Witness to the German Revolution (38 page)

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Authors: Victor Serge

Tags: #History, #Europe, #Former Soviet Republics, #Germany, #Modern, #20th Century, #Political Science, #Political Ideologies, #Communism; Post-Communism & Socialism

BOOK: Witness to the German Revolution
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1
Oxford, 1967.
2
Revolution in Danger
(London, 1997).
3
Memoirs
, p155.
4
Memoirs
, pp157-175.
5
In his 1968 Columbia University doctoral dissertation
Victor Serge: The Making of a Novelist (1890-1928)
, University Microfiches, Ann Arbor, MI.
6
In 1971 Broué had suggested that “in all probability” Albert was in fact Serge. See P Broué,
Révolution en Allemagne
(Paris, 1971), p597.
7
Notes d'Allemagne
(Montreuil, 1990).
8
See in particular the writings from the Russian civil war period collected in
Revolution in Danger.
9
Memoirs
, p177.
10
Birth of Our Power
(Harmondsworth, 1970), pp65-66.
11
Red Flag
: main daily paper of the KPD.
12
Calculation made three months ago. [Serge's note.]
13
The term billion is used to mean a thousand million (10
9
); likewise trillion is used to mean a million million (10
12
) and quadrillion a thousand million million (10
15
).
14
Figure for all German workers—this was before the massive inflation.
15
Eugene Varga (1879-1964), leading Comintern economist.
16
Working-class districts of Berlin.
17
German war medal.
18
Wealthy French banker involved in negotiations on reparations with Stinnes.
19
General Gaston de Galliffet (1830-1909), one of the commanders responsible for crushing the Paris Commune of 1871.
20
The Kapp putsch, an attempted right wing military coup defeated by a general strike called by all the workers' organizations.
21
When the SPD-led government supported the army's crushing of workers' insurrectionary movements after the Kapp putsch.
22
The March Action of 1921 was a response to police action in central Germany ordered by the social democrat Horsing; but Serge is disingenuous not to mention that the KPD was guilty of irresponsibility in launching this adventurist action.
23
(1878-1935): anarchist, songwriter and playwright; imprisoned for his role in the Bavarian Soviet Republic; released 1924; imprisoned and killed by Nazis.
24
(1893-1939), leader of Bavarian Red Army in 1919, and well-known expressionist playwright.
25
(1889-1933), organizer of a guerrilla army during March Action.
26
Organization Escherich, an armed body created by the far right Bavarian Interior Minister Escherich.
27
The French used colonial troops from Senegal and North Africa in the occupation of the Rhineland and, later, the Ruhr. Morgan Philips Price, who visited the Rhineland in November 1921, reports that while there was racist feeling against the black troops among the middle classes, working people were often dehumanized with the African troops.
28
Originally the alliance of Britain, France and Russia before and during World War I; after 1917 the alliance of Britain and France.
29
Luis Nicolau Fort was one of the Spanish anarchists responsible for the assassination of the Spanish prime minister, Eduardo Dato, in March 1921. He and his wife, Joaquina Concepcion, were extradited from Germany to Spain in early 1922, despite the fact that the extradition treaty between Spain and Germany excluded political prisoners.
30
MacDonald was to become the first Labour prime minister after the December 1923 election.
31
V. M. Chernov (1876-1952), formerly Russian Social Revolutionary leader, lived abroad after 1920.
32
Evno Azev was a police spy who penetrated the Social Revolutionary organization.
33
V. Volodarsky, a leading Bolshevik, was assassinated by the Social Revolutionaries in June 1918.
34
Friedrich Adler (1879-1960), Austrian socialist leader who assassinated the prime minister in 1916; later secretary of the Second International.
35
Zetkin was in fact 22 years older than Adler!
36
Jean Longuet (1876-1938), son of Marx's daughter Jenny; member of the French Socialist Party; opposed affiliation to the Comintern.
37
L. Martov (1873-1923), Russian Menshevik leader; opposed Bolshevik revolution; emigrated 1920.
38
G. M. Serrati (1872-1926), leader of left of Italian Socialist Party; refused to join Italian CP in 1921, but joined in 1924.
39
In August 1918 the Social Revolutionary Fanny Kaplan shot and seriously wounded Lenin.
40
Baku, capital of Azerbaijan, oil producing center; Tbilisi (Tiflis), capital of Georgia.
41
The trial of the Social Revolutionaries began in Moscow in June 1922. Vandervelde and other Western social democrats acted as defense lawyers for the accused. The trial ended with 14 death sentences which were suspended.
42
Karl Radek (1875-1939), Bolshevik leader who played an important role in Germany on behalf of the Comintern in the 1919-23 period.
43
Serge seems to be blaming Adler as a representative of international social democracy. Adler was a leading figure in the Austrian Social Democracy, which took power at the birth of the republic in 1918, but he did not hold any major governmental responsibility.
44
Gold coins had circulated freely before the war, but were collected in during the war. They retained value when paper marks became worthless.
45
Admiral Miklós Horthy headed an authoritarian regime in Hungary from 1920 after the overthrow of the short lived Communist regime.
46
Erskine Childers (1870-1922), executed as a member of the IRA.
47
Over 200 were killed in the South African miners' strike.
48
April 16, 1922.
49
The treaty of Sèvres was signed between the Allies and the Ottoman Empire in 1920, but revised in 1923 following Turkish victories.
50
An Iraqi city.
51
(1863-1936): Belgian Socialist.
52
The Independent Social Democrats (USPD) split from the SPD in 1917; in October 1920 the majority voted to fuse with the KPD; in September 1922 most of what was left of the USPD reunited with the SPD, leaving a small splinter group including the veteran revolutionary Georg Ledebour (1850-1947).
53
That is, the Second International (of which the British Labour Party was a major constituent) and the International Union of Socialist Parties (Two and a half International), founded in Vienna.
54
Leader of the American Federation of Labor.
55
Split from the SPD led by Liebknecht and Luxemburg which became the original core of the KPD.
56
Emil Eichhorn (1863-1925), member of USPD. On November 9, 1918 he occupied Berlin police headquarters with a group of workers and soldiers and became police chief. His removal from office, on January 5, 1919, led to workers' rising and repression.
57
Admiral A.V. Kolchak (1873-1920), General A.I. Denikin (1872-1947), General N.N. Yudenich (1862-1933): leaders of the white forces in the Russian civil war.
58
Otto Landsberg and Rudolf Wissell were, like Ebert, Scheidemann and Noske, SPD ministers and people's commissars in 1919.
59
The troops which crushed the Commune of 1871 were sent in from Versailles, outside the Commune's territory.
60
Heinrich Dorrenbach (1888-1919); revolutionary and sailors' leader in 1918. Arrested 1919 and shot “trying to escape.”
61
The Badische Anilinund Soda Fabrik, a major chemical company.
62
French use of black African troops in the Ruhr occupation posed particular problems for the KPD, since some sections of the left responded in a racist manner. The KPD line was to reject racism while agreeing that black troops should not be there. A special leaflet was issued for Senegalese troops, which stated, “You are here to pillage and steal in favor of the same French imperialists who murder and rob you in your homeland.”
63
Walter Rathenau, the Jewish foreign minister of the Reich, was murdered on June 24, 1922 by an extreme right organization because of his support for paying reparations.
64
Franz Mehring (1846-1919), veteran socialist closely associated with Rosa Luxemburg.
65
A metric pound—half a kilogram.
66
Communists played a leading role in the short-lived Soviet Republic in Bavaria in April 1919, and were afterwards victims of savage repression.
67
Timofeyev was one of 14 Social Revolutionaries sentenced to death in Moscow in 1922, but the death sentences were suspended.
68
In Le Havre, on August 25, 1922, workers striking against a pay cut clashed with police who killed three and injured 15.
69
Joseph Cyrille Magdalaine Denvignes, French general who spent six years in Germany. He described his experiences in
La guerre ou la paix
(Paris, 1927).
70
The assistance given by Bismarck and the Prussian troops in the crushing of the Paris Commune.
71
Netherlands currency.
72
The Communist demand was that the part of the nation's real wealth (land, buildings, factories) which was not eroded by inflation should be confiscated by the Reich to enable it to balance its budget.
73
On July 23 there had been violent clashes between demonstrating workers and police in these two cities. Wroclaw was formerly known as Breslau.
74
Louis XVI's minister Foulon and his son-in-law Berthier, the
intendant,
were killed by the Paris crowd on July 22, 1789.
75
German police wore green or blue uniforms according to which force they belonged to. The Schutzpolizei—municipal police—wore green; the national
Sicherheitspolizei
, under direct control of the minister of the interior, wore blue.
76
Serge refers to SPD members as “citizen”—a form of address current in the French bourgeois revolution—rather than using the Communist “comrade.”
77
At the time of the March Action.
78
The Freikorps, used to crush the working class in 1919.
79
In June we saw a sharp increase in the crime rate and in suicide. In Berlin alone, there were 2,700 crimes against property in the course of the month, and over 150 suicides. [Serge's note.]
80
Since 1921 there had been much discussion of the demand for a “workers' government,” that is, a KPD-SPD coalition within the existing parliamentary framework. Such a demand flowed from united front policies yet risked encouraging reformist illusions. As Serge shows, the “workers' governments” established in Saxony and Thuringia later in 1923 were conceived as short term measures, and as springboards for insurrection and civil war.
81
The royal family of Prussia and subsequently of the German Empire.
82
November 1919; the general strike following the Kapp putsch in March 1920; the March Action in 1921.

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