Paul Frölich, writing for the tenth anniversary, on the original response of majority Socialist Democrats to 1917’s October Revolution.

‘German Social Democracy and the October Revolution’ by Paul Frölich from International Press Correspondence. Vol. 7 No. 58. October 20, 1927.

From the times when the Bolsheviki took so prominent a position in the Russian revolution that it was realisable even to those abroad to the end of the great war, the Social Democratic Press of Germany maintained a benevolent attitude towards them, with only a few exceptions which are however all the more characteristic of their policy. Even before the Independents had had removed from the Mensheviki and Social Revolutionaries, the said Press took the side of the Bolshevist party, and when this party had conquered the power, the Social Democratic Press of Germany also on the whole countenanced it, whereas the Kautsky, Stein, Ströbel and others among the Independents made an infuriated charge against the Bolshevist policy.

The outbreak of the Russian March revolution was very sceptically commented on, by the Social Democratic papers. The “Vorwärts” wrote that there could be no talk of a real revolution. that it was only a case of a somewhat forcible change of Ministers brought about by British policy and that this change did not transfer the power to any new class, but merely into the hands of the most resolute pro-war party, the party of Miljukoy and Rodsianko. Only when it became quite evident that the March revolution was a gigantic rising of the people, at whose head marched the working class, they welcomed it joyously and gave themselves airs, saying proudly: This is our work! Parvus then wrote in his article “The Social Balance of the War”:

“All honour to the heroic fights of the Russian revolutionaries, but we also have helped in the overthrow of Tsarism, we the Social Democrats of the Central Powers. For this we went to the front, and we have achieved our end. Without the defeats Russia suffered, there could be no victory of the Russian revolution. It is we who have done it and certainly not those who, when the workers of Germany and Austro-Hungary were bleeding to death in their fight against the Tsarist military forces, attacked them in the rear with a line of fire and gas bombs and, with cold cruelty left the women and children in Germany to die for want of food in order to paralyse the energies of the men.”

Others were even more clumsy than Parvus. The fascinating tale about the fight against Tsarism with which the workers had been enticed to join in the war policy of German Social Democracy, a tale that had long been drowned in the roaring of the cannons was suddenly heard again. It was intended to win back the confidence of the workers in the policy of the S.P.G. which had been lost, at a moment when the treachery to the working class became more obvious than ever. While the triumph over the victory of the Russian revolution as having been achieved by the troops of German workers was a despicable hypocrisy and abuse of Karl Marx’ name, the Social Democrats on the other hand understood very well how to judge of the events in Russia from the Marxist point of view. When the Mensheviki and Social Revolutionaries joined the bourgeois Government, the Social Democrats cried treachery. Cunov explained in the “Glocke” (1917, No. 17) that the only right policy of the workers’ parties was to collect the necessary forces in the country and then “to overthrow the liberal Bourgeois Government, to establish a purely Socialist government and institute a dictatorship of the proletarian masses.”

Thus the only policy which was revolutionary and promised success was propagated by the German party leaders, to be immediately forgotten, it is true, when they themselves were faced by the necessity of coming to a practical decision. Cunov moreover appropriated to himself the whole Bolshevist programme: Constituent Assembly, reform of administration, laws for workers, agrarian revolution.

What was the political meaning of this attitude? Had these political Scheidemanns suddenly turned into revolutionaries? By no means! Marxism was good for Russia, in Germany, however, war credits were granted, Ministers were cajoled, hopes were set on Ludendorff and the workers were lulled with vain illusions. The Germans were zealously at work stamping out the sparks from the revolutionary conflagration which were carried eastwards. Whilst the Bolshevist tactics in Russia met with so clever an understanding, German politicians got writer’s cramp in their effort to prove that these tactics were in place in Russia but utterly useless and in- admissible in Germany. Germany was a civilised country, which was going to abolish absolutism under the omnipotence of their Generals in a strictly legal way.

The policy of Social Democracy agreed to a T. with the Supreme Command. Revolution was welcome as a military means of weakening Russia. There was great satisfaction over the fact that one opponent in the East was falling out so that German imperialism could be led to victory in the West with increased vigour. In the same way in which the Supreme Command had the Bolsheviki removed to Russia in sealed cars, so did Social Democracy propagate Bolshevist ideas under the seal: German workers, this is nothing for you!

When the Bolsheviki had taken over the power in the October revolution, the German Social Democrats welcomed the Government of the workers and soldiers and speeded the Mensheviki with some curses on their way. There was an actual race between them and the Left Independents for the favour of the Bolsheviki Parvus was zealously endeavouring to bring about a collaboration between the German Social Democrats and the Bolsheviki, and it was only when the latter turned them a cold shoulder that their enthusiasm cooled down.

Neither the terror, nor the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly nor the proletarian dictatorship were enough to damp the social democratic joy over the Bolshevist policy. Indeed, they defended everything which they condemned afterwards as a crime against humanity and against which they enlisted the robber bands of the Baltic States and the Noske terror.

Wilhelm Blos, later President of Württemberg and a solicitous father to the Mechterstedt students of murder, proved in an article entitled “The New Russian State” (“New Time” of January 25th 1918) that there was an absolute harmony bel- ween what was being practised in Russia and Marx’ teachings. Others followed in the same tracks. Even in October 1918, when revolution was already knocking at Germany’s door and the Scheideamnns trembled in their shoes from dread of the Bolsheviki, the “Neue Zeit” published an article by N.E. Verov in which the following passage is found:

“It is hardly comprehensible that, on the basis of biassed reports, even a section of the Socialist Press joins in the chorus against a Socialist party which doubtlessly represents the mass of the Russian workers and Russian Marxists and is to-day trying to transform the decaying bourgeois Russia into a socialist community by struggling against the unscrupulous counter-revolutionary Coalition…As a matter of fact the talk about a Bolshevist dictatorship of the proletariat being incompatible with democracy only shows how even the so-called Marxists are under the influence of Radical-Liberal views and how little they have grasped Marx’ theory of the class war and the State.”

This was written in a journal which was managed by Cunov, the same Cunov who understood at that very same time shamelessly to forge the Marxist theory of class war and of the State in a “deeply erudite” book. What was the cause of this honesty on the part of the Social Democratic leaders towards the Russian revolution and the Bolsheviki? Why did they thus forget their rôle as professional liars? We do not wish to do them injustice they remained true to their unfaithfulness, to their treachery. They sided with the Bolsheviki as being the Russian party which was to conclude peace with Germany, which, being the party of the revolution, carried on war against the imperialist war and therefore offered a guarantee that Russia would not go back into the folds of the Entente. The Mensheviki had shown that, at the decisive moment, they sided with their own bourgeoisie and thereby with the war of conquest of the Entente. In order to cut off the ground under the feet of the latter, the German Social Democrats defended the internal policy of the Bolsheviki with the arguments of revolutionary Marxism whilst at the same time they forged Marxism and the foreign policy of the Bolsheviki.

The Social Democrats revealed these German imperialist motives as soon as the Bolsheviki refused to help the German Government in deceiving the people. As is well known, the German Government had espoused the Bolshevist slogan of peace without annexations and compensations with a clear con- science and, with the same clear conscience had drawn up a mad programme of conquest in its draft of the peace treaty of Brest Litovsk. The Government presumed that the Bolsheviki in their difficult position, would not be over-particular and would acknowledge as the result of an imaginary self-determination of the peoples what was, in reality, violation of these peoples. When Trotzky, by breaking off negotiations in Brest had made it clear to the whole world that he refused to play a duet with an imperialist power, the “Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung”, the organ of the Government, opened an attack against the Bolsheviki and raised an outcry against the “Russian anarchy”.

Up to that time the Government Press had pampered the Bolsheviki no less than did the Social Democratic Press with the exception that the former could dispense with the Marxism of the cheap Jacob. At a signal from above, the Social Democratic Press immediately wheeled round. In the “Vorwärts”, Stampfer wrote essays of revolting baseness and with so much hypocrisy that even those are repelled who are used to putting up with a good deal from that quarter. On February 15th 1918 the same paper published an article by Otto Braun, member of the governing body, now Prime Minister of Prussia, in which all the methods of the later Anti-Bolshevist League were already put to the test. We quote from it as follows:

“They are aiming a deadly blow at Democracy and are substituting for it energy and brute force. In a manner which must rouse the envy of the most brutal serf of the Tsar, they are gagging the public opinion and throwing large numbers of their comrades into prison even though they only differ in their tactics.

“They are knocking down all who oppose them by means of the armed power of the soldiers who are still devoted to them. This rule of the unbridled Bolshevist Socialist military rabble is however as reprehensible as the despotism of the Tsarist military rabble. It cannot last long.

“The chaos in the economic and political domain will, of necessity, become gradually worse and finally lead to the collapse of this unnatural socialist rule of the sword. What the Bolsheviki are doing in Russia is neither socialism nor democracy, it is rather an outrageous putschism and anarchy.

“For this reason, we must draw a marked and clearly visible line of separation between Bolshevism and ourselves.”

This was too much even for the Vienna “Arbeiter Zeitung”, which called the article a document “of the moral and mental condition of some comrades in Germany”. The agitation in the German Social Democratic Press continued up to the moment when the Bolsheviki, with their teeth set and their faces averted, signed the Peace Treaty. At that moment it was broken off, and the courting of the favour of the Bolsheviki began once more. What does the intermezzo signify? It was a manoeuvre for distracting the workers and win them for German imperialism. The object was, by agitating against the Bolsheviki, to district the attention of the masses of German workers who were indignant at the Brest Treaty and to hush up the crime committed by the German Government. It was a continuation of the disgraceful treachery on the occasion of the great January strike.

This vileness was repeated when Social Democracy was called upon to decide whether or not it should accept the Brest Peace Treaty. The Social Democratic Press had hardly ventured to utter a word against the attempts at conquest in the East. It had not made the slightest attempt at rousing a movement against the Treaty and had, on the contrary, helped in suppressing the January strike.

With a smile of satisfaction, the leaders of the party calmly watched the doings of the pro-conquest politicians and awaited the time when their “striving for peace” should be “forcibly suppressed”. When the Peace Treaty was placed before the Reichstag, a few good creatures indeed did get up and say that it would never be possible to give and express consent to such a predatory peace. Hermann Wendel used even very impressive and determined words against the policy of the party. In the “Frankfurter Volkszeitung” he stated that there was a “complete catastrophe of the social democratic peace policy”, and against those who were prepared to accept the Peace in order “not to endanger the achievements of the party”, he wrote as follows:

“Are we to grant war credits for the sake of such a trifle, in order that German regiments may glorious task! suppress revolution in Finland? Are we going to sell our honour, our souls, our future for a mess of such a pottage?

“The party can no longer join in this war policy. It cannot give its consent to this peace! It must not grant new war credits!

“If it nevertheless does so, it should at least be honest, take down its present sign-board and wipe out the old firm from the registers of history.”

The few voices soon died away and their possessors bowed their heads. The voices in the Press were very different. The same people who had, without being asked, professed their good intentions to the Bolsheviki and were ready to play the same tune again in a short time, were decidedly in favour of consenting to the Peace Treaty. Stampfer said that it was necessary to accept it, as otherwise the Russians might arrive at erroneous conclusions and want to resume fighting. The “Hamburger Echo” abused the literary men of again putting a spoke in the wheel of the party and had the disgusting courage to write: “If the Russians and Roumanians accept this peace for want of a better one, why should we be the ones to reject it?”

In the Reichstag faction not more than 12 voices were in favour of rejecting the treaty. With the greatest trouble a decision was come to abstain from voting.

The Social Democrats naturally promoted the campaigns of German imperialism against the revolution in Finland, in the Baltic Provinces, in the Ukraine, in the Caucasus in that they concealed from the workers what was happening in the East. Wilhelm Jansson of the A.D.G.B. (German General Federation of Trade Unions) even applauded the murder of workers in Finland. In spite of all this, they continued their efforts to get into the good graces of the Bolsheviki. When however the German revolution was knocking hard at the doors, it was Mr. Scheideman who agitated in the Government for a breach with Russia and found a pretext for it. At that time the Social Democracy entered on the period of the most rascally calumniations of the first Workers’ Revolution; the party put at the service of this campaign the sworn enemies of the German working class and the scum of the servile members of the Press.

In its whole attitude towards the Russian revolution and the Bolsheviki, German Social Democracy did not for one moment fix its glance on the interests of the German, still less of the international working class. It was exclusively guided by the aims and wishes of German imperialism. It is responsible for the infamous predatory peace of Brest Litovsk and for the attempts at slaughtering the Russian revolution. It has promoted this policy of German imperialism by a brilliant feat of malicious craft and insidiousness. Even where it said the truth about the policy of the revolutionary party, this truth turned, in its mouth, into the most ignominious lie.

International Press Correspondence, widely known as”Inprecor” was published by the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI) regularly in German and English, occasionally in many other languages, beginning in 1921 and lasting in English until 1938. Inprecor’s role was to supply translated articles to the English-speaking press of the International from the Comintern’s different sections, as well as news and statements from the ECCI. Many ‘Daily Worker’ and ‘Communist’ articles originated in Inprecorr, and it also published articles by American comrades for use in other countries. It was published at least weekly, and often thrice weekly. The ECCI also published the glossy magazine ‘Communist International’ edited by Zinoviev and Karl Radek from 1919 until 1926 monthly in German, French, Russian, and English. Unlike, Inprecor, CI contained long-form articles by the leading figures of the International as well as proceedings, statements, and notices of the Comintern. No complete run of Communist International is available in English. Both were largely published outside of Soviet territory, with Communist International printed in London, to facilitate distribution and both were major contributors to the Communist press in the U.S. Communist International and Inprecor are an invaluable English-language source on the history of the Communist International and its sections.

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