zone as the place to which he hoped ro return afrerthe end of 'SØorld ìØar II.

Kantorowicz knew what he was talking about. He had returned fromthe United States to rhe Soviet Zone of German¡ but had left EastBerlin in 1957 for NØest Germany. He was an example of someone whohad-long remained an unwelcome stranger in both parts of the dividedcountry.

In the East returnees were welcome only at the price of adaptation.They were indebted, as some gradually came to realize, to a regimewhose practices had little to do with the overly-optimistic expecrarionsthat those in exile had envisioned for a socialist society. whoever rurnedtheir back on the GDR would auromarically be welcomed in the west.However, once in the Federal Republic, those who stood by their criti-cal assessment of the society's development would then be effectivelymargìnalized, if not actively persecured. critical questions were direct-

1 Hans Albert walter, ,,Das Risiko des Moralisten: Begenungen mit Alfred Kantorowicz,", prefaceto: Alfred Kantorowicz, Etwas ist ausgeblieben: Zur geistigen Einheit der deutschen L¡teraturnach 1945(Hamburg: Christians, 1985), p. 12.

167

ed, even posthumousl¡ at anyone who stayed in the GDR regardingtheir personal responsibility for the failures of that state. Those whoshare this experience include a group of historians who built up theGDR historical sciences in the 1950s and early 1960s. They are thesubject 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 chanceto carry out scholarly work while maintaining their integrit¡ in theirunderstanding, as political historians.

To this theme I would like to pose rwo concise quesrions. First: \Øhatwere the specific paradigmatic historical assumprions within which thosewho re-immigrated had to work? Second: To what extent did the worksof the re-immigrants shape GDR historical scholarship in its early phase?Basicall¡ to address these quesrions I will limit the analysis ro rheyears 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 over-view: \Øho were the historians?

IØho were the Historians?

Those re-immigrating historians who belong ro the founding genera-tion of GDR historical scholarship include, in order of birth, HermannDuncker (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 20thcongress of the Soviet Communist Party. All those whose scholarly andpolitical lives and ways of thinking are described here entereq, upontheir return, the eastern part of German¡ a land which was neither a

terra incognita nor an uninhabited island even in regard to historical

scholarship. Connected with the re-immigrants was a group of histori-

ans 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 schol-

arship in the GDR. A few non-Marxist historians, whose careers were

held back during the Third Reich, or who had identified with the rests-

tance, 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 (1901-

1955). Other historians who were, to varying degrees, tainted by asso-

ciation with the Nazis were granted the chance of a fresh start in theircareers: 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 to-

ward 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. None-

theless there did exist,the opportunity for true cooperation.

- 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 emigra-

tion", which depends on ,,breaking the mutual isolation of the so-called

bourgeois and socialist historians." Socialists and Communists, bour-

geois democrats and socially progressive Catholics, should, according

to Rosenberg, re-examine their received views and tactics. ,,Throughnon-dogmatic and critical work, the emigrated historians must make a

concerted and cooperative effort to develop, out of the negation of the

Mario Kessler, Exilerfahrung in Wissenschaft und Politik: Remigrierte Historiker in der frühenDDF (Cologne etc.: Böhlau, 2001).

t68

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 historicalstudies. "a

Rosenberg, who died ín 1943, did not live to see rhe failure of hishopes. The political situation of post-war Germany worked to prohibita 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 theexisting social structure.

In place of the subsequent dis-empowerment of the classes and thestrata from whose ranks Hitler enjoyed the most comprehensive sup-port, a formal de-Nazification process was instituted through whichjudges and corporate managers, high- and low-level civil servants, as

well as numerous Nazi historians were integrated into the Federal Re-public. Persons returning from exile who were wary or critical of thispolicy were therefore not welcome.

In the Soviet Occupation Zone, the dispossession of large-scale realestate and the nationalization of industr¡ banking, and wholesale tradewas enforced under the ambitious claim of constructing a democraticsocialist society: a project which was fully in keeping with the progra-matic vision of the KPD as well as the SPD at that time. Those who hadbeen driven out of Germany by the Nazi regime were encouraged toreturn. ,,To all of you who were driven out of Germany; all Germanscientists, scholars, artists, and writers beyond the borders of yourhomeland, we send our greetings", so proclaimed the official statementof the Kuburbund for the Democratic Renewal of Germany in Novem-ber of 1945. ,,The time of emmigration has ended within Germany andoutside its borders. Let it be known that Germany needs you."' For thefirst time in their lives many of these refugees had the feeling of beingindispensable.

However, the Soviet reparations polic¡ in which the Soviets appro-priated 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 fewCommunists and Social Democrats, were brutally persecuted. The lead-

ership of the SED, which was completely dependent on the goodwill ofthe-Soviet occupation powers, supported this action. This was a fore-

shadowing 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 contradic-tion between the socialist ideal and the dictatorial reality. Some hopedthat through their efforts they would be able to bridge this developingschism. Already before the time of their exile, they were convinced that"ôrises,, war, and material suffering could be overcome only throughsocialism.

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 howlittle 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-mann in the US (writing about Joseph

'Weydemeyer), and Meusel in the

GDR (writing on the English Revolution), do address important ques-

tions about bourgeois society in the 17'h and 19'h centuries.

The works on German history which were already being formulatedduring the time of exile, especially those which came from Kuczynski'spen, depict the genesis and development of industrial capitalism as

little more than Lenin's concept of the eve of the proletarian revolu-tion, and the parliamentary system as simply an instrument of domi-nance for the bourgeoisie - here obviously connected to the KPD's un-derestimation of democrac¡ but without reference to the Communistdissidents of the KPD opposition, who had defended the constitution ofthe first German republic.

From another perspective, however, the accomplishments of the Com-

munist exile's historical writings are indeed evident in comparison with

1,71,

4 Arthur Rosenberg, ,,D¡e Aufgabe des Historikers in der Emigration", Emil Julius Gumbel (ed.),Freie Wissenschaft: Ein Sammelbuch aus der deutschen Emigrction (Strasbourg: SebastianBrant, 1938), p.213.

5 Statement, quored from: Karola F¡ngs and Cordula Lissner (eds.), UnterVoþehalt: Rückkehraus der Emigrat¡on nach 1945 (Cologne: Emons, 1 945), p. 164.

1,70

those of the so-called Third Reich-driven historiography. Here it suffic-

es to be reminded of Jürgen Kuczynski's work on the situation of the

proletariat, especially the foreign workers in Nazi Germany; AlfredMeusel's social historical consideration of German and British foreignpolic¡ 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 Ger-

man intellectual history. They were the socialist opponents of thosescholars 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 oppo-

sites, the GDR historians at no point in their lives supported, justified,

or trivialized a racial-biological war of extermination. Often, they them-selves barely escaped from Nazi Germany. Their academic accomplish-ments as well as deficits - but above all their decision to seek, in east-

ern German¡ an alternative to the course of German history as it had

been played out up to thât time - cannot be considered in isolationfrom 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, under-standing of anti-Fascism.

According to the official party line, anti-Fascism was simply equat-

ed with the GDR and the SED. Only through the rule of the SED, in-cluding the command over knowledge production and research, couldsocial progress be guaranteed. This, grounded in methods of historicalresearch, 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 historyas being the adaptation of the results of historical research for thelegitimization 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 witha Marxist-Leninist understanding of a progrâmmatic policy directedtowards the solution of social problems.

It was hardly possible for historians in the GDR to renounce thisprogram, and this was not merely due to the practical consequences. Afundamentally affirmed unity of politics and academic knowledge indi-cated that there was an intellectual atracion and a politically bindingforee behind this deformed version of Marxism. Indeed, Marxism, inall of its various expressions, was, and is, unthinkable without takingits utopian dimension as an article of faith.

The most insightful among the Marxist GDR historians saw in his-torical materialism - which they dedicatedly applied - a stimulatingmethod for research. The¡ however, did not auromatically classify theirfindings according to the needs of the party leadership. ,,No one wantsto see", warned \JØalter Markov urgently in 1,947,,,historical material-ism, bãcause of its suppression in other parts of German¡ be compen-sated for by a monopoly in the eastern zone, unless he intentionallywants to see it ruined through inbreeding. What is called for is that allGerman universities allow for the free comÞetition of both theories andthe duty to make them known."6

Along with the practical partisanship for the socialist project, im-mediately following 1,945, a discussion developed - that had alreadybeen going on intensively during the period of exile - involving thetheoretical understanding of history. The vast majority of the GDRhistorians viewed themselves as Marxist, even when they followed thedevelopment of the socialist world with some concern. Some of themmaintained the belief that even Stalin could nor destroy the basic pro-gressive currency of Marxism.

Ernst Engelberg emphasized that his understanding of parriality (irshould be noted how he eventually developed this concept further in theseventies) 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 deutschenHochschulen,1947, No. 1, pp. 8-9, quoted from: ldem, Kognak und Königsmörder: HistorischeMiniaturen (fEastl Berlin and Weimar: Aufbau-Verlag, 1979), pp. i 9-20.

173

with the molding of facts according ro a mandarory party view of his-tory. To him partiality meanr researching the forces that contribute tothe progress of history.

By the concept of partiality, those researchers who were engagedwith, but not uncritically of the GDR and the SED undersrood some-thing completely different rhan auromarically cooperating with the sys-tem. Moreover, it meant there was no commonality to be found be-tween'Walter Markov's non-dogmatic understanding of history and thatof Hanna Wolf - the Rector of the SED Party Academy - for whomhistoriography and party propaganda were one and the same. Even so,Walter Markov and his adherents were able ro remain in the GDR-inthe face of the threat of repression - searching for a socialist alterna-tive to the particular historical trend which had been carried out up rothat time.

Through 1952 Alfred Meusel could still calmly ward off rhe accusa-tion 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 Iwish to represent a program of the Rankean school heïe", he stated atthe Historians' Meeting in June of 1952, ,,rather, I have merely statedthat Rankes' work contains some things from which we may learn. AndI 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, returneesfrom the'West, and the members of the early communist opposition groupswas carried over - albeit to a lesser extent - into the GDR, the histori-ans who had returned also became ensnared in the network of the PartyControl Commission. This especially affected Jürgen Kuczynski as aformer 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 Swit-zerland.

On the one hand, the re-immigrants soon found out that the Partyapparatus was dependent on the skills these refugee historians had ac-

quired during their exile, such as foreign language ability and familiar-ity with international scholarship. On the other hand, previous contactwith Jewish or other relief-organizations, to bourgeois politicians, and

even to Communists who were considered enemies of the part¡ couldbe incriminating, or at the very least a black mark on one's importantKader files. Engelberg and the musicologist Georg Knepler attemptedin vain to clear the names of some of those who had been indicted in the

Prague Slánskf trial.sEven 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, inthe end, none of the historians had to suffer the fate of Paul Merker, whoas 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 mem-

oirs, which covered the time up until 1945 (1973), and Karl Obermann'smemories of his exile in France (1,984).' In the literary estate of AlbertSchfèiner and Alfred Meusel, biographic descriptions can be found thatsubstantiate the texts that were published in the GDR.10

,,Historiker-Tagung, June 7 and I [1952]," Archiv der Berlin-Brandenburgischen Akademie derWissenschaften, Alfred Meusel Papers (ABBAW, NL Meusel), No. 6'lB.

174

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 Kultur-und 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 aboutSchreiner). See Die Bundesbeauftragte für die Unterlagen des Staatssicherheilsd¡enstes derehemaligen DDR (BSIU), MfS-Zenlralarchiv, HA l)01 1, Vo|.286. Meusel's notes are collectedin: ABBAW NL Meusel, No. I.

1"7 5

Aside from the possibility of cryptic or perhaps some insider-privi-leged remarks of Kuczynski's, none of these texts address internal par-

ty 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 theplaying-down of these crimes as merely the ,,negative effects of the cultof personality."

More often the survivors of the camps decided simply to return tothe GDR, whose official silence through mass-repression seemed con-venient 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 torment-ing questions. Going to the Federal Republic of Germany was not mere-

ly a political decision made by some of the other camp survivors, butrather it was often due to the debt they felt they owed to their inner-

most need to process the terrible events through crying out or throughwriting.ll

Despite all the coercion and suffering inflicted by their own rankand file, for those historians who returned the ,,general line" of theparty remained in principle outside any critique. The re-immigrantsswore, without giving any critical analysis to the idea, that the work-ing class and ,,its party" were the prominent forces in socialist society.

The faith in the ultimate superiority of socialism united - despite alltheir underlying differences - the historians with the SED leaders and

their party apparatus.

In general this must have led the historians, despite diverse individ-ual differences, to an impoverished and dualistic world view - a mindset of good and evil, which pigeon-holed the subtle Marxist class anal-ysis into a friend-or-foe schema. 'Whoever rejected this way of thinkingwould inevitably come to be considered 'a counter-revolutionary', and

11 See Wolfgang Ruge, Berlin-Moskau-Sosswa: Stat¡onen einer Em¡gration (Cologne: Pahl-Rugenstein Nachf., 2003), pp. 439.

1,76

a 'bourgeois relic.' Within this conception of history there was no placefor the idea of a multi-party ('bourgeois') democracy âs prerequisitefor the self-government of the working people.

From the very beginning a relationship vis-à-vis the institutions ofthe SED arose that contributed decidedly to rhe subordination of thehistorical disciplines under paternalistic party guardianship: Even theprofessionally experienced, and to some extenr critical historians likeErnst Engelberg or Leo Stern, during their controversies, appealed morethan once to the Central Committee apparatus as the highest authorit¡and thereby assisted it in acquiring the decision-making power thatthey themselves would eventually come to experience. This general loss

of political voice was not simply taken by the Central Commitee'sapparatus through force, it was also the historians who brought thisloss'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 implicationof this was submission - even if it did not always turn our to be thecase. At any rate, with the rigid classification sysrem within the partystructure, a democratic conception of socialism had to weather somedamage. This, which to some was a sensitive dilemma, was intensifiedby the SED exercise of power and its subsequent resistance to criticalideas. Nevertheless, none of the re-immigrants ended their connectionto 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 ex-pose the underlying roots of social disaster and thereby perform the ser-

vice of making a contribution to the prevenrion of fatally flawed socialdevelopments, in both the present and the future. On one hand, Marxisttheory offers a point of departure for investigating the historical conti-nuity of various historical developments ranging from imperialism, mili-tarism, and political anti-Semitism ro Fascism. On the other hand, dog-matic axioms often preclude the realistic assessmenr of bourgeois society.

However, the GDR historians during their exile, and to a greaterextent afterwards, were devoting their attention to areas of research

1,77

that up until then had only rarely been addressed in the German univer-sities, such as the research of revolutions or the history of Marxismand the workers' movement. They were working out, if not at timestending to overestimate, the roll of the mass population and the factorsof material life as the primary and deciding forces in the process ofhistory. The works of the re-immigrants were, in this rcgard, a chal-lenge to historical studies in the Federal Republic of German¡ which,consequently, were also gradually taking up these problems and doingso in a way which was actuall¡ at least in part, more open and produc-tive 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 ev-eryday life, Ernst Engelberg's Bismarck biography and also his investi-gation of Social Democracy under Bismarck, Leo Stern's large-scaleedition on the German 'Workers' Movement, the work of Hans Mottekcovering economic history and environmental research, or Karl Ober-mann's historical presentation of the Revolution of 1848 and the pro-cess of class formation in pre-revolutionary years, are not importantcontributions to German historical scholarship of that generarion andbeyond? The question of whether Mottek or Obermann, who, duringtheir exile, took their first steps into what would become life-long ca-

reers in histor¡ would have been able to write such works under differ-ent 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 AlbertSchreiner, whose creative apex as researchers had already been se-

cured in the period of their lives prior their return. Any verdict overArnold Reisberg's and Wolfgang Ruge's works should be prefaced withthe question of how their innermost reserves were able to motivatethem 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 pop-

ulation wanted, also compelled the surviving re-immigrants to reflect ontheir shared responsibility for the breakdown of this state. Jürgen Kuc-zynski 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 [whenKuczynski 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 con-

ceive reality ,,under'the fascinating influence" of Marxist-Leninist the-

otY,

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 gran-

diose goals is used to sanctify the deployment of criminal meâns.l3

Júrgen Kuczynski, Foñgesetzter Dialog mit meinem Urenkel(Berlin: Schwarzkopf & Schwarz-kopf, 1996), p. 81.

Wolfgang Ruge, ,,Nachdenken über die Geschichtswissenschaft der DDR," Zeitschrift für Ge-schichtswi 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 stan-dard should be used to judge the historical scholarship that had beenproduced there. Nothing seemed more natural to the historians andpublicists of the FRG as to impose the pluralistic West German modelof historical studies as the measure with which to judge the success orshortcomings of the GDR historians. This was rhe ideal by which thecommission in charge of handling the final accounts, and the rebuildingof eastern German historical institutions (which, by the wa¡ did notonly consist of western Germans) oriented itself.

The severity of the critique of the easrern German historians upon rhefirst 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 his-torical studies, that later historians would present at the end of the 1990s.These findings about hisrorians, who after 1945 - unlike most of thepost-1990 GDR researchers - were granted a second chance, were forWest Germans often sobering, but nothing new to the East Germans whohad studied this history. Indeed, in the GDR rhere was research initiatedby re-immigrants and carried on by their students, rhat provided lucidinformation about perpetrators, accomplices, and also the compliance ofGerman historians with National Socialism. Justifiably the propagandis-tic style of these works has been subjected to critique; it has also prob-lematized 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 Social-ism, their sometimes acerbic formulations certainly take on a new light.

The Cold \Øar adversely affected both of rhe German srares. As theFrench historian of the Comintern, Pierre Frank, pointed out, ,,the re-sult was the mutual intensification of reactionary tendencies, originat-ing from two clearly different societal foundations."la Cerrainly the

14 Pierre Frank, Gesch¡chte der Kommunistischen Internationale,Vol.2 (Frankfurt-Main: ISP-Verag, 1 981 ), p. 783.

180

distortion of historical observations made by historians in both of the

German states led to a self-induced blockade in the processing of thepast - and not only in the West. Georg lgger's assessment remainsworthy of discussion, according to which ,,it was not until the end ofthe 1960s that a pluralistic historical scholarship in the Federal Repub-lic was possible for the first time, although a fundamental differenceremained between the two states in regard to the mechanisms for disci-plining nonconforming historians: the FRG, with its rule of law, and the

GDR with a dictatorship."15The debate over German historians in National Socialism, as well

as over the handling of history in the individual departments in bothGerman states, raise questions about the quality control of present

academic standards as well as questions about an overdue precaution-

ary discussion in regard to the reintegration of those East Germanfristorians who have been cast out of the production of academic knowl-edge, but who nevertheless fulfill all of the moral and professionalcriteria 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 Marx-ist and non-Marxist history educators, in both instruction and research,

coexisted with one another in the GDR. At the beginning of the nextdeca-de the non-Marxist historians, to the extent that there were anyremaining in the GDR at all, had been condemned to a marginal exist-ence. The inteiference of the Party impeded or strangled any seriousresearch as far as it was not in agreement with the wishes of the SED

apparat. The paternalistic control of the Party over academic knowl-edge had exclusively negative results. Historians, especially Marxists,who supported this policy ultimately worked against their own inter-ests as researchers. Indeed every critique of the re-immigrants whoshared in this counter-productive relationship of scholarship and polit-ical interests is stuck with the counter-question of what chance they (or

15 Georg lggers, Deutsche Geschichtswissenschaft: Eine Kritik dertrad¡tionellen Geschichtsaulfassung von Herder bis zur Gegenwart (Vienna: Böhlau, 1997), p. 428.

181

l

t)

ri

,ir'l11

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 differ-ently.

This contribution has dealt with one of the problems within the dy-

namic fields of academic knowledge and politics and at the same timeposes some implicit questions on the subject of political ethics. Thewell-known question, what remains of the works of the re-immigrantsand of the body of historical knowledge that came out of the GDR, is aquestion for which this author, unlike some of his colleagues, does notpresume 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 newgeneration may improve and surpass them. It is part of our trade - incontrast to that of the architect or even the philosopher - that thenames of the historians, if they are fortunate, remain engraved in col-lective memory with regard to their moral value longer than to theirworks. Their shelf life is usually already determined by the immediate-

ly following generation. Yet it still remains an open question: who willbe 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 Fall of the Berlin Wall and the Radical

t82

,,The strong case of guest-workers from the Balkan countries and fromAnatoliar" wrote the essayist Rolf Schneider, an East-German-born au-thor, ,,provides the main arguments for right-wing currents in the oldFederal Republic. This is not the case in the five new states, i. e. theformer GDR. It is not easy to answer the question why such a move-ment constituted by the extreme political right should arise, a move-ment, which is not only noticeable, but speaks with such a shrill voice."1

This essay deals with the problem of right-wing radicalism) parricu-larly with its neo-Nazi variant in the new German states, the formerGerfian Democratic Republic, during the immediate years after the fallof the Berlin \íall. The fact that since the early 1.990's Germany wasstruck by a wave of xenophobic violence renders special significance tothe topic. The violence evo,ked a sense of horror both in and outsideGermany. At the same time, it led to an unprecedgnted degree of soli-darity with foreigners and asylum-seekers who lived in Germany. Thesolidarity was demonstrated openly by the German public, most signif-icantly in a huge government-supported demonstration on the symbolic

Right in East Germany

Rolf Schneider, ,,Die rechten Deutschen ¡m Osten," Un-Heil über Deutschland. Fremdenhaßund Neofaschismus nach der Wiedervereinigung (Hamburg: Stern, 1993), p. 1 36. This essaywas published ¡n an earlier form as ,,The extreme righl after German unification: ls the easternpart of Germany a special case?," in: Krzysãof Glass et al. (eds.), Fremde-Nachban-PartnerwiderWillen? Mitteleuropas alte/neue Stereotypen und Feindbilder (Vienna and Torun: AdamMarszalek, 1 995), pp. 73-83.

183

date of November 9, 2000 in Berlin.2 Nevertheless, neo-Nazis contin-

ued their daily and nightly attacks against the homes of asylum-seek-

ers, 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 for-

eigners 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 ofthe country) as, for example, in the small town of Mölln, where twoTurkish families were brutally murdered in 1.993.

For some researchers right-wing radicalism in the east is in its caus-

es fundamentally different from that in the west. For them, the wave ofviolent xenophobia in eastern Germany mainly results from the nega-

tive aspects of German unification, and is in that sense a new phenom-

enon. 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 anti-

fascist struggle of 'i.933 to L945 had been incorporated in the commu-

nist tradition, to which the leadership of the socialist unity part¡ thesED, claimed to succeed. since the historical lessons of the anti-Fascistresistance 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 pastafter rØorld war IL rn 1945 an anti-Nazi and to some exrenr an anti-capitalist 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 demo-crátic and socialist labor movement of the years of the rØeimar Repub-Iic. However, the sED leadership wasted and finally lost almost allcredit it had immediately aÍter 1945. over the years, the means ofpolitical indoctrination, over-simplistic agitation and obtrusive propa-ganda 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 Fas-

cism was the ttreoretical base for the approach towards a complex prob-lem. The cominternls famous definition of Fascism as ,,open terroristdictatorship of extremely reactionary, most chauvinistic, most imperi-alistic elements of finance capital". might have been valid for Fascismin power, particularly for Nazism. ,,However, it reduced the problem tothat of support for the NSDAP by big enrrepreneurs, bankers and land-lords, 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 resistancein Germany and Europe (communist, socialist, bourgeois, religious) werereduced to a movement which was almost exclusively led by commu-nists. only in the last years of the GDR did more balanced inrerprera-

9 November is the anniversary of the ,,aborted" German revolution of 1918, the mislead Hitlerputsch of 1 923, lhe ,,Night of Broken Glasses" of 1 938, and the fall of the Berlin Wall of 1989.

For the extent of the attacks see the annual report of the German Veñassungsschutz ('Serviceof the Proiection of the Const¡lution'), quoted in DerTagesspiegel and Neues Deutschland,March 30,2001.

Stuttgarter Zeitung, November 6, 1 992.

See the special issue of Aus Po l¡tik und Ze¡tgesch,bhfe, September 22, 29oo, on the subject.

4

5

1.84

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: Grundla-gen-Gefahren-Gegenstrategien", ldem/Horst lsola (eds.), Rechtsextrem¡smús iñ vereintenDeutschland: 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 histo-

rians, 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 work-er's support for Hitler before and mainly after 1933) reflected the way inwhich the SED leadership dealt with Nazism and anti-Nazism as 'the

burden of the past'. '!ühilst !Øest Germany was depicted as a hotbed of

neo-Nazism, where Hitler's supporters (i.e. the capitalists) were still inpower, 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 understand-

ing 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' re-

turned 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 asingle and united German nation. However, ,,with the international rec-

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: DieDeutschen 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. Derantifaschistische 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 andMunich: Knaur, 1987), pp.219 etseq.

1.86

ognition of the GDR after the conclusion of Ostpolitik, rhe stancechanged noticeably. In the 1.970s, srrenuous efforts were made by theEast German regime to develop a sense of a separate GDR identit¡based on a class theory of the narion which held that not only werethere two German states (the East German still being viewed as themoie progressive), there were now also two German nations."lo

One of the ironies of recent history is the fact that the small groupsof dissenters which emerged since the mid-1980s in the GDR mostlysupported the idea of an independenr socialist (although non-Stalinist)East German state. They still supporred this position in late 1989, whenthe viability of the GDR became quesrionable after the fall of the Ber-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 Ger-many. The dissenters who initiated the street demonstrations were strongenough to mobilize the masses for overthrowing the regime, but were notpowerful enough to win mass support for their ideas of a socialism witha human face or of a','Third IØay'between market capitalism and statesocialism. But even a democratic socialist project could not provide peo-ple with an attractive alternarive to the policy of quick unification on'Süest German terms. In face of an acute economic, political, ecologicaland-moral crisis, not only so-called 'real existing socialism', but everyform of socialism was discredited. This collapse pulled down the moralvalues upon which the old governmenr claimed to be based, includingeven anti-Fascism.

Right-wing Radicalism in the GDR Before 1989

Youth dissent in East Germany has a long history and can be tracedback to the workers' revolt of June 1953. But it was only in the mid-

1 0 Mary Fulbrook, The two Germanies, 1945-1990: Problems of lnterpretat¡on (Basingstoke andLondon: MacMilfan, 1992), p.70.

L87

1980s that the use of neo-Nazi symbols as a form of political protestwas recorded in top-secret Stasi files. These forms of protest remainedadmittedly limited to a very small segment of youth (a few hundred).11

Since the mid-1980s, fundamental disapproval of the GDR increased re-

markably among the younger generation. According to an unpublishedopinion poll conducted 1985 by the Institute of Youth Research in Leipzig,51. percent of trainees and young workers interviewed supported the GDRin principle, while six percent declared their non-identification. Threeyears later, the percentage of approval had declined to 18 percent, whilethe percentage of those who declared non-identification rose to 28. ln1985, half of the interviewed believed that socialism would finally over-throw capitalism world-wide, while in 1988 the percentage of those whobelieved 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 Chris-tian humanism. A small number of artists or would-be literati aroundthe Berlin district of Prenzlauer Berg tried to withdraw themselves fromsociety and from its norms and values. Expressions of German nation-alism were extremely unpopular among dissenters. But to many 'aver-age' East Germans the West German model was quite attractive. Theyoriented themselves according to 'West German politics, and had tosome extent the same party preferences as 'SØest Germans. This includ-ed, particularly among young frustrated people, a feeling of pride in('SØest) German economic or athletic, mainly soccer achievements, tend-ing 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 identi-fied with a different picture of 'SØest German¡ namely with a strongwork ethic and law-and-order mentality which supposedly was mainlyresponsible for what was called the 'Wirtschaftswunder (EconomicMiracle).

1 1 See Walter Süß, ,,Zur Wahrnehmung und lnterpretation des Rechtsextremismus in der DDRdurch das MtS," Deutschland Archiv,Yol.26 (1 993), No. 4, pp. 11 et seq.

12 SeePeterFörsterandGünterRoski,DDRzwischenWendeundWahl.Me¡nungstotscherana-Iysieren den Umbruch (Berlin: Linksdruck, 1990), pp. 39-41 .

188

In the mid 1980s there were currents of quasi-Nazi oùentation amonggroups of East German soccer fans. As in other countries there was a

good breeding ground for fascist ideas among these skinhead-styledyoung men. Not all of these mostly male youngsters were hard-coreFascists, 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 brutalattacks against foreigners derived. These crimes started in the late 1980s.

Since the 7970s, the GDR had imported workers from Poland, Hun-gary and Yugoslavia, but also from Algeria, Vietnam and Mozambique.For Third lùØorld countries these agreements were made possible byconcluding highly exploitative labor treaties with these countries. Evenso, less than one percent of all the East German residents were foreign-ers. They were concentrated mostly around industrial plants, lived iso-

lated from the rest of the population in enclosed housing blocks andhad virtually no contact with East German social life outside theirwork. The case lvas different for some thousand other foreigners whostudied in East Germany or who lived there as 'alien residents'. These

were mostly those who had married East Germans and decided to livein the country, primarily people from the Soviet Union, Romania orfrom 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 musiciansand the audience of a rock concert held in the Berlin Church of Zion ínOctober '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 leader-

ship still took the simple line that Nazism was the product of monopolycapitalism; only subversive influence from the 'SØest could be responsi-ble for neo-Nazi undercurrents in the GDR.13 There was indeed a ..blos-

13 See ibid., pp. 15-16; Loni Niederländ er, ,,Zu den Ursachen rechtsradikaler Tendenzen in derDDR", Neue Jusflz, Vol. XLIV (1 990), No. 1 , pp. 16-18.

t89

soming" of rightist movements in'Slest Germany and 'Slestern Europe

at that time. But the causes were fundamentally different from those in

the GDR, namely an increase in youth unemployment and a loss ofcredibility 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 affínityof 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 ex-

pressed 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 an-

other 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

towards foreigners and extremist groups. 'While 5 percent of the inter-

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 Commis-

sioner 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 firstfree elections in March 1990, it became obvious that the new govern-

ment and its west German partners were unable to deal with the esca-Iating economic problems. Far from turning the East German economyaround, the currency union of July 1, L990 exacerbated rising unem-ployment, part-time labor, increased bankruptcy and heightened uncer-tainty about the furure for millions. The problems of complicity withStasi activities worsened the situation. Familial and other traditionalpatterns of life were disrupted, services were cut and the old socialnetwork collapsed. After that racist and xenophobic propaganda couldsucceed. Almost all East Germans were completely unprepared for thecapitalist order suddenly thrust upon them. After having been isolatedfrom the rest of the world with habits formed through decades of livingwithin a paternalistic and hierarchical order, they were overwhelmedboth by the promises and the aggressiveness of the new sociery. Manyof them sought scapegoats. Part of the blame was directed against \Øest'German civil servants, businessmen and university teachers (a stereo-type of arrogant 'Wessies) who often succeeded dismissed East Ger-mans in top positions.

It is little wonder that many East Germans vented their inferioritycomplex on foreigners. The problem increased with the massive influxof East Europeans to Berlin and East Germany right after the fall of thewall. They came for economic reasons and were confronted with mas-sive xenophobia. Many East German workers saw the new immigrantsas competitors for labor and employment. This was the situation whenslogans such as ,,German jobs for German workers.. or later the CDUcampaign Kinder statt Inder (children rarher than Indians), a rejectionagainst highly qualified compurer specialists recruited from Asia, be-came popular. During the same period anti-semitic sentiments surfacedin German¡ not only in her Eastern part, with the presence of manyJews among the political left. after 1990, most prominently symbolizedin the person of Gregor Gysi, the charismatic leading figure of theParty 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 Fußwill mich nach Deutschland tragen. von außen nach innen schàuen (Berlin: samson, 1993),pp. 49-63, and my comment ibid., pp. 65-68.

1,91,

14 Peter Ködderitzsch and Leo A. Müller, Rechtsextrem¡smus in der DDR (Göttingen: Lamuv1 990), p. 1 9.

See ChristopherT. Husbands, ,,Neo-Nazis in East Germany:The New Danger," Patterns oÍPrejudice, (1991), No. 1, p. 10.

16 Quoted in: lbid,, p. 10.

1.90

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 fromthe former GDR and 3,000 of the 26,000 members of the Deutsche

Volksunion were from East Germany.ls Since then, the small National-

demoþ.ratiscbe Partei Deutschlands (NPD) as well as several smaller

groups have flourished, often through a double-membership of the ac-

tivists. Vhile in '$Øest 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 whichgives 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-capital-ism" from the right, or a National Socialism sui generis.

The mid-1990s brought a new stage of the rightists' struggle for cul-

tural 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 thatlink like-minded activists from all over the country [East and'West Ger-

many]."20 Holocaust denying texts, which are legally forbidden in Ger-

many, 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-knownGerman Nazi bands is Brutale Haiezl from eastern Germany).

Some problems of interpretation

The discussion about right-wing radicalism in Eastern Germany con-tinues. Most of the researchers see some reasons in the GDR's past (thesimplistic attitude rowards Nazism; anti-Fascism as an ideology of le-gitimizing the Berlin rØall and political oppression) but also concludethat the circumstances of unification and the influx of !Øest Germanright-wingers aggravated the situation. '!Øilhelm Heitmeyer and, later,Armin Pfahl-Traughber saw in young East German rightists typical vic-tims of a rapid modernization within the conrexr of ,,institutional ero-bion."22 For the ,,Theory of Dominance" and its supporters, the rea-sons áre mainly to be found in a rapidly adapted ,,chauvinism ofaffluence", although this is more typical for middle-class pro-Republi-kaner in the !Øest than for underdogs in the East.z3 other researchersmake the discrepancy berween demands and reality responsible for right,wing radicalism after the fall of the wall: unable ro realize their vi-sions, they try all sorts of expedients which are generally not acceptedby the 'mainstream'.2a Some current observers also mention the weak-ness-of the formal control system, mainly the police, in Eastern Germa-ny.25 Some analysts focus on underlying historical traditions of Germanxenophobia before 1945 as well as the crisis caused by re-unification.

18 See Manf red Behrend, ,,Rechtsextremismus in Ostdeutschland vor und nach dem Anschlußan 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 thestate 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 RechtsextremÈsten," 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

¿¿

¿ô

24

Brutal Sharks.

wilhelm Heitmeyer et al. , Die Bielefelder Hechtsxtremismus-sfudle (weinheim and Munich:Juventa, 1992);Armin Pfahl-Traughber, ,,Die Entwicklung des Rechtsextremismus in ost- undWestdeutschland," Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichfe, September 22,2000, pp. 3-14.For this opinion see the numerous writings of Birgit Rommelspacher...

See the early essay of Wolfgang Brück, ,,skinheads: Vorboten der Systemkrise,,, Karl-HernzHeinemann 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 ge-gen rechts?," A us Politik und Ze¡tgesch¡chte, September 22, 2OOO, pp.22-29.

193

l

l

l

In that regard, however, Germany seems to be only an extreme exam-ple of racial violence which is present in all liberal democracies.26

The gap between a more prosperous West and a relatively poorerEast leads to the tendency to define a feeling of solidarity less by com-mon norms than by ,,external" categories. That means that patternslike class solidarity or democratic values lose some of their influence.Ethnic origin or a place from which somebody comes become 'nationalissues'. The Other seems to be responsible for all sorts of problemswhile standing for a shared reference of collective German identity.Bourgeois-democratic values and, even more, socialist traditions areunder constant attack from the far right, which tries to misuse erodingpâtterns in a struggle for cultural hegemony.

26 Panikos Panayi, ,,Racial Violence in the new Germany," Contemporary European H¡story,(1 994), No. 3, pp. 265-87.

1.94

Can Marxist Historical Thought Survive?

The collapse of the Soviet-led world also resulted in the collapse of anideolog¡ which served as its legitimizing ideology: Marxism-Leninism.Thd seventy years of history appeil in a new light and the historicaldebates of the years 1985186 until 1991 - the so-called Perestroika -are no longer regarded.âs â return to the Leninist Iegacy. These criticalyears now appear to us as the final crisis, not only of the Leninistapproach but of Marxism itself. Those historians who are fascinatedby political power and the existance of large stares ask, after the col-lapse of the Soviet Union, the entire Eastern Bloc, as well as the break-up of Yugoslavia, whether Marxism still has any relevance as a guidingideologf 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 thoughtdepends on its ability to adapt and change, which - contrary to com-mon assumptions - it has done over the last 150 years. These transfor-mations, which will be sketched in the following remarks, have resuk-ed, albeit not automaticall¡ from the built-in cardinal contradiction ofMarxist historical thought.

Marxist historical thinking elevated, and at the same time reduced,

a millenia of complex and contradictory human developmenr into ac-

cessible categories, which turned into building blocks of a positivisticapproach. 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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the first precondition of all human existence, hence of all history... namely

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.

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 indifferent numbers, under different circumstances, in different fashions, and

for different reasons. This implies that any given level of the means ofproduction 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 ofhumanity' must be studied within the context of the history of industry and

exchange.2

Marx and Engels worked through the immense importance of the eco-

nomic activities of human societies from the perspective of class strug-gle. The non-Marxist historian Fritz I7agner observes that ,,those au-

thors elevated the historical conditions of Englánd, with its captains ofindustry and its masses of wage laborers which they have encounteredpersonally to truly world historical significance: the egotistical rulingclasses with their aims of acquisition and profit maximization, as wellas the changing conditions of production depending on the level of tech-

nology and mastery of nature, became the keys to understanding thetrue guiding forces of history. It was important to make visible these

structural elements: hence history became the central and life-saving

science for those millions of suppressed, exploited, and from their truenature alienated people."3

This gave the impression that the historical processes could be re-constructed through knowable laws of the organization of labor, socialstratification, and the distrubution of property. History thus became a

_socio-ethical program in which Marxists emphasized the inter-depen-dance of judiciary and constitutional law and politics, as well as arrand science as ideologies which derive from socio-economic circum-stances. Yet these socio-economic circumstances change ove¡ time andindeed 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 ofprogress: trans-nationalistic, dynamic, and bold. Hegel's dialectic waschanged into a technique of power and meaning for which the humaneTinal goal justified all means: to build the classless societ¡ a paradisefree from private properry, indeed in order to make prossible the corre-spondance of natural social conditions and personal processes of con-siousness."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 criticalMarxist perspective rejecting any inrenr roward objectivity as a form ofpositivism. To say it differently: Marx enriched the possibilities of his-torical research immensely through his interdisciplinary approach, aim-ing toward the totality of societal conditions. The Marxist social per-

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

Fritz 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 historico-philosophical development: the first rationalistic and enlightened phase 1843 (Zur Kritik derHegelschen Rechtsphilosoph¡e),the second materialist-humanist phase, influenced by Feuer-bacn 1844 (Die ökonomisch-philosophischen Manuskripte and Zur Judenfrage), anð a third,dialectic-mater¡alistic, phase extending from the 1B4s rhesen über FeuerbachTothe 1867 DasKap¡tal.I will not here argue Wolfson's assertion that historical materialism as well as theMarxist understanding of rwolution derives from Jewish monotheistic throught. see MurrayWolfson, 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 JewishQuestion: 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 ofhistorical research and reflection were judged and prejudged according

to their usefulness in the revolutionary struggle. The political impact ofMarxism was enhanced by its dual nature as a means of analysis and

social utopianism. Yet for Marxism as a scholarly approach, this was ahinderance.

Friedrich Engels, who was at times unfairly accused of oversymplify-

ing 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 revolu-

tionary 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 ofa letter) to Paul Ernst ,,that the materialist methodology will turn into itsopposite 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 ofhistory has to be studied anew before one begins to derjve the political,judiciar¡ asthetic, philosophical, religious, etc., views which are indige-

nous to any given period."7

In this essa¡ I cannot even begin to sketch the development ofMarxist 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 onlybasically. How can historical analysis work through the unity or con-

tradiction between ,,naturally determined" evolutionism and social laws

of development? This problem crystallized in Kautsky's inrerprerarronof socialism as an inevitable process. Is Marxist interpretation of his-torical connections possible at all given its background in the assumed

unity of knowledge and revolutionary practices? What consequencesfor the Marxist understanding of history have resulted from the socialreforming policies of the socialist mass parties, after the end of thegreat depression of 1896-1897, and the theory of total capitalist col-lapse linked with those events?

'$7ith the Bolshevik revolution oÍ 1,917 the Marxist inrerpretationof history quickly became a singular doctrine. The debates between theintellectuals of the Second International, which contributed to a plural-istic climate among Marxists, were curtailed in Leninist Russia, whereall 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 worksof Gyórgy Lukács such as his History and Class Consciousness andKarl Korsch's Marxism and Philosophy automatically suspecr. Stalin's

Questions of Leninism, which appeared first in 1.925, created the hy-brid construction of Marxism-Leninism, which, as the official ideolog¡was supported by an institutional basis. The dominance of the StalinistParty led to the exclusion of all critical historians, including criticalMarxists. David Ryazanov, the first Soviet biographer of Marx, be-came, like many of his colleagues, a victim of Stalinist terror. Thedifferentiating methodological appoach of Marxism toward historicalreality was over-simplified and deformed by the supposed unity of sci-ence and politics, a unilinear ideological construct which was supposedto lead to the victory of the socialist means of production. This vulgarhistoricism debased Marxism into a simple legitimating science for theStalinist system.s

This development was already criticized by Arthur Rosenberg in1,939 in the United States. In his still relevanr comments, Rosenberg

o

7

Friedrich Engels to Florence Kelley-Wischnewetzky, January 27,1887, MEW,Yol.36,p.97.

Friedrich Engelsto Paul Ernst, June 5, 1890, MEW,Yol.37,p.411.

Friedrich Engels to Conrad Schmidt, August 5, 1890, MEW, Vol.37, p.436.

1.98

See Oskar Negt, ,,Maxismus als Legitimationswissenschaft," Abram Deborin and NikolajBuchar¡n, Kontroveßen überdialektischen und mechanischen Materialismus{Frankfurt-Ma¡n:Suhrkamp, 1969), p.7.

199

described the ,,historical vision of Bolshevism" as the product of inner-Russian conditions, including internal Bolshevik struggles as well as

the transformed strategy of the Communist International after the worldrevolution did not materialize. Russian history was increasingly instru-mentalized by the victorious Stalinist faction. The historical vision ofBolshevism was, according to Rosenberg, shaped by ,,the guiding dog-ma of Stalinism, that the building up of socialism would be possible inone single country, meaning in Russia."e For Stalin the decisive reasons

for the Russian Revolution were located within the particular condi-tions of Russian history. Thus Stalin wanted to put proletarian contentinto Russian national form: the development of Soviet Russia became

,,nothing but a new epoch in the historical national culture. The leader-

ship of this national culture, which previously belonged to the nobility orthe bourgeoisie, now belonged to the ruling bureaucracy of Bolshevism

and the new intelligentsia as shaped by the Soviet government."lo Underthese conditions Bolshevism acquired a new and increasingly positiverelationship 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 ar-gues that ,,it was no accident that Zinoviev had to be killed before Sta-

lin's new national Russian historical perspective could have been estab-lished within Bolshevism."ll Such a doctrine of history meant a sharp

breach with \Øestern understanding of science and scholarship whichwas also the foundation of the theory of Marx and Engels.

It would be unfair to completely condemn all of the historical schol-

arship produced in the Eastern Bloc in the following decades. The moredistant 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 undKlassenkampf: 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 Rosenberg, ,,Gesch¡chtsbild," p. '183.

1 1 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 ofseveral decades, a particularly stimulating influence on the historiog-raphy in the Eastern Bloc. This left-oriented literature was even morevisciously assaulted by the official guardians of the pure doctrine thanthe 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 interpreta-tion of the Marxist legacy from the institutionalized represenrarives ofMarxism-Leninism. Secondl¡ those independant Marxists had to pro-vide empirically founded research in order to combat the anti-Marxistsin 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 themainstream scholarly world. Even the political rollback strategy of the

Reagan and Thatcher eras in the English-speaking world could not re-

verse this tendency.' However, it remains to be seen whether and towhat extent the exclusion of Marxists from German academic insritu-tions will be corrected in a new political climate. It is still open wheth-er the German Sonderweg (German divergence from the 'West) whichhas excluded the socialist left from the public sphere, has run its course.

The disintegration of Marxist-Leninist historical thought began inthe Eastern Bloc long before 1989. This was probably more pronouncedin Hungary and Poland than in the Soviet Union or the GDR. Yet, even

in East Germany younger historians departed from the priorities of theparty ideologues, since the mid-1980s at the latest, as a number of workswhich were produced before 1989, and published shortly after, testify.Contrary to the situation in other Eastern BIoc countries, critical histori-ans in the GDR remained connected to the Marxist paradigm for the

time being. Between them and, at times, older colleagues who suddenlychanged into outspoken anti-Marxists in order to secure their place inthe new united German academic landscape arose sharp confrontations.

About fifteen years have passed since the collapse of Communism inCentral and Eastern Europe. Marxist thought is, today, quite marginal-

20r

ized within historiography and other disciplines as well. Many of theformer representatives of official Marxist-Leninism are silent, while a

smaller number remain bound to the old positions. Others seek a criti-cal engagement with their own academic biographies. Among the lat-ter, one should point out the East German historian V/olfgang Ruge,who between 1,933-1956 fled Nazism ro rhe Soviet Union and also ex-perienced the darkest sides of life under Stalinism in prison camps andexile to remote areas.lz

Our cardinal mistake was that we perceived and represented reality under

the distorting influence of a seductive theory. 'What was decades ago verypromising 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

GDR) Iurked unmistakable economic failure and a disregard for human

rights; the impetus of anti-Facism dried out; the hopes of 1.945 evaporated.l3

For those historians who want to remain loyal to Marxist historicalthought, albeit in a critically reflective fashion, the following conse-quences emerge out of the failure of the Soviet model: the Marxistnotion that the historical process toward socialism can be predictedand interpreted in a linear fashion, has to be abandoned. Marxist histo-rians have contributed much to understanding societal developments intheir historical contexts. The historical works of Isaac Deurscher, EricHobsbawm, Roy Medvedev, Arthur Rosenberg, 'lØalter Grab, WalterMarkov, Albert Soboul, and Ernst Engelberg - to name but a few - willremain relevant for some time to come. These works are significant,not least because of the fact that their authors departed from the rigiddemands of a canonized, anti-pluralistic Marxism-Leninism - albeit todifferent degrees.

Most of the East German Marxist works suffered from a seconddefficiency: they were largely immune ro the insights and research from

12 Cf. Wolfgang Ruge's impressive autobiography Berlin-Moskau-Sosswa: Stat¡onen einer Emi-gration (Bonn: Pahl-Rugenstein Nachf ., 2003).

202

disciplines which were unknown to the founding fathers of Marxism.Thus Marxist historians did not open themselves to the differentiatingreception of personal and mass psychology. This led to â narrow per-

spective which was particularly harmful in the analysis of Fascism.

These difficiencies are also to blame for the rather negligible contribu-tion of Marxist research to our understanding of the Holocaust.

The German Marxist Karl Korsch recognized in 1950, while in Amer-ican exile, the inevitable failure of a canonized Marxist perspective:

It is meaningless to ask whether the doctrine of Marx and Engels is stilltrue 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

working-class are reactionary utopias... For better or worse the important

elements of the Marxist doctrine, with their changed function and in diffe-

rent contexts are still influential today... And from the practical experiences

of the formerly Marxist working-class movement important impulses have

merged into todayls struggles between peoples and classes.la

What the communist'dissident Korsch concluded from this diagnosis ofthe 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-senschaft,Vol.Xll (1 993), No. 7, p. 584.

14 Karl Korsch, ,,Zehn Thesen über Maxismus heute [1950]," Politische Terte, ed. by Erich Ger-lach 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 simulta-neously attatched to the critical potential in Marxist thought and ac-tion, stated in 1939 what seems worth reflecting on even sixty yearslater.

The present generation cannor find remedies and fulfilling prophecies inMarx's writings. However, he remains an example of how to reconsider

critically and to draw conclusions from the changes in society.l6

Translated by Axel Fair-Schulz.

204

Karl. Marx: An Example of Anti-Semitism? Previously unpublished. AGerman 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. Translat-ed by Ed Kovacs.

The Russian Reuolution and the Jewish Workers' Mouement. First pub-lished 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 publishedin: Jack Jacobs (ed.), Jewish Politics in Eastern Ewrope: The Bwnd atI 00 (Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001 ), pp. 1,83-9 4. Reproducedwith permission of Palgrave/MacMillan.

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Arthur Rosenberg: Heretic Between the Camps.

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Trotsky on Arcti-Semit-

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Anti-Semitism Against a Non-Jew: The Case of Paul Merker. First pub-

lished 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 per-

mission of Palgrave/MacMillan.

Exile Experience in Scholarship and Politics: Re-immigration of Histo-rians to East Germazy. Previously unpublished. A German version was

published in: Mario Kessler, Exil wnd Nach-Exil: Vertriebene Intellek-tuelle im 20. lahrbundert (Hamburg: VSA, 2002), pp. 1,81,-97. Trans-lated by David Schrag.

The Fall of the Berlin Wall and the Radical Right in East Germany.Previously unpublished. A French version, translated from the Englishmanuscript 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. AGerman 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 AxelFair-Schulz.

206

Mario Kessler, b. 1955 in Jena, is Research Fellow at the Center forContemporary Historical Research (Zentrurn für Zeitbistorische For-scbung) and Associate Professor of Modern History at the University

"of Potsdam, Germany.

His books include: Antisemitismus, Zionismus und Sozialismws: Inter-nationale Arbeiterbewegung und jüdische Frage im 20. Jahrhundert(Mainz: Decaton, 1993); Zionismus und internationale Arbeiterbewe-gung 1897 bis L933 (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, L994); Die SED und die

luden - zwischen Repression und Toleranz: Politiscbe Ennuicklungenbis 1967 (Berlin: Akademie-Vedag, 1,995); Heroische Illusion und Sta-

lin-Terror: Beiträge zur Komrnunismus-Forschung (Hamburg: VSA,1.999); Exilerfahrung in \Xl,issenschaft und Politiþ.: Remigrierte Historiþerin 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 (1889-1943) (CoIosne etc.: Böhlau, 2003); Ein Funþen Hoffnung: Verwicþlun-gen - Antisemitismus, Nahost, Stalinismus (Hamburg: VSA, 2004); Vom

bùrgerlichen Zeitalter zur Globalisierung: Beiträge zur Geschicbte derArbeiterbewegung (Berlin: trafo-verlag dr. wolfgang weist, 2005).

Among many other books he has co-edited Ketzer im Kommwnismus:23 biographische Essays, 3'd ed. (Hamburg: VSA, 2003, with TheodorBergmann) and Ausgrenzwng oder Integration? Ostdeutsche Sozialwis-

207

The Author

sens cb aftler zutisch en Isolierungverlag dr. wolfgang weist, 2004,der Heyden).

und Selbstbehauptung (Berlin: traþ-with Stefan Bollinger and Ulrich van

'SØeitere Titel aus dem trafo verlag

Aleksander, Karin (Hrsg.): "Frauen und Geschlechte¡verhältnisse in der DDR und in denneuen Bundesländern. Eine Bibliographie", trafo verlag 2005, 578 S., geb., ISBN 3-89626-363-3,42,80 EUR

Baick, Simone / Münz-Koenen, Inge (Hrsg.): "Im Dialog mit Ilerner Mittenzwei. Beiträgeund Materialien zu einer Kulturgeschichte der DDR", [= Abhandlungen der Leibniz-Sozietät,Bd. 3], trafo verlag2002,350 S., zahlr. Fotos u. Dok., Personalbibliographie, Personenregi-ster, ISBN 3-8 9 626-180 -0, 29,80 EUR

Beth, Hans-Joachim (Hrsg.): "Zeitschrift 'Militärgeschichte'. Bibliographisches Gesamtre-gister 1.962-7990",trafo verlag 2000, 220 S.,geb., ISBN 3-89626-170-3,24,80 EUR

Brun-Zechovoi, Valerij: "Manfred Stern - General Kleber. Das tragische Leben eines Berufs-revolutionärs (L896-1.954)" , [= Biographien europäischer Antifaschisten, Bd. 8], trafo verlag2000,1.77 S., Abb. u. Dok., Namensregister, ISBN 3-89626-175-4,16,80 EUR

Dornik, Wolfram: "Erinnerungskulturen im Cyberspace. Eine Bestandsaufnahme österreichi-scher'Websites zu Nationalsozialismus und Holocaust",284 5., zahlr. Abb., ISBN 3-89626-479-6:29,80BUR

Drexler, Peter / Schnoor, Rainer (Eds.): "Against the Grain / Gegen den Strich gelesen. Studiesin English and American Literature and Literary Theory. Festschrift für'Slolfgang \Íicht", [=Potsdamer Beiträgezur Kultur- und Sozialgeschichte, Bd. 3], trafoverlag2004,530 S., ISBN3 -89 626-49 9 -0, 39,80 EUR

Genow, Nikolai (Ed.): "Continuing Transformation in Easte¡n Europe", (engl.) [= 5sçi¿1Studies on Easte¡n Europe, iol.2l,trafo verlag 2000,230 S., zahl¡. Tab. und Abb., ISBN 3-89 626,21, 6- 5, 23,80 EUR

Hantsch, Simone: "Das Alphatier. Aus dem Leben der Gertrud Duby-Blom",[= BiographieneuropäischerAntifaschisten,Bd.Tl, trafoverlag1.999,1,94S.,29 Fotos, ISBN3-89626-776-2,19,80 EUR

Helas, Horst: "Juden in Berlin-Mitte. Biografien - Orte - Begegnungen" 2., durchges. u.erg. Auflage, trafo verlag 2001,,3L2 S., zahlr. Abb., ISBN 3-89626-337-4,20,80 EUR

Herzog, Peter: "Die Wiedergutmachung", biographischer Roman, trafo verlag 2004,281,5.,Abb., Tb,ISBN 3-89626-506-7, 16,80 EUR

Hoffmann, Volker: "Der Dienstälteste von Plötzensee. - Das zerrissene Leben des Musiker-ziehers Alfred Schmidt-Sas (1,895-1,943lr." Kritische Biographie, Geleitwortwort von GiselaMa¡ Nachwort von Johannes Tuchel, [= Biographien europäischei Antifaschisten, Bd. 2],trafo verlag 1.998,321. S., 87 Fotos u. Dok., Register, ISBN 3-89626-089-8, 18,80 EUR

Hübner, Hans: "Helen Ernst. Ein zerbrechliches Menschenkind (1.904-1948lr. Athen, Zürich,Berlin, Amsterdam, Ravensbrück und Schwerin. Stationen einer Künstle¡in im !Øiderstand",

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trafo verlag 2002, 383 S., zahlr. Abb., Register, ISBN 3-89626- 1.47-9,24,90 EURKultur- undSozialgeschichte, Bd. 31, trafo verlag 2004,530 S., ISBN 3-89626-499-0, 39,80 EUR

Jähnert, Gab¡iele / Nickel, Hildegard Maria /Gohrisch, Jana u.a. (Eds.): ,.Gender in Tran-sition in Eastern and central Europe Proceedings", trafo verlag 2000, rsBN 3-89626-326-9,29,80 EUR

Keßler, Mario: "Vom bürgerlichenZeitalter zur Globalisierung. Beiträge zur Geschichte derArbeiterbewegung", Aufsatzsammlung, [= Hochschulschriften, Bd. 8], trafo verlag 2005,218 S., ISBN 3-89626-279-3,24,80 EUR

Klausch, Hans-Peter: "Hermann Bode (1911-1944).EinBraunschweiger sradtverordnererim Kampf gegen Faschismus und Krieg", [= Biographien europäischer Antifaschisten, Bd. 6],trafo verlag,2. Auflage 2003,228 S., Namensreg., ISBN 3-89626-41,7-6,16,g0ETJR

Pietrzynski, Ingrid: 'Der Rundfunk ist die Stimme der Republik ...'- Bertolt Brecht und derRundfunk der DDR 1,949-1,956", trafo verlag 2003,325 S., Faksimili, Dok., Register, ISBN3 -89 626-260-2, 35,80 EUR

Plener, ulla: "Helmut schinkel. Zwischen vogelers Barkenhoff und Stalins Lager. Biogra-phie eines Reformpädagogen in Dokumenten (1.902-1.946)", l= Biographien europäischerAntifaschisten, Bd. 1], trafo verlag1.998,2. ergänzte Auflage, ZB7 5.,74 Bilder, 83 Dok.,Register, ISBN 3 -89626-142-8, 18,80 EUR

Plener, Ulla: "Theodor Leipart. Persönlichkeit, Handlungsmotive, Wirken, Bilanz - Ein Le-bensbild mit Dokumenten (1'867-1947]l", [= Biographien europäischer Antifaschisten, Bd. 5],2 Halbbände, trafo verlag 20001. Hbbd.: Biographie, 389 S., zahlr. Abb., Namensreg., ISBN 3-89626-079-0,20,80 EUR / 2.Hbbd.: Dokumente,530 S., 102 Dok., Namensreg., ISBN 3-89626-080-4, 27,80 EUR

stock, Ernst / walcher, Karl: "Jacob-$Øalcher (1,887-1,970). Gewerkschafter und Revolutionärzwischen Berlin, Paris und New York", [= Biographien europäischer Antifaschisten, Bd. 4],trafo verlag 1998,259 S., 50 Fotos u. Dok., ISBN 3-89626-144-4, 1.9,80 EUR

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"widerstand in Berlin gegen das NS-Regime 1933 bis 1945. Ein biographisches Lexikon in 12Bänden", Herausgegeben von der Geschichtswerkstart der BV VdN e.V. unter Leirung vonHans-Joachim Fieber, trafo verlag2002-2005, ISBN 3-89626-350-1, 300,00 EUR

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