OFFICIAL INSANITY THREAD
Posted by mortal
Anyone tried this?
REUTERS, LONDON
A new phenomenon is emerging on the Internet and like all geekish fads it involves terms seldom, if ever, heard elsewhere, such as "cuneiform meatspace" and "carburettor logotype."
The game is called "Google-whacking" and is the invention of some search-obsessed fans of Google.com, the search engine that has an index of over three billion Web pages.
The object of Googlewhacking is simple enough. A participant types two words into the Google search line with the hopes of pulling off a single search result.
If you see "Results 1-1 of 1" appear under a Google search -- congratulations! You're a winner (and you clearly don't have enough work to do).
Googlewhacking is more difficult than it looks. Google's massive database updates constantly, thus making the solitary search result more and more elusive.
And, of course, if your Googlewhack is subsequently recorded anywhere online it is forever nullified as a Googlewhack since future searches would pull up multiple results, one of the maddening challenges of the pastime.
Take "cuneiform meatspace," a Googlewhack ostensibly coined last month by an Internet user. A search on Monday, triggered three search results for "cuneiform meatspace," thus ending its brief life as a successful whack, or "uniwhack."
Various Web sites, including Unblinking.com, explain Googlewhacking in detail, replete with rules for the uninitiated.
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It's also desperately difficult!
REUTERS, LONDON
A new phenomenon is emerging on the Internet and like all geekish fads it involves terms seldom, if ever, heard elsewhere, such as "cuneiform meatspace" and "carburettor logotype."
The game is called "Google-whacking" and is the invention of some search-obsessed fans of Google.com, the search engine that has an index of over three billion Web pages.
The object of Googlewhacking is simple enough. A participant types two words into the Google search line with the hopes of pulling off a single search result.
If you see "Results 1-1 of 1" appear under a Google search -- congratulations! You're a winner (and you clearly don't have enough work to do).
Googlewhacking is more difficult than it looks. Google's massive database updates constantly, thus making the solitary search result more and more elusive.
And, of course, if your Googlewhack is subsequently recorded anywhere online it is forever nullified as a Googlewhack since future searches would pull up multiple results, one of the maddening challenges of the pastime.
Take "cuneiform meatspace," a Googlewhack ostensibly coined last month by an Internet user. A search on Monday, triggered three search results for "cuneiform meatspace," thus ending its brief life as a successful whack, or "uniwhack."
Various Web sites, including Unblinking.com, explain Googlewhacking in detail, replete with rules for the uninitiated.
---
It's also desperately difficult!
you may know of interest of racing pidgeons, but ialso have a fondness for Locusts - Cankerworms - Caterpillars
I will restore to you the years that the locust
hath eaten, the cankerworm, and the caterpillar,
and the palmerworm, my great army which I sent among you.
Joel 2:25
This article is very loosely based on a talk I gave to the AGM of Revolutionary History in 1997 although the overwhelming majority of this text is new I believe that it reasonably accurately reflects the spirit of what I said two years ago. Because I had just published a book about the IS/SWP, Ted Crawford who convened the meeting advertised the subject as "A History of IS". At the time, having sated myself on the fractured rhythms of Cliff
LS's Tip of the week
ESSENTIAL OILS aren't essential unless you're an engine, a gearbox or a twat
I will restore to you the years that the locust
hath eaten, the cankerworm, and the caterpillar,
and the palmerworm, my great army which I sent among you.
Joel 2:25
This article is very loosely based on a talk I gave to the AGM of Revolutionary History in 1997 although the overwhelming majority of this text is new I believe that it reasonably accurately reflects the spirit of what I said two years ago. Because I had just published a book about the IS/SWP, Ted Crawford who convened the meeting advertised the subject as "A History of IS". At the time, having sated myself on the fractured rhythms of Cliff
LS's Tip of the week
ESSENTIAL OILS aren't essential unless you're an engine, a gearbox or a twat
aaargh i've got R.S.I in my typing hand now 
LS's Tip of the week
ESSENTIAL OILS aren't essential unless you're an engine, a gearbox or a twat
LS's Tip of the week
ESSENTIAL OILS aren't essential unless you're an engine, a gearbox or a twat
i quite enjoy reading about the german revolution too, join me now as i take you on a journey into the past.................................
It is not without some embarrassment that I undertake a criticism of our comrade Walter Held's article 'Why the German Revolution Failed'. The terrible conditions of the reactionary period which we are going through prevent Held himself from participating in the discussion. In spite of Held's enforced silence, however, I feel forced to criticise his article, because it contains a number of errors on questions of prime importance for the revolutionary education of proletarian militants. For the very reason that his article contains excellent truths, very useful to recall, it is so much the more necessary to criticise it: nothing, indeed, is more dangerous than an error which takes refuge behind a great truth.
Held strongly emphasises, and rightly so, that without a tested party with a firm leadership it is impossible to lead a proletarian revolution to a successful conclusion. This great truth was certainly demonstrated positively in October 1917, in Russia, and negatively in Germany in 1918-19. Held, however, gives to this truth an abstract character.
Apropos of the various events of 1919-23 in Germany or Italy, Held incessantly uses the same expressions: "the conception [of the party] was not adequate from the very beginning", "the attempt to [build a party] was too late", "such an attempt [to build a party] was doomed to failure because there was a vacuum", etc. Held thus turns in a vicious circle: the party cannot be formed because it does not yet exist. But there was a time when the one real party that he recognises, the party of the October Revolution, also did not exist. How did Lenin and his co-workers pass from the non-existence to the existence of a fully-formed and tested party? Held is under the illusion that he has analysed this important question and that he applies what he has thus learned to the events of 1917-23. In reality, however, he simply reiterates, over and over again, that such a party was not created in Germany. As he must get out of this vicious circle one way or another he ends up by breaking through it haphazardly and arbitrarily. As the non-existence of the party is his sole explanation for everything, so he fetishises one incident in the party's history into the sole explanation for its non-existence. He stumbles, in the history of the German movement, upon the Levi case, and is obliged to exaggerate and distort it in order to construct out of it a cause for the defeat of the revolutionary wave of 1917-23, and thereby for the degeneration of the Communist International and the Soviet state. Held has thus been led to a veritable revision of the history of the Comintern and the origins of our movement.
To clarify all the points raised by Held would mean to write a history of the Communist International. I will limit myself here to trying to correct his evaluation of a number of important facts. I will try to show how he was led to such inexact evaluations through a false method. It is to be hoped that this discussion will inspire many young members of our party to become much more familiar with the rich history of the first years of the Communist International.
The Second World War once more brings forward to our generation, under broadly analogous conditions, the tasks which were not resolved at the end of the First World War. The history of the Leninist period of the Communist International is of more burning significance today than ever before.
Paul Levi
In order to explain his criticism of the leadership of the German and Russian Communist parties, Held bestows the greatest eulogies on the pamphlet that Paul Levi wrote after the March Action of 1921 in Germany. He writes: Immediately after the close of the event, he [Levi] published a brilliantly written pamphlet, Unser Weg: wider den Putschismus (Our Road: Against Putschism). Outside of Rosa Luxemburg's Spartacus Programme, this is one of the most noteworthy contributions to be found in the whole history of the German Communist Party." Held does not dwell long on the circumstances of the publication of this pamphlet. Only indirectly does it appear in his article that Levi's criticism of the leadership of which he was a member was made outside the party.
After the defeat of the March Action in Central Germany, the Communist Party underwent the most severe blows. In addition to the military and police repression there was the activity of armed reactionary bands such as the Orgesch. The courts unhesitatingly handed out long sentences to the Communist workers. Leaders were hunted down and arrested. One of them, Sylt, was killed "while attempting to escape". The bourgeois and Social -Democratic press was waging a violent campaign against the Communists, accusing them of sabotage, arson and murder. The entire bourgeois rabble and its Social -Democratic lackeys were crying incessantly about "the putsch". It was under these conditions that Paul Levi, on 3 April 1921, sent his pamphlet to press without the knowledge, much less the consent, of the party. Naturally, Levi understood the term "putsch" differently from the anti-Communist hounds, who so described any revolutionary action. Later we shall discuss whether Levi was justified in calling the March Action a "putsch" in the Marxist sense of the word. But if we admit for the moment that he was entirely right on the political plane, the irresponsible manner in which he presented his critique could not and did not fail to furnish a weapon against the party.
The pamphlet was distinguished above all by its complete lack of solidarity with the party. It threw the grossest insults publicly at the party leaders. It used unsparingly the cheapest demagogy. The following is one example among many others: "You orphans and widows of the fallen proletarians! Do not hate capitalism; do not hate the Social-Democratic lackeys and hangmen, do not hate the Independent Socialist rascals who have stabbed the fighters in the back. Do hate the leaders of the Communist Party! And you workers who, maltreated in the jails, still raise high your bloody heads, convinced that you have fallen into the hands of the enemy in a gallant right for the interests of the proletariat - you are mistaken. You have no right to be proud of your wounds, you are victims of new Ludendorffs who cynically and, frivolously sent you to your death!"
The leaders of the party are thus compared publicly, by a member of the leadership, to Ludendorff. Any honest member of the party could do no more than remain impervious to Levi's arguments. By his irresponsible conduct Levi discredited his political critique of the leadership's errors, and thus helped the leadership to avoid its political responsibility. As Lenin noted: "Levi behaved like an 'anarchist intellectual' (if I am not mistaken, the German term is Edelanarchist), instead of behaving like an organised member of the proletarian Communist International. Levi committed a breach of discipline. By this series of incredibly stupid blunders Levi made it difficult to concentrate attention on the essence of the matter.
Held passes very lightly over this whole problem of Levi's conduct. Dealing with the criticisms of Levi that Lenin made in his conversations with Clara Zetkin, Held writes that, according to Lenin, "Levi's critique lacked the feeling of solidarity with the party, and had embittered the comrades by its tone, rather than by its content." And Held comments: "This argument sounds surprising, coming from a politician who had always used the sharpest tone in his polemics, and had ridiculed every criticism of sharp tone as evidence of political weakness," Thus Held reduces the whole question to "tone", without quoting Lenin's further declaration to Zetkin: "[Levi] tore the party to pieces. He did not criticise, but was one-sided, exaggerated, even malicious; he gave nothing to which the Party could usefully turn. He lacks the spirit of solidarity with the party."
Indeed, Lenin knew how to employ 1he sharpest tone in his polemics." But one must note that either this "tone" was directed against the enemies of the party, and not against his own party or, in polemicising against another party member, even where he used a sharp tone, Lenin always made clear that they both stood together within the borders of the same party. Levi did not understand how to discern these borders. He publicly "tore" his own party "to pieces".
Having reduced the affair to a question of tone, Held evidently cannot comprehend the attitude of Lenin and Trotsky. He writes: 1t remains difficult to understand how Lenin and Trotsky could follow the Third World Congress in placing the form above the content" [of Levi's criticism]. But the question was by no means one of "tone" or "form"; the principles of democratic centralism, the very conception of a party, were at stake. By passing so lightly over this whole aspect of the problem, Held betrays a real blindness to organisational problems.
Under the given conditions the first duty of the German party was to cut immediately all ties with Levi, independently of any further political discussion. To act otherwise would have been to erase all party boundaries; indeed, for the party it would have been suicide. On April 29, 1921, the Executive Committee of the Communist International adopted a resolution approving Levi's expulsion: "Having read Paul Levi's pamphlet Unser Weg wider den Putschismus, the ECCI ratifies the decision to expel Paul Levi from the United Communist Party of Germany and, consequently, from the Third International. Even if Paul Levi were nine-tenths right in his view of the March offensive, he would still be liable to expulsion from the party because of his unprecedented violation of discipline and because, by his action, in the given circumstances, he dealt the party a blow in the back. Today, with the entire experience of the last 22 years that separates us from this declaration, I do not see a single word which could be changed.
Certainly Levi's conduct hardly tallies with the flattering picture which Held paints of him. Let us try to construct a more balanced portrait. Levi was a lawyer, the son of a rich banker. He came into contact with the Social-Democratic movement before 1914 in the course of defending party members in court. However, he did not become really integrated in the labour movement. During the war he became an internationalist in his views, but did not join in the underground work of the Spartacists. The war over, it was above all his abilities as writer and orator, in view of the lack of cadres, that carried him to the first rank. Those who worked at his side from 1919 to 1921 report that in the difficult periods he sometimes spoke of retiring into private life, that he was not made for the struggle, etc. Zetkin, while defending Levi to Lenin, nevertheless said: "After the murder of Rosa [Luxemburg], Karl [Liebknecht] and Leo [Jogiches] he had to take over the leadership; he has regretted it often enough .
He never gave up, it is said, collecting antiques. The dilettante and the aesthete were always present in him. Lenin told Zetkin that already during the war he "was aware of a certain coldness in his [Levi's] attitude to the workers. Something of a 'please keep your distance'. Extremely interesting for the light it throws on Levi's personality is the letter which he addressed to Lenin on 29 March 1921. In this letter he was already condemning the March Action, just ended, as a 'fatal putsch", and explained what his conduct was going to be: "I will also now go no further than to write something like a pamphlet in which I will set down my conceptions; I will neither bring the case before the authorities who are now considering meeting in Germany, nor before the International Executive Committee. The comrades who bear the responsibility should not feel hindered by me."
These lines might have been written by anyone but a revolutionist. Intellectual smugness, lack of solidarity with his organisation, condescension and even a certain contempt, and some fatalism - all these can be seen in his words. But even more is involved. This letter was written four days before he sent his pamphlet to press! Either he was guilty of duplicity in reassuring Lenin or, more likely, he reveals here his personal and political instability.
The March Action
We, must now ask ourselves: Was Levi's estimate of the March Action entirely right politically? In his pamphlet he denounced the party's adventurism, and qualified the March Action as a "putsch"; it was even for him "the biggest Bakuninist putsch in all history." Held, without saying so specifically, seems to adopt Levi's version completely. He speaks of "putschist riots" and of "putschists". He gives a highly coloured description of the March Action with the help of tragicomic episodes borrowed from Levi's pamphlet. He neglects, however, to place it exactly in the trajectory of the German revolution.
This tacit adoption of Levi's appraisal, and this absence of precise political analysis are all the more astonishing since Lenin and Trotsky were far from agreeing with Levi even on the political plane. Held, who could not fail to know the documents, did not undertake to discuss this point. He did not even note it. Lenin wrote: "Of course, Levi was not right in asserting that this action was a 'putsch'; this assertion of Paul Levi is nonsense."
The most complete and precise political analysis of the March Action is found in one of Trotsky's speeches before a membership meeting of the Moscow section of the Russian Communist Party at the end of July 1921, immediately after the Third Congress of the Comintern:
"What was the content of the March events? The proletarians of Central Germany, the workers in the mining regions, represented in recent times, even during the war, one of the most retarded sections of the German working class. In their majority they followed not the Social Democrats but the patriotic, bourgeois and clerical cliques, remained devoted to the Emperor, and so on and so forth. Their living and working conditions were exceptionally harsh. In relation to the workers of Berlin they occupied the same place, as say, did the backward Ural provinces in our country in relation to the Petersburg workers. During a revolutionary epoch it happens not infrequently that a most oppressed and backward section of the working class, awakened for the first time by the thunder of events, swings into the struggle with the greatest energy and evinces a readiness to fight under any and all conditions, far from always taking into consideration the circumstances and the chances of victory, that is, the requirements of revolutionary strategy. For example, at a time when the workers of Berlin or Saxony had become, after the experience of 1919-20, far more cautious - which has its minuses and its pluses too - the workers of Central Germany continued to engage in stormy actions, strikes and demonstrations, carting out their foremen on wheelbarrows, holding meetings during working hours, and so on. Naturally, this is incompatible with the sacred tasks of Ebert's Republic. It is hardly surprising that this conservative police Republic, in the person of its police agent, the Social Democrat Horsing, should have decided to do a little 'purging' there, i.e., drive out the most revolutionary elements, arrest several Communists, etc.
Precisely during this period (the middle of March), the Central Committee of the German Communist Party arrived firmly at the idea that there was need of conducting a more actively revolutionary policy. The German Party, you will recall, had been created a short while before by the merger of the old Spartacus League and the majority of the Independent Party and thereby became confronted in practice with the question of mass actions. The idea that it was necessary to pass over to a more active policy was absolutely correct. But how did this express itself in practice? When the Social-Democratic policeman Horsing issued his order, demanding of the workers what Kerensky's government had more than once vainly demanded in our country, namely: that no meetings be held during working hours, that factory property be treated as a sacred trust, etc. - at this moment the Central Committee of the Communist Party issued a call for a general strike in order to aid the workers of Central Germany. A general strike is not something to which the working class responds easily, at the party's very first call -especially if the workers have recently suffered a number of defeats, and, all the less so in a country where alongside the Communist Party there exist two mass Social-Democratic parties and where the trade-union apparatus is opposed to us. Yet, if we examine the issues of Rote Fahne, central publication of the Communist. Party, throughout this period, day by day, we will see that the call for the general strike came completely unprepared. During the period of revolution there were not a few bloodlettings in Germany and the police offensive against Central Germany could not in and of itself have immediately raised the entire working class to its feet. Every serious mass action must obviously be preceded by large-scale energetic agitation, centring around action slogans, all hitting on one and the same point. Such agitation can lead to more decisive calls for action only if it reveals, after probing, that the masses have already been touched to the quick and are ready to march forward on the path of revolutionary action. This is the ABC of revolutionary strategy, but precisely this ABC was completely violated during the March events. Before the police battalions had even succeeded in reaching the factories and mines of Central Germany, a general strike did actually break out there. I already said that in Central Germany there existed the readiness to engage in immediate struggle, and the call of the Central Committee met with an immediate response. But an entirely different situation prevailed in the rest of the country. There was nothing either in the international or the domestic situation of Germany to justify such a sudden transition to activity. The masses simply failed to understand the summons.
"Nevertheless, certain very influential theoreticians of the German Communist Party instead of acknowledging that this summons was a mistake, proceeded to explain it away by propounding a theory that in a revolutionary epoch we are obliged to conduct exclusively an aggressive policy, that is, the policy of revolutionary offensive. The March action is thus served up to the masses in the guise of an offensive. You can now evaluate the situation as a whole. The offensive was in reality launched by the Social-Democratic policeman Horsing. This should have been utilised in order to unite all the workers for defence, for self-protection, even if, to begin with, a very modest resistance. Had the soil proved favourable, had the agitation met with a favourable response, it would then have been possible to pass over to the general strike. If the events continue to unfold further, if the masses rise, if the ties among the workers grow stronger, if their temper lifts, while indecision and demoralisation seize the camp of the foe - then comes the time for issuing the slogan to pass over to the offensive. But should the soil prove unfavourable, should the conditions and the moods of the masses fail to correspond with the more resolute slogans, then it is necessary to sound a retreat, and to fall back to previously prepared positions in as orderly a manner as possible. Therewith we have gained this, that we proved our ability to probe the working masses, we strengthened their internal ties and, what is most important, we have raised the party's authority for giving wise leadership under all circumstances.
"But what does the leading body of the German Party do? It gives the appearance of pouncing upon the very first pretext: and even before this pretext has become known to workers or assimilated by them, the Central Committee hurls the slogan of the general strike. And before the party had a chance to rally the workers of Berlin, Dresden and Munich to the aid of the workers of Central Germany - and this could perhaps have been accomplished in the space of a few days, provided there was no leaping over the events, and the masses were led forward systematically and firmly - before the party succeeded in accomplishing this work, it is proclaimed that our action is an offensive. This was already tantamount to ruining everything and paralysing the movement in advance. It is quite self-evident that at this stage the offensive came exclusively from the enemy side. It was necessary to utilise the moral element of defence, it was necessary to summon the proletariat of the whole country to hasten to the aid of the workers of Central Germany. In the initial stages this support might have assumed varied forms, until the party found itself in a position to issue a generalised slogan of action. The task of agitation consisted in raising the masses to their feet, focusing their attention upon the events in Central Germany, smashing politically the resistance of the labour bureaucracy and thus assuring a genuinely general character of the strike action as a possible base for the further development of the revolutionary struggle. But what happened instead? The revolutionary and dynamic minority of the proletariat found itself counter-posed in action to the majority of the proletariat, before this majority had a chance to grasp the meaning of events. When the party ran up against the passivity and dilatoriness of the working class, the impatient Communist elements sought here and there to drive the majority of the workers into the streets, no longer by means of agitation, but by mechanical measures. If the majority of workers favour a strike, they can of course always compel the minority by forcibly shutting down the factories and thus achieving the general strike in action. This has happened more than once, it will happen in the future and only simpletons can raise objections to it. But when the crushing majority of the working class has no clear conception of the movement, or is unsympathetic to it, or does not believe it can succeed, but a minority rushes ahead and seeks to drive workers to strike by mechanical measures, then such an impatient minority can, in the person of the party, come into a hostile clash with the working class and break its own neck."
As we see, Trotsky does not speak, and could not speak of a "putsch." Classic examples of the putsch are: the attempted insurrection of Blanqui in Paris on 14 August 1870, the insurrection of 1 December 1924 organised by the Estonian Communist Party in Reval or, on a reactionary plane, Hitler's attempt at Munich on 8 November 1923. The March Action is far from this type. It embraced hundreds of thousands of workers. The sloga.n of political power never went beyond a propagandist character, and played only an episodic role. The question of the arming of the workers was connected with the struggle against the fascist bands and not to a direct struggle for power.' Thus, the call for a general strike at Mansfeld declared: The workers should secure arms where they can, and smash the Orgesch [armed reactionaries] wherever possible."
The character of the movement in Central Germany in its early stages is typified by a resolution adopted by the several thousand workers of the Leunawerke factory on March 21: "An action committee was elected which was put in charge of drawing up the following demands and taking the necessary measures to realise them. The following demands were formulated: 1. Immediate withdrawal of the armed police and of the military occupation forces from Central Germany. 2. Disarming of the Orgesch and its accomplices. 3. Arming of the workers for defence against counterrevolutionary coups. 4. If the factories are occupied [by the armed forces] all work is to be stopped immediately."
On 24 March, the Central Committee of the party threw itself into the adventure of the general strike, which was a complete failure. The March Action is an example of a partial struggle where a minority is ready to go much further than the class as a whole. Such a situation always raises very difficult tactical problems for the revolutionary party. It is very possible that even with the most prudent policy an experienced party might not have been able to come out of that situation without having received serious blows. The Bolshevik Party was not able to avoid them in July 1917 and, as Trotsky notes, the March Action is related much more to a situation of this type than to a putsch.
The Third World Congress
On the political plane, Levi was of course much closer to the truth than the majority of the German party leadership. Nevertheless, our examination of the question of the "putsch" enables us to evaluate Held's criticism of the Third Congress of the Communist International. To Held, who adopted Levi's theory of the "putsch", any mention of the fact that the German Communist Party in spite of everything had participated in a great proletarian struggle is a "concession to the general rhetoric of the Congress". As neither Lenin nor Trotsky refrained from often mentioning this important fact, Held saw in this a part of the "compromise" that Lenin refers to with the majority of the German delegation. The remainder of the compromise, according to him, is the attitude of the Congress toward Levi. Held writes that the main theses on tactics adopted by the Congress "anathematised the critics of the ultra-leftists". On this point, however, the theses stated,
"In making a thorough examination of the possibilities of struggle, the VKPI) must carefully note the circumstances and opinions which indicate difficulties, and subject the reasons advanced against an action to searching inquiry, but once action has been decided on by the party authorities all comrades must obey the decisions of the party and carry the action through. Criticism of the action should begin only after the action itself is ended, it should be made only in party organisations and bodies, and must take account of the situation of the party in relation to the class enemy. Since Levi disregarded these obvious requirements of party discipline and the conditions of party criticism, the congress confirms his expulsion from the party and considers it impermissible for any member of the Communist International to collaborate with him,"
This is the "anathema" of which Held speaks. In reality, the resolution simply recalls the most elementary principles of revolutionary discipline. But we have already seen that Held has a real blindness toward the demands of democratic centralism. For him, the decision of the Third Congress is bureaucratism. Even worse, it is bureaucratism that caused the bankruptcy of the International and the degeneration of the Soviet state. Held writes: 'The delegates must have gained the impression that it would always be better to make mistakes following orders of the Comintern than to act correctly while violating discipline. In this way the foundation stone was laid for the development which was to change the Communist International in the course of a few years into a society of Mamelukes, in slavish dependency upon the ruling faction in Moscow, and finally into the mere instrument of Stalin's opportunist nationalistic foreign policy." And at the end of the article he mentions, among the causes of the failure of Lenin and Trotsky: "the treatment of it [the German March Action] by the Third World Congress, where form was placed above content, and a bureaucratic conception of discipline was sanctioned."
Held's somewhat vulgar contrast between "to make mistakes following the order of the Comintern", and "to act correctly while violating discipline" is not correct, for there were not, as we shall see, any "orders of the Comintern" in the March Action. With this criticism, which is certainly the weakest point of his article, Held comes dangerously close to the petty-bourgeois critics of Bolshevism, who also discovered that the "foundation stone" of Stalinism was laid by the Bolsheviks themselves. For them this stone is the discipline of the party, the prohibition of factions in the Bolshevik Party, or the repression of Kronstadt. For Held it is the "bureaucratic conception of discipline" of the International. We will return later to this method of interpretation. Let us now cite still more facts to elucidate the problem of Paul Levi.
Did Lenin and Trotsky give Levi's head to the leadership of the German party as their part of the "compromise" which Lenin mentioned at the Congress? Not at all. Lenin's attitude toward Levi is well known through his conversations with Clara Zetkin, as well as through his speeches at the Congress: Levi committed a serious breach of discipline, he attacked the party in an irresponsible and disloyal manner, and the Congress could not retract his expulsion; however, Levi has great abilities, and if he disciplines himself, and wishes to collaborate, Lenin would intervene in a few months for his reinstatement. Trotsky's position was essentially the same:
"The decision concerning Levi adopted by the Congress at Moscow is perfectly clear and requires no extended commentaries. By the decision of the Congress, Levi was placed outside the Communist International. This decision was not at all adopted against the wishes of the Russian delegation, but on the contrary with its rather conspicuous participation, inasmuch as it was none other than the Russian delegation that drafted the resolution on tactics. The Russian delegation acted, as usual, under the direction of our party's Central Committee. And as a member of the Central Committee and member of the Russian delegation, I voted for the, resolution confirming Levi's expulsion from the International. Together with our Central Committee I could see no other course. By virtue of his egocentric attitude, Levi had invested his struggle against the crude theoretical and practical mistakes connected with the March events with a character so pernicious that nothing was left for the slanderers among the Independents to do except to support him and chime in with him. Levi opposed himself not only to the March mistakes but also to the German party and the workers who had committed these mistakes....
I do not mean to say by this that I considered Levi irretrievably lost to the Communist International as far back as the Congress. I was too little acquainted with him to draw any categorical conclusions one way or the other. I did, however, entertain the hope that a cruel lesson wouldn't pass for nought and Levi would sooner or later find his way back to the party . . . But when I learned - and this happened two or three weeks after the Congress - that Levi instead of patiently climbing up the embankment began noisily proclaiming that the track of the party and the entire International must be switched over to the precise place where he, Paul Levi, had tumbled, and that therewith Levi began building a whole'party'on the basis of this egocentric philosophy of history, I was obliged to say to myself that the Communist movement had no other recourse -deplorable as it may be - except to definitely place a cross over Levi."
Zetkin herself, Levi's close political companion, had to state to the Congress: 'My personal opinion is that Paul Levi himself will say the last word about this, when he, as I hope, in spite of everything, will work and fight with us again in the future as a Communist on a principled basis and on the line of the Communist Party. Indeed Levi said the last word. He soon attacked the October Revolution, and took refuge in the Social Democracy, so that Lenin was able to write a few months later: "Levi and Serrati are not characteristic in themselves; they are characteristic of the modern type of the extreme left wing of petty-bourgeois democracy, of the camp of the 'other side', the camp of the international capitalists, the camp that is against us."
Then exactly what was the "compromise" of which Lenin spoke at the Congress? The compromise had very precise limits: Lenin and Trotsky so formulated the resolution on tactics, written largely by Lenin, that the German delegates could join in a common vote on it. Had they desired, Lenin and Trotsky could have worded it in a way that would have made it impossible for the Germans to vote for it, thus necessitating a separate vote on the tactic of the March Action. One can recognise that there was a question whether to have a common resolution with the Germans, and that it could be answered by yes or no without unleashing by that the degeneration of the International and the USSR. The possibility of a separate vote was mentioned by Trotsky, who added that the Russian delegation would probably be in the minority, for the Germans had the support of the Austrian and Italian delegations, the majority of the Hungarian delegation, etc. Naturally, it was not the fear of being in the minority which held back Lenin and Trotsky from demanding a separate vote, although this fact was not without importance.
The main reason for their attitude was the immaturity of the German leadership. The German party, and moreover the whole International except the Russian party, was still in the process of formation. It must be added that the struggle against centrism in the International was far from being ended. It well seems that for all these reasons Lenin and Trotsky were right, after their sharp political attack on the March Action, in seeking a common vote. However, in a certain sense the question on this particular point remains open. But this by no means signifies that one could, like Held, derive such disproportionate consequences from such a narrowly-limited "compromise".
To appraise Held's criticism of the Third Congress, we must examine one further point: the responsibility of the International in the March events. Held attributes the direct responsibility for the March Action to the Secretariat of the Executive Committee of the Communist International. He writes: "Lenin and Trotsky shook their heads at all this folly. They were unaware that the March Action was contrived by the Secretariat of the ECCI." And further: "Since Lenin and Trotsky based the necessity for the introduction of the New Economic Policy on the failure of the international revolution to materialise, Zinoviev and his associates in the Secretariat thought they could provide a speedy remedy. This was precisely their chief motive for unleashing the infantile March Action."
For an accusation of such gravity, we must demand serious proof from Held. Held explains lengthily that, in view of their opposition to the New Economic Policy, Zinoviev and Bukharin could not but have desired the March Action. That is possible, but even if it were certain, it would be no proof that they "contrived" and "unleashed" the March Action, i.e., an accusation of direct responsibility. Held was only repeating one of Levi's accusations, which he too had advanced without proof. In reality, it seems demonstrable, at least indirectly, that such responsibility did not exist. Indeed, the Third Congress was the scene of the most violent discussions; letters and telegrams until then unknown were pulled out of pockets; the leaders of the German party were under fire from Lenin and Trotsky and even from Zinoviev, who was then under pressure from Lenin. If there actually had been some telegram or order, written or verbal, from Moscow about the unleashing of the March Action, it is extremely unlikely that such a bomb would not have burst at the Congress, or even before it. Shortly after the Congress Trotsky had occasion to write on this subject: "the German bourgeois and Social-Democratic newspapers, and in their wake the press throughout the world began howling that the March uprising had been provoked by orders from Moscow; that the Soviet power, in difficult straits at that time (peasant mutinies, Kronstadt, etc.), had issued, to save itself, you see, an order to stage uprisings regardless of the situation in every given country. It is impossible to invent anything sillier than this!"
Further along, Held explains, on the basis of Radek's later revelations that, in the period immediately preceding the March Action, "Zinovlev and Bukharin had continued their machinations against Levi's policies and, as a result, the March Action had taken place!' Here Held abandons his main thesis, that of direct responsibility, devoid of proof, as we have seen, for a new thesis of indirect responsibility, difficult to define with precision: Zinoviev and Bukharin had favoured the leadership which had set out on the adventure of March 1921. In this diluted sense responsibility can be extended indefinitely.
Lenin and Trotsky may in this sense he held responsible for not having more closely controlled the work of the Secretariat. And historically there is some truth in this: Lenin and Trotsky were occupied with the building of the Soviet state, they were not always able to prevent Zinoviev and Bukharin from making errors. This general responsibility Trotsky willingly recognised when he wrote: If we were to blame for the March mistakes - insofar as it is possible to speak here of blame - then it was only in the sense that the International as a whole, including our own party, has up to now failed to carry on enough educational work in the sphere of revolutionary tactics, and for this reason failed to eliminate the possibility of such mistaken actions and methods. But to dream of completely eliminating mistakes would be the height of innocence."
In this realm it is necessary above all not to lose a sense of proportion. In the concrete case of the German leadership, if one wishes to go to the point of explaining why Levi did not have enough authority to prevent the March Action, one must look - as much as to Zinoviev's machinations - to the personal traits of Levi himself.
Held's Method
Summarising his criticism of the Third Congress, Held writes: "the Third World Congress already contained the diseased germs which were a few years later to precipitate the degeneration of the Communist International and, along with it, the Soviet state." We have already seen how unjustifiable are the historical points of Held's criticism. We must now dwell upon his method. With his "germ" theory, Held follows a method long practised by the critics of Bolshevism. Trotsky had occasion to reveal the emptiness of this explanation in his pamphlet Stalinism and Bolshevism, in which he showed, specifically, how Souvarine "seeks the inner flaws of Bolshevism" to "explain all subsequent historical mishaps.'
Why was Held carried along this beaten track of the causal continuity of Bolshevism and Stalinism? He recognised, with good reason, the absolute necessity of the party for the success of the revolution. But this in no ways means that the subjective factor
LS's Tip of the week
ESSENTIAL OILS aren't essential unless you're an engine, a gearbox or a twat
It is not without some embarrassment that I undertake a criticism of our comrade Walter Held's article 'Why the German Revolution Failed'. The terrible conditions of the reactionary period which we are going through prevent Held himself from participating in the discussion. In spite of Held's enforced silence, however, I feel forced to criticise his article, because it contains a number of errors on questions of prime importance for the revolutionary education of proletarian militants. For the very reason that his article contains excellent truths, very useful to recall, it is so much the more necessary to criticise it: nothing, indeed, is more dangerous than an error which takes refuge behind a great truth.
Held strongly emphasises, and rightly so, that without a tested party with a firm leadership it is impossible to lead a proletarian revolution to a successful conclusion. This great truth was certainly demonstrated positively in October 1917, in Russia, and negatively in Germany in 1918-19. Held, however, gives to this truth an abstract character.
Apropos of the various events of 1919-23 in Germany or Italy, Held incessantly uses the same expressions: "the conception [of the party] was not adequate from the very beginning", "the attempt to [build a party] was too late", "such an attempt [to build a party] was doomed to failure because there was a vacuum", etc. Held thus turns in a vicious circle: the party cannot be formed because it does not yet exist. But there was a time when the one real party that he recognises, the party of the October Revolution, also did not exist. How did Lenin and his co-workers pass from the non-existence to the existence of a fully-formed and tested party? Held is under the illusion that he has analysed this important question and that he applies what he has thus learned to the events of 1917-23. In reality, however, he simply reiterates, over and over again, that such a party was not created in Germany. As he must get out of this vicious circle one way or another he ends up by breaking through it haphazardly and arbitrarily. As the non-existence of the party is his sole explanation for everything, so he fetishises one incident in the party's history into the sole explanation for its non-existence. He stumbles, in the history of the German movement, upon the Levi case, and is obliged to exaggerate and distort it in order to construct out of it a cause for the defeat of the revolutionary wave of 1917-23, and thereby for the degeneration of the Communist International and the Soviet state. Held has thus been led to a veritable revision of the history of the Comintern and the origins of our movement.
To clarify all the points raised by Held would mean to write a history of the Communist International. I will limit myself here to trying to correct his evaluation of a number of important facts. I will try to show how he was led to such inexact evaluations through a false method. It is to be hoped that this discussion will inspire many young members of our party to become much more familiar with the rich history of the first years of the Communist International.
The Second World War once more brings forward to our generation, under broadly analogous conditions, the tasks which were not resolved at the end of the First World War. The history of the Leninist period of the Communist International is of more burning significance today than ever before.
Paul Levi
In order to explain his criticism of the leadership of the German and Russian Communist parties, Held bestows the greatest eulogies on the pamphlet that Paul Levi wrote after the March Action of 1921 in Germany. He writes: Immediately after the close of the event, he [Levi] published a brilliantly written pamphlet, Unser Weg: wider den Putschismus (Our Road: Against Putschism). Outside of Rosa Luxemburg's Spartacus Programme, this is one of the most noteworthy contributions to be found in the whole history of the German Communist Party." Held does not dwell long on the circumstances of the publication of this pamphlet. Only indirectly does it appear in his article that Levi's criticism of the leadership of which he was a member was made outside the party.
After the defeat of the March Action in Central Germany, the Communist Party underwent the most severe blows. In addition to the military and police repression there was the activity of armed reactionary bands such as the Orgesch. The courts unhesitatingly handed out long sentences to the Communist workers. Leaders were hunted down and arrested. One of them, Sylt, was killed "while attempting to escape". The bourgeois and Social -Democratic press was waging a violent campaign against the Communists, accusing them of sabotage, arson and murder. The entire bourgeois rabble and its Social -Democratic lackeys were crying incessantly about "the putsch". It was under these conditions that Paul Levi, on 3 April 1921, sent his pamphlet to press without the knowledge, much less the consent, of the party. Naturally, Levi understood the term "putsch" differently from the anti-Communist hounds, who so described any revolutionary action. Later we shall discuss whether Levi was justified in calling the March Action a "putsch" in the Marxist sense of the word. But if we admit for the moment that he was entirely right on the political plane, the irresponsible manner in which he presented his critique could not and did not fail to furnish a weapon against the party.
The pamphlet was distinguished above all by its complete lack of solidarity with the party. It threw the grossest insults publicly at the party leaders. It used unsparingly the cheapest demagogy. The following is one example among many others: "You orphans and widows of the fallen proletarians! Do not hate capitalism; do not hate the Social-Democratic lackeys and hangmen, do not hate the Independent Socialist rascals who have stabbed the fighters in the back. Do hate the leaders of the Communist Party! And you workers who, maltreated in the jails, still raise high your bloody heads, convinced that you have fallen into the hands of the enemy in a gallant right for the interests of the proletariat - you are mistaken. You have no right to be proud of your wounds, you are victims of new Ludendorffs who cynically and, frivolously sent you to your death!"
The leaders of the party are thus compared publicly, by a member of the leadership, to Ludendorff. Any honest member of the party could do no more than remain impervious to Levi's arguments. By his irresponsible conduct Levi discredited his political critique of the leadership's errors, and thus helped the leadership to avoid its political responsibility. As Lenin noted: "Levi behaved like an 'anarchist intellectual' (if I am not mistaken, the German term is Edelanarchist), instead of behaving like an organised member of the proletarian Communist International. Levi committed a breach of discipline. By this series of incredibly stupid blunders Levi made it difficult to concentrate attention on the essence of the matter.
Held passes very lightly over this whole problem of Levi's conduct. Dealing with the criticisms of Levi that Lenin made in his conversations with Clara Zetkin, Held writes that, according to Lenin, "Levi's critique lacked the feeling of solidarity with the party, and had embittered the comrades by its tone, rather than by its content." And Held comments: "This argument sounds surprising, coming from a politician who had always used the sharpest tone in his polemics, and had ridiculed every criticism of sharp tone as evidence of political weakness," Thus Held reduces the whole question to "tone", without quoting Lenin's further declaration to Zetkin: "[Levi] tore the party to pieces. He did not criticise, but was one-sided, exaggerated, even malicious; he gave nothing to which the Party could usefully turn. He lacks the spirit of solidarity with the party."
Indeed, Lenin knew how to employ 1he sharpest tone in his polemics." But one must note that either this "tone" was directed against the enemies of the party, and not against his own party or, in polemicising against another party member, even where he used a sharp tone, Lenin always made clear that they both stood together within the borders of the same party. Levi did not understand how to discern these borders. He publicly "tore" his own party "to pieces".
Having reduced the affair to a question of tone, Held evidently cannot comprehend the attitude of Lenin and Trotsky. He writes: 1t remains difficult to understand how Lenin and Trotsky could follow the Third World Congress in placing the form above the content" [of Levi's criticism]. But the question was by no means one of "tone" or "form"; the principles of democratic centralism, the very conception of a party, were at stake. By passing so lightly over this whole aspect of the problem, Held betrays a real blindness to organisational problems.
Under the given conditions the first duty of the German party was to cut immediately all ties with Levi, independently of any further political discussion. To act otherwise would have been to erase all party boundaries; indeed, for the party it would have been suicide. On April 29, 1921, the Executive Committee of the Communist International adopted a resolution approving Levi's expulsion: "Having read Paul Levi's pamphlet Unser Weg wider den Putschismus, the ECCI ratifies the decision to expel Paul Levi from the United Communist Party of Germany and, consequently, from the Third International. Even if Paul Levi were nine-tenths right in his view of the March offensive, he would still be liable to expulsion from the party because of his unprecedented violation of discipline and because, by his action, in the given circumstances, he dealt the party a blow in the back. Today, with the entire experience of the last 22 years that separates us from this declaration, I do not see a single word which could be changed.
Certainly Levi's conduct hardly tallies with the flattering picture which Held paints of him. Let us try to construct a more balanced portrait. Levi was a lawyer, the son of a rich banker. He came into contact with the Social-Democratic movement before 1914 in the course of defending party members in court. However, he did not become really integrated in the labour movement. During the war he became an internationalist in his views, but did not join in the underground work of the Spartacists. The war over, it was above all his abilities as writer and orator, in view of the lack of cadres, that carried him to the first rank. Those who worked at his side from 1919 to 1921 report that in the difficult periods he sometimes spoke of retiring into private life, that he was not made for the struggle, etc. Zetkin, while defending Levi to Lenin, nevertheless said: "After the murder of Rosa [Luxemburg], Karl [Liebknecht] and Leo [Jogiches] he had to take over the leadership; he has regretted it often enough .
He never gave up, it is said, collecting antiques. The dilettante and the aesthete were always present in him. Lenin told Zetkin that already during the war he "was aware of a certain coldness in his [Levi's] attitude to the workers. Something of a 'please keep your distance'. Extremely interesting for the light it throws on Levi's personality is the letter which he addressed to Lenin on 29 March 1921. In this letter he was already condemning the March Action, just ended, as a 'fatal putsch", and explained what his conduct was going to be: "I will also now go no further than to write something like a pamphlet in which I will set down my conceptions; I will neither bring the case before the authorities who are now considering meeting in Germany, nor before the International Executive Committee. The comrades who bear the responsibility should not feel hindered by me."
These lines might have been written by anyone but a revolutionist. Intellectual smugness, lack of solidarity with his organisation, condescension and even a certain contempt, and some fatalism - all these can be seen in his words. But even more is involved. This letter was written four days before he sent his pamphlet to press! Either he was guilty of duplicity in reassuring Lenin or, more likely, he reveals here his personal and political instability.
The March Action
We, must now ask ourselves: Was Levi's estimate of the March Action entirely right politically? In his pamphlet he denounced the party's adventurism, and qualified the March Action as a "putsch"; it was even for him "the biggest Bakuninist putsch in all history." Held, without saying so specifically, seems to adopt Levi's version completely. He speaks of "putschist riots" and of "putschists". He gives a highly coloured description of the March Action with the help of tragicomic episodes borrowed from Levi's pamphlet. He neglects, however, to place it exactly in the trajectory of the German revolution.
This tacit adoption of Levi's appraisal, and this absence of precise political analysis are all the more astonishing since Lenin and Trotsky were far from agreeing with Levi even on the political plane. Held, who could not fail to know the documents, did not undertake to discuss this point. He did not even note it. Lenin wrote: "Of course, Levi was not right in asserting that this action was a 'putsch'; this assertion of Paul Levi is nonsense."
The most complete and precise political analysis of the March Action is found in one of Trotsky's speeches before a membership meeting of the Moscow section of the Russian Communist Party at the end of July 1921, immediately after the Third Congress of the Comintern:
"What was the content of the March events? The proletarians of Central Germany, the workers in the mining regions, represented in recent times, even during the war, one of the most retarded sections of the German working class. In their majority they followed not the Social Democrats but the patriotic, bourgeois and clerical cliques, remained devoted to the Emperor, and so on and so forth. Their living and working conditions were exceptionally harsh. In relation to the workers of Berlin they occupied the same place, as say, did the backward Ural provinces in our country in relation to the Petersburg workers. During a revolutionary epoch it happens not infrequently that a most oppressed and backward section of the working class, awakened for the first time by the thunder of events, swings into the struggle with the greatest energy and evinces a readiness to fight under any and all conditions, far from always taking into consideration the circumstances and the chances of victory, that is, the requirements of revolutionary strategy. For example, at a time when the workers of Berlin or Saxony had become, after the experience of 1919-20, far more cautious - which has its minuses and its pluses too - the workers of Central Germany continued to engage in stormy actions, strikes and demonstrations, carting out their foremen on wheelbarrows, holding meetings during working hours, and so on. Naturally, this is incompatible with the sacred tasks of Ebert's Republic. It is hardly surprising that this conservative police Republic, in the person of its police agent, the Social Democrat Horsing, should have decided to do a little 'purging' there, i.e., drive out the most revolutionary elements, arrest several Communists, etc.
Precisely during this period (the middle of March), the Central Committee of the German Communist Party arrived firmly at the idea that there was need of conducting a more actively revolutionary policy. The German Party, you will recall, had been created a short while before by the merger of the old Spartacus League and the majority of the Independent Party and thereby became confronted in practice with the question of mass actions. The idea that it was necessary to pass over to a more active policy was absolutely correct. But how did this express itself in practice? When the Social-Democratic policeman Horsing issued his order, demanding of the workers what Kerensky's government had more than once vainly demanded in our country, namely: that no meetings be held during working hours, that factory property be treated as a sacred trust, etc. - at this moment the Central Committee of the Communist Party issued a call for a general strike in order to aid the workers of Central Germany. A general strike is not something to which the working class responds easily, at the party's very first call -especially if the workers have recently suffered a number of defeats, and, all the less so in a country where alongside the Communist Party there exist two mass Social-Democratic parties and where the trade-union apparatus is opposed to us. Yet, if we examine the issues of Rote Fahne, central publication of the Communist. Party, throughout this period, day by day, we will see that the call for the general strike came completely unprepared. During the period of revolution there were not a few bloodlettings in Germany and the police offensive against Central Germany could not in and of itself have immediately raised the entire working class to its feet. Every serious mass action must obviously be preceded by large-scale energetic agitation, centring around action slogans, all hitting on one and the same point. Such agitation can lead to more decisive calls for action only if it reveals, after probing, that the masses have already been touched to the quick and are ready to march forward on the path of revolutionary action. This is the ABC of revolutionary strategy, but precisely this ABC was completely violated during the March events. Before the police battalions had even succeeded in reaching the factories and mines of Central Germany, a general strike did actually break out there. I already said that in Central Germany there existed the readiness to engage in immediate struggle, and the call of the Central Committee met with an immediate response. But an entirely different situation prevailed in the rest of the country. There was nothing either in the international or the domestic situation of Germany to justify such a sudden transition to activity. The masses simply failed to understand the summons.
"Nevertheless, certain very influential theoreticians of the German Communist Party instead of acknowledging that this summons was a mistake, proceeded to explain it away by propounding a theory that in a revolutionary epoch we are obliged to conduct exclusively an aggressive policy, that is, the policy of revolutionary offensive. The March action is thus served up to the masses in the guise of an offensive. You can now evaluate the situation as a whole. The offensive was in reality launched by the Social-Democratic policeman Horsing. This should have been utilised in order to unite all the workers for defence, for self-protection, even if, to begin with, a very modest resistance. Had the soil proved favourable, had the agitation met with a favourable response, it would then have been possible to pass over to the general strike. If the events continue to unfold further, if the masses rise, if the ties among the workers grow stronger, if their temper lifts, while indecision and demoralisation seize the camp of the foe - then comes the time for issuing the slogan to pass over to the offensive. But should the soil prove unfavourable, should the conditions and the moods of the masses fail to correspond with the more resolute slogans, then it is necessary to sound a retreat, and to fall back to previously prepared positions in as orderly a manner as possible. Therewith we have gained this, that we proved our ability to probe the working masses, we strengthened their internal ties and, what is most important, we have raised the party's authority for giving wise leadership under all circumstances.
"But what does the leading body of the German Party do? It gives the appearance of pouncing upon the very first pretext: and even before this pretext has become known to workers or assimilated by them, the Central Committee hurls the slogan of the general strike. And before the party had a chance to rally the workers of Berlin, Dresden and Munich to the aid of the workers of Central Germany - and this could perhaps have been accomplished in the space of a few days, provided there was no leaping over the events, and the masses were led forward systematically and firmly - before the party succeeded in accomplishing this work, it is proclaimed that our action is an offensive. This was already tantamount to ruining everything and paralysing the movement in advance. It is quite self-evident that at this stage the offensive came exclusively from the enemy side. It was necessary to utilise the moral element of defence, it was necessary to summon the proletariat of the whole country to hasten to the aid of the workers of Central Germany. In the initial stages this support might have assumed varied forms, until the party found itself in a position to issue a generalised slogan of action. The task of agitation consisted in raising the masses to their feet, focusing their attention upon the events in Central Germany, smashing politically the resistance of the labour bureaucracy and thus assuring a genuinely general character of the strike action as a possible base for the further development of the revolutionary struggle. But what happened instead? The revolutionary and dynamic minority of the proletariat found itself counter-posed in action to the majority of the proletariat, before this majority had a chance to grasp the meaning of events. When the party ran up against the passivity and dilatoriness of the working class, the impatient Communist elements sought here and there to drive the majority of the workers into the streets, no longer by means of agitation, but by mechanical measures. If the majority of workers favour a strike, they can of course always compel the minority by forcibly shutting down the factories and thus achieving the general strike in action. This has happened more than once, it will happen in the future and only simpletons can raise objections to it. But when the crushing majority of the working class has no clear conception of the movement, or is unsympathetic to it, or does not believe it can succeed, but a minority rushes ahead and seeks to drive workers to strike by mechanical measures, then such an impatient minority can, in the person of the party, come into a hostile clash with the working class and break its own neck."
As we see, Trotsky does not speak, and could not speak of a "putsch." Classic examples of the putsch are: the attempted insurrection of Blanqui in Paris on 14 August 1870, the insurrection of 1 December 1924 organised by the Estonian Communist Party in Reval or, on a reactionary plane, Hitler's attempt at Munich on 8 November 1923. The March Action is far from this type. It embraced hundreds of thousands of workers. The sloga.n of political power never went beyond a propagandist character, and played only an episodic role. The question of the arming of the workers was connected with the struggle against the fascist bands and not to a direct struggle for power.' Thus, the call for a general strike at Mansfeld declared: The workers should secure arms where they can, and smash the Orgesch [armed reactionaries] wherever possible."
The character of the movement in Central Germany in its early stages is typified by a resolution adopted by the several thousand workers of the Leunawerke factory on March 21: "An action committee was elected which was put in charge of drawing up the following demands and taking the necessary measures to realise them. The following demands were formulated: 1. Immediate withdrawal of the armed police and of the military occupation forces from Central Germany. 2. Disarming of the Orgesch and its accomplices. 3. Arming of the workers for defence against counterrevolutionary coups. 4. If the factories are occupied [by the armed forces] all work is to be stopped immediately."
On 24 March, the Central Committee of the party threw itself into the adventure of the general strike, which was a complete failure. The March Action is an example of a partial struggle where a minority is ready to go much further than the class as a whole. Such a situation always raises very difficult tactical problems for the revolutionary party. It is very possible that even with the most prudent policy an experienced party might not have been able to come out of that situation without having received serious blows. The Bolshevik Party was not able to avoid them in July 1917 and, as Trotsky notes, the March Action is related much more to a situation of this type than to a putsch.
The Third World Congress
On the political plane, Levi was of course much closer to the truth than the majority of the German party leadership. Nevertheless, our examination of the question of the "putsch" enables us to evaluate Held's criticism of the Third Congress of the Communist International. To Held, who adopted Levi's theory of the "putsch", any mention of the fact that the German Communist Party in spite of everything had participated in a great proletarian struggle is a "concession to the general rhetoric of the Congress". As neither Lenin nor Trotsky refrained from often mentioning this important fact, Held saw in this a part of the "compromise" that Lenin refers to with the majority of the German delegation. The remainder of the compromise, according to him, is the attitude of the Congress toward Levi. Held writes that the main theses on tactics adopted by the Congress "anathematised the critics of the ultra-leftists". On this point, however, the theses stated,
"In making a thorough examination of the possibilities of struggle, the VKPI) must carefully note the circumstances and opinions which indicate difficulties, and subject the reasons advanced against an action to searching inquiry, but once action has been decided on by the party authorities all comrades must obey the decisions of the party and carry the action through. Criticism of the action should begin only after the action itself is ended, it should be made only in party organisations and bodies, and must take account of the situation of the party in relation to the class enemy. Since Levi disregarded these obvious requirements of party discipline and the conditions of party criticism, the congress confirms his expulsion from the party and considers it impermissible for any member of the Communist International to collaborate with him,"
This is the "anathema" of which Held speaks. In reality, the resolution simply recalls the most elementary principles of revolutionary discipline. But we have already seen that Held has a real blindness toward the demands of democratic centralism. For him, the decision of the Third Congress is bureaucratism. Even worse, it is bureaucratism that caused the bankruptcy of the International and the degeneration of the Soviet state. Held writes: 'The delegates must have gained the impression that it would always be better to make mistakes following orders of the Comintern than to act correctly while violating discipline. In this way the foundation stone was laid for the development which was to change the Communist International in the course of a few years into a society of Mamelukes, in slavish dependency upon the ruling faction in Moscow, and finally into the mere instrument of Stalin's opportunist nationalistic foreign policy." And at the end of the article he mentions, among the causes of the failure of Lenin and Trotsky: "the treatment of it [the German March Action] by the Third World Congress, where form was placed above content, and a bureaucratic conception of discipline was sanctioned."
Held's somewhat vulgar contrast between "to make mistakes following the order of the Comintern", and "to act correctly while violating discipline" is not correct, for there were not, as we shall see, any "orders of the Comintern" in the March Action. With this criticism, which is certainly the weakest point of his article, Held comes dangerously close to the petty-bourgeois critics of Bolshevism, who also discovered that the "foundation stone" of Stalinism was laid by the Bolsheviks themselves. For them this stone is the discipline of the party, the prohibition of factions in the Bolshevik Party, or the repression of Kronstadt. For Held it is the "bureaucratic conception of discipline" of the International. We will return later to this method of interpretation. Let us now cite still more facts to elucidate the problem of Paul Levi.
Did Lenin and Trotsky give Levi's head to the leadership of the German party as their part of the "compromise" which Lenin mentioned at the Congress? Not at all. Lenin's attitude toward Levi is well known through his conversations with Clara Zetkin, as well as through his speeches at the Congress: Levi committed a serious breach of discipline, he attacked the party in an irresponsible and disloyal manner, and the Congress could not retract his expulsion; however, Levi has great abilities, and if he disciplines himself, and wishes to collaborate, Lenin would intervene in a few months for his reinstatement. Trotsky's position was essentially the same:
"The decision concerning Levi adopted by the Congress at Moscow is perfectly clear and requires no extended commentaries. By the decision of the Congress, Levi was placed outside the Communist International. This decision was not at all adopted against the wishes of the Russian delegation, but on the contrary with its rather conspicuous participation, inasmuch as it was none other than the Russian delegation that drafted the resolution on tactics. The Russian delegation acted, as usual, under the direction of our party's Central Committee. And as a member of the Central Committee and member of the Russian delegation, I voted for the, resolution confirming Levi's expulsion from the International. Together with our Central Committee I could see no other course. By virtue of his egocentric attitude, Levi had invested his struggle against the crude theoretical and practical mistakes connected with the March events with a character so pernicious that nothing was left for the slanderers among the Independents to do except to support him and chime in with him. Levi opposed himself not only to the March mistakes but also to the German party and the workers who had committed these mistakes....
I do not mean to say by this that I considered Levi irretrievably lost to the Communist International as far back as the Congress. I was too little acquainted with him to draw any categorical conclusions one way or the other. I did, however, entertain the hope that a cruel lesson wouldn't pass for nought and Levi would sooner or later find his way back to the party . . . But when I learned - and this happened two or three weeks after the Congress - that Levi instead of patiently climbing up the embankment began noisily proclaiming that the track of the party and the entire International must be switched over to the precise place where he, Paul Levi, had tumbled, and that therewith Levi began building a whole'party'on the basis of this egocentric philosophy of history, I was obliged to say to myself that the Communist movement had no other recourse -deplorable as it may be - except to definitely place a cross over Levi."
Zetkin herself, Levi's close political companion, had to state to the Congress: 'My personal opinion is that Paul Levi himself will say the last word about this, when he, as I hope, in spite of everything, will work and fight with us again in the future as a Communist on a principled basis and on the line of the Communist Party. Indeed Levi said the last word. He soon attacked the October Revolution, and took refuge in the Social Democracy, so that Lenin was able to write a few months later: "Levi and Serrati are not characteristic in themselves; they are characteristic of the modern type of the extreme left wing of petty-bourgeois democracy, of the camp of the 'other side', the camp of the international capitalists, the camp that is against us."
Then exactly what was the "compromise" of which Lenin spoke at the Congress? The compromise had very precise limits: Lenin and Trotsky so formulated the resolution on tactics, written largely by Lenin, that the German delegates could join in a common vote on it. Had they desired, Lenin and Trotsky could have worded it in a way that would have made it impossible for the Germans to vote for it, thus necessitating a separate vote on the tactic of the March Action. One can recognise that there was a question whether to have a common resolution with the Germans, and that it could be answered by yes or no without unleashing by that the degeneration of the International and the USSR. The possibility of a separate vote was mentioned by Trotsky, who added that the Russian delegation would probably be in the minority, for the Germans had the support of the Austrian and Italian delegations, the majority of the Hungarian delegation, etc. Naturally, it was not the fear of being in the minority which held back Lenin and Trotsky from demanding a separate vote, although this fact was not without importance.
The main reason for their attitude was the immaturity of the German leadership. The German party, and moreover the whole International except the Russian party, was still in the process of formation. It must be added that the struggle against centrism in the International was far from being ended. It well seems that for all these reasons Lenin and Trotsky were right, after their sharp political attack on the March Action, in seeking a common vote. However, in a certain sense the question on this particular point remains open. But this by no means signifies that one could, like Held, derive such disproportionate consequences from such a narrowly-limited "compromise".
To appraise Held's criticism of the Third Congress, we must examine one further point: the responsibility of the International in the March events. Held attributes the direct responsibility for the March Action to the Secretariat of the Executive Committee of the Communist International. He writes: "Lenin and Trotsky shook their heads at all this folly. They were unaware that the March Action was contrived by the Secretariat of the ECCI." And further: "Since Lenin and Trotsky based the necessity for the introduction of the New Economic Policy on the failure of the international revolution to materialise, Zinoviev and his associates in the Secretariat thought they could provide a speedy remedy. This was precisely their chief motive for unleashing the infantile March Action."
For an accusation of such gravity, we must demand serious proof from Held. Held explains lengthily that, in view of their opposition to the New Economic Policy, Zinoviev and Bukharin could not but have desired the March Action. That is possible, but even if it were certain, it would be no proof that they "contrived" and "unleashed" the March Action, i.e., an accusation of direct responsibility. Held was only repeating one of Levi's accusations, which he too had advanced without proof. In reality, it seems demonstrable, at least indirectly, that such responsibility did not exist. Indeed, the Third Congress was the scene of the most violent discussions; letters and telegrams until then unknown were pulled out of pockets; the leaders of the German party were under fire from Lenin and Trotsky and even from Zinoviev, who was then under pressure from Lenin. If there actually had been some telegram or order, written or verbal, from Moscow about the unleashing of the March Action, it is extremely unlikely that such a bomb would not have burst at the Congress, or even before it. Shortly after the Congress Trotsky had occasion to write on this subject: "the German bourgeois and Social-Democratic newspapers, and in their wake the press throughout the world began howling that the March uprising had been provoked by orders from Moscow; that the Soviet power, in difficult straits at that time (peasant mutinies, Kronstadt, etc.), had issued, to save itself, you see, an order to stage uprisings regardless of the situation in every given country. It is impossible to invent anything sillier than this!"
Further along, Held explains, on the basis of Radek's later revelations that, in the period immediately preceding the March Action, "Zinovlev and Bukharin had continued their machinations against Levi's policies and, as a result, the March Action had taken place!' Here Held abandons his main thesis, that of direct responsibility, devoid of proof, as we have seen, for a new thesis of indirect responsibility, difficult to define with precision: Zinoviev and Bukharin had favoured the leadership which had set out on the adventure of March 1921. In this diluted sense responsibility can be extended indefinitely.
Lenin and Trotsky may in this sense he held responsible for not having more closely controlled the work of the Secretariat. And historically there is some truth in this: Lenin and Trotsky were occupied with the building of the Soviet state, they were not always able to prevent Zinoviev and Bukharin from making errors. This general responsibility Trotsky willingly recognised when he wrote: If we were to blame for the March mistakes - insofar as it is possible to speak here of blame - then it was only in the sense that the International as a whole, including our own party, has up to now failed to carry on enough educational work in the sphere of revolutionary tactics, and for this reason failed to eliminate the possibility of such mistaken actions and methods. But to dream of completely eliminating mistakes would be the height of innocence."
In this realm it is necessary above all not to lose a sense of proportion. In the concrete case of the German leadership, if one wishes to go to the point of explaining why Levi did not have enough authority to prevent the March Action, one must look - as much as to Zinoviev's machinations - to the personal traits of Levi himself.
Held's Method
Summarising his criticism of the Third Congress, Held writes: "the Third World Congress already contained the diseased germs which were a few years later to precipitate the degeneration of the Communist International and, along with it, the Soviet state." We have already seen how unjustifiable are the historical points of Held's criticism. We must now dwell upon his method. With his "germ" theory, Held follows a method long practised by the critics of Bolshevism. Trotsky had occasion to reveal the emptiness of this explanation in his pamphlet Stalinism and Bolshevism, in which he showed, specifically, how Souvarine "seeks the inner flaws of Bolshevism" to "explain all subsequent historical mishaps.'
Why was Held carried along this beaten track of the causal continuity of Bolshevism and Stalinism? He recognised, with good reason, the absolute necessity of the party for the success of the revolution. But this in no ways means that the subjective factor
LS's Tip of the week
ESSENTIAL OILS aren't essential unless you're an engine, a gearbox or a twat
and then came The German Left and Bolshevism
(takes a deep breath)
INTELLECTUAL life m the Soviet Union throughout the rule of the epigones has consisted exclusively of the struggle against 'Trotskyism', to the point where it finally perished on this diet and all that is wafted to us today from Stalin
LS's Tip of the week
ESSENTIAL OILS aren't essential unless you're an engine, a gearbox or a twat
(takes a deep breath)
INTELLECTUAL life m the Soviet Union throughout the rule of the epigones has consisted exclusively of the struggle against 'Trotskyism', to the point where it finally perished on this diet and all that is wafted to us today from Stalin
LS's Tip of the week
ESSENTIAL OILS aren't essential unless you're an engine, a gearbox or a twat
then their was the german who joined the spanish civil war, for the purpose of my story, we'll call her eva
After her escape from Spain, Eva found refuge in Britain. She joined the ILP, which subsequently dissolved into the Labour Party. She worked for the BBC, as a teacher and, in the early 1970s, as a translator for Ian Mikardo MP. At the time the article was written, she was living as a pensioner in London, where she later died.
WE ARRIVED in Perpignan in August 1936, a month after the outbreak of the civil war in Spain. A lorry was to bring us (Hans, myself and a couple of comrades already waiting) to Port Bou. It was a hair-raising journey, sharp bends up in the Pyrenees and just as steep again going down, at a crazy speed. I would have prayed, had I been religious. But we arrived in Port Bou and journeyed on in a car to Barcelona, to the Hotel Falcón on the Rambla Catalunya, the POUM headquarters.
The atmosphere in Barcelona was indescribable. Today one would call it a 'high', as after taking drugs, intoxicating and intoxicated. From early in the morning to late at night, the barrel-organs on the Rambla played revolutionary songs. Of course, that could not continue; but while it lasted it was unrepeatable.
All of Barcelona's 58 churches were burnt down; many still smouldered. Only the large 'Sagrada Familia' cathedral by Gaudi withstood everything - if is made of cement. The militiamen, without uniform but with armbands of the POUM or the CNT (anarchists), rifle over the shoulder, go to the front early on, come home again for dinner, hold their siesta and towards four o'clock in the afternoon go off again.
The Hotel Falcón teemed with foreigners, mostly Americans, French, German and Italian emigrants. Many had been living in Spain for some years and immediately made themselves available. We were organised by Else, a German, who spoke fluent Spanish. Her husband Gerhard was a medical orderly at the front.
The big villas on the hills around Barcelona were abandoned by their owners and occupied. They now served the authorities as an administration centre. We were allowed to go in and readily shown around. The shooting of the priests, big farmers and factory owners was over and the revolution was under way. The anarchists and the POUM were the driving forces. The civil war was no longer regarded as a passing trifle; the militias exercised - though still without uniform - and one had to be very economical with the ammunition. Then a ship arrived from Mexico, the Magallanes, with 20,000 old Mauser rifles and 20,000,000 cartridges. It was not much, but it arrived at the right moment and there were no conditions attached. The celebration was indescribable. The first officers were elected and their orders - after detailed discussion - were followed.
We received some pocket money and made ourselves available. On the second evening we met a former school friend of mine from Berlin who, with her friend, had worked in Catalonia since 1933. Great joy. They invited us in and gave me a pair of shoes for the front. The next day I found a note in the hotel: 'We have gone to Paris.' I was extremely disappointed. Nothing had indicated that they were against the revolution. For us, as German anti-fascists, it was a moral duty to assist the Spanish Republic. And both had left! Perhaps we were naive.
I waited for the next ambulance going to the Aragon front. The first had been full. Ruth, a German nursing sister, had gone with it. We hoped that we would meet up. It never arrived. During the first night on the way to the front it was surprised by Franco's Moors, with bare feet and curled knives, who cut the throats of everyone. I had to write to Ruth's old father and describe her heroic death. We could not tell him the truth.
The first Spanish women with whom I spoke wanted to know how we succeeded in not having a child every year. They saved up money from the household budget to enable their husbands to visit the brothel. And only male children counted. A Spanish comrade told me that he had no children. His comrade laughed and said: he has six daughters.
Another point. They wanted to know why I had come to Spain, and why I was even prepared to separate from my husband in order to go to the front. It was surely not because of politics, it could only mean that I was looking for a man- And detailed propositions rained down upon me. We had hour-long discussions about the role of women in the socialist society. Lenin was right: 'The emancipation of women must begin with the men.'
We were sixteen in the ambulance, which had been donated by the British ILP. We were stationed in Tierz, a village near Huesca, which was in Franco's hands. The Aragonese Pyrenees, blue and covered with snow, stood in the background. The front stagnated. The first casualty I treated as a medical orderly was characteristic of the Spanish mentality The ideal human type would unite Prussian disciple with Spanish individuality. For example, it was not considered 'manly' to use the latrines in the dugout. One did it outside in the fresh air standing up. We lost several good comrades that way The digging of trenches also contradicted masculine dignity
I met Else's husband Gerhard. He had been the manager of the Breslau Theatre, spoke fluent Spanish and could talk for hours about art We read Don Quixote together. The October nights were very cold and we all received long underpants.
I only experienced one real attack. Beforehand we got rum in our coffee and marijuana cigarettes. Neither affected me. Afterwards we had neither advanced nor retreated, but had many wounded and three dead. Gerhard and I were in the line of fire a few times. I was terrified!
As I am blood group '0', I am a universal blood donor. There was no other test at that time, only the four groups. The blood was directly transferred. I lay beside the casualty and my blood flowed into his. It was very satisfying to see how a pale face with blue lips would gradually take on colour. After the attack, every week I gave around 200cc of blood.
After six months I received leave. Hans worked in ballistics in Barcelona and awaited his transfer to Lérida. While I was in Barcelona, I met Major Clern Attlee, who would become Labour Prime Minister in 1945, and Fenner Brockway, the Chairman of the ILP. Both wanted to speak with POUM officials and anarchists. I accompanied them everywhere and translated. In the evenings we went together to the café. Fenner wanted to know more than I was able to report to him in my poor English. But it was a very interesting week for me, and I got to know the background which later would lead to the street-fighting in Catalonia.
I was able to get myself transferred to Lérida, and worked in orthopaedics at a hospital for the wounded. We lived in a monastery cell. Hans had a car and chauffeur at his disposal and once took me with him to Manresa, the monastery of the Holy Grail. It was being used by the Catalan War Ministry. A fairy-tale castle.
April 1937 was a good month. We both worked and made plans for our future life in a socialist Spain.
May 1937. The Soviet Union had sent technicians and food. No weapons.1 Condition: restoration of the status quo in Catalonia and Asturias. The factory owners and landlords should have their rights restored; the clergy, insofar as it was not openly fascistic, should also be permitted; and all non-Communists, that is, anarchists and POUM members, should be purged. The Communists occupied the telephone centres in Barcelona and L6rida; street-fighting resulted, and there were dead and wounded. It was the Russian intention to give the Spanish revolution a respectable face, in order to make it acceptable to the western powers, Britain and France. The untrustworthy generals were again called up, resulting later in democratic strongholds such as Malaga being betrayed. The bourgeoisie emerged from its holes. It was like Germany in 1918, when the reaction hid itself behind Noske and Scheidemann. One had the sense of déja vu, only this time the CP was the reactionary factor. Apart from the war industry, all expropriated enterprises were handed back to their previous owners. The POUM's offices were closed, its officials arrested Andrés Nin, the head and heart of the POUM, was shot. Shock troops were sent against the anarchists, in order to smash any resistance. At the time, Bilbao was already threatened, and every man was needed at the front.
Hans was involved in the Lérida street-fighting. They were some of the worst days of my life: to fight against our own side, to have to defend what the revolution had accomplished since July 1936, and perhaps lose everything in this senseless clash. The POUM, as the weakest party, was the obvious sacrificial lamb. All its members - including ourselves - were described as Franco's agents, as traitors to the working class. The same had occurred in Germany before the Nazi take-over: the Stalinists had called the Social Democrats 'social-fascists'. Everything that went on in Spain was logical. The CP sought after 'Trotskyists' and shot them. Of course, they came out on top in the street-fighting and on the 'ideological front'. 'If this and that is not done, we will lose the war.' And who wanted that?
Though we knew in our innermost thoughts that the war was already lost. For ten months a real socialism had existed, a system worth fighting for. Then the arrests of the POUM members and anarchists started. The Stalinists hated nothing so much as the socialist opposition. Their greatest fury was directed at the supposed or genuine Trotskyists.
Hans had to return to Lérida at the end of May I wanted to stay in Barcelona for another fourteen days, and take an intermediate medical exam. He was arrested on a bus with a number of others - mostly foreigners. Among them was Else, Gerhard's wife. He was also in Barcelona, and we regarded ourselves as a 'Gesellschaft mit beschrankter Verhaftung [a play on GmbR Company with Limited Liability, which prefixed with 'ver' becomes 'arrests']. Katia Landau, who had come from Vienna with her husband Kurt, had been arrested together with her.2 Kurt had previously been a private secretary to Trotsky. The CP sought after him. He had enough political experience to know that he would not get out of Spain alive. The anarchists hid him for weeks. Then he changed his accommodation. I brought food and news. He kept stressing something again and again: whom the labour movement has once taken hold of, never gets away again, whether he remains active or not. Two days after my last visit Kurt vanished forever. Then the Stalinists settled their account. After the end of the civil war nobody could prove anything against them.
1 tried to alarm the consulates about the arrested foreigners. Most of them were ready to help, made visits and representations, and succeeded in getting those with valid passports deported to France. The British consul was the only exception: 'Whoever is still in Barcelona is there at his own peril. Anyone with sense has gone long ago.' I was not so easy to get rid of, but asked softly and modestly, who paid him and for what? Then he went red in the face and shouted: 'You Communist, get out of here.'
In the meantime, Barcelona was bombarded from the sea. That was a new experience. It is curious how one can get used to air raids, but get horribly scared when the shooting is lateral and the front walls of the houses vanish.
In August 1937, it was my turn. I was arrested with six Spanish comrades in the home of Andres Nin, where I went to fetch a blanket for Hans.
The first two months I was incommunicado. That is not as bad as it sounds. I would have received no visitors in any case - all my friends were in jail, except Gerhard. I only know that it was a military prison. I was interrogated a few times by a German Stalinist. He screamed that I was an agent of Franco and a German fascist spy. It paid not to reply: I had not known any important POUM officials - once I had sat for three hours on a bus with George Orwell, that was all. Only my connection to Landau could have been dangerous, but they knew nothing about it. At my interrogation, the Stalinist said that a bullet would be too good for me, ammunition was scarce!
Then I was moved to the official women's prison, which was managed by a POUM comrade. She was the wife of Andrade, a top official. In a country where the women have very few rights, they keep their own name; therefore, nobody knew who she was. She could not grant us any relief, but as political prisoners we were not required to work and through her got to know what was going on outside. We were thirty 'politicals', living in a large hall with a magnificent view. Apart from an unpolitical German, whose husband was an anarchist, and a just as unpolitical French woman, we consisted of Spanish POUM or anarchist comrades. The prison held around six hundred women; the so-called criminals were originally nuns, or wives of small racketeers and war-profiteers.
Every morning we used the showers - never meeting any of the others. I heard that they thought we must have been horribly mucky, because we used so much water. In any case, they exchanged soap for bread. Not that we had plenty - I think it was 300 grams per day, two plates of rice or pea soup, and two cups of a brown, hot fluid. We were very hungry, but the civilian population had to work with the same ration.
The nuns were all middle-aged. Sister Teresa remains in my memory because of her great kindness, She looked after the scantily-supplied chemist's shop. Never was she impatient or did she say a bad word. One would have thought that we socialists would have incarnated the devil on earth to her - on the contrary, she mothered us all and always knew best. I have often thought of her and would like to know how she ended her days.
MY friend was Maria-Teresa Sarda, who had been imprisoned as a POUM member together with her mother. She gave me Spanish lessons and I avenged myself with historical materialism. We attempted to learn an international shorthand, but it was a total failure. For two hours every day we ran round the long dining table and did gymnastics. Our stomachs had shrunk, so that after the first really hungry months we managed on our rations. In any case, it was easier to be hungry than to be without soap. Moreover, we had lice. Very rarely one of the Spanish comrades received a parcel. Everything was shared out. We had a doctor among us, a German, allegedly 'political', older than us. One day she received a parcel and vanished with it; nothing was said, but we never spoke to her again, she was excluded by everyone. She had broken a fundamental rule and had to pay for it.
A certain scene remains in my memory: the wives of about ten men - said to be fascists - had gone to the men's prison early around 5 o'clock to say their goodbyes to them before they were to be shot. After an hour they came back, emitting heart-rending screams, tearing at their hair, tearing their clothes - it was terrible to have to hear it, and we all suffered with them. There was no talking and all activities stopped. Then came the afternoon: around 4 o'clock the same women entered with flowers in their hair. They had castanets in their hands and danced and sang. The dances were joyful. They had earlier manifested their sorrow - and now life carried on. This psychology will for ever remain incomprehensible to us.
Hans was released three weeks after my arrest and returned to France with his customary 'visa sans arrêt'. In the summer of 1937, on the last day of the validity of his passport, he went back to Holland. Without a visa for a final destination one was not permitted to stay in France. My passport had run out. Whoever had arrested us had taken all our papers, which I, of course, have never seen again. The foreigners with valid passports were slowly released; only the German and Italian emigrants remained. The uncertainty over the length of the sentence was the most worrying. Wholly disregarding the gradual advance of Franco's troops, something we of course never mentioned.
I loved Spain, the country, the people, the climate, the food, even the always recurring manana, with which they put off all decisions. But from the beginning of 1938 we all knew that Franco's victory was only a question of time.
One day I was called into the office. An official from the British consulate was there with a parcel wrapped in newspaper. I had to swear to my identity. I took the parcel in my left hand, but he made it clear that it had to be the right hand. So I swore that I indeed was who I was. It was only later that I found out that I had sworn on the bible. He then went with me into the city to get me photographed. No word about what for, why, when, etc. Three impatient weeks elapsed; meanwhile, it was August 1938. Then an old motor car drove up: the consular official. He brought a British travel document, valid for three months. I had to pack my things in all haste - there was not much- I left my Spanish money in the prison; the peseta was not exchanged. A few quick tears were shed - and the thirteen months ended as they had begun, without transition-
At that time there were hardly any foreigners left in Barcelona. The British destroyer Imperial sailed between Barcelona, Valencia and Marseilles, and had evacuated all the British. If one more passenger had now been reported, this had to be an important person. So the crew were drawn up in lines under the leadership of the captain, and I boarded the ship in a thin skirt leather jacket and espadrillas. I was given the cabin of the second in command. After the meal -with knife and fork, after such a long time - I asked to speak to the captain and explained the mistake. He laughed, found it all very funny, and said that if I wanted I could remain aboard and sail round the Mediterranean with them. I politely declined and after seventeen hours I left the ship at Marseilles without a penny and sought out the British consulate.
Who could describe my dread as I was confronted with the horror from Barcelona? He glanced at me and said: 'We already know each other'. And then began a cannonade of insults against all Communists and riffraff such as I. As it had become too dangerous to be in Barcelona, he had removed himself to the safety of Marseilles. I wanted only money enough to telegraph to Amsterdam and somewhere to stay overnight. I promised to pay the money back the next day - he was convinced that he would never see it again. Bu. the money arrived, I repaid it and travelled to Paris.
September 1938 - Munich - the war had been averted once more, the French mobilisation was cancelled. Women cried tears of relief in the streets.
I was received with open arms by the German comrades, especially by Brandler and Thalheimer, for whom I was to give a detailed report. It was, of course, a bit disappointing - after all, I had spent the previous thirteen months in prison.
I could not go to Hans in Holland; the Dutch put Spanish volunteers immediately over the German border.
As soon as the first relief at being in a land at peace was over, I had the feeling that I should go back to Spain; I longed to be there, perhaps I could still help ... It was completely irrational, idiotic.
I have described the external events of this catastrophe, which the Spanish civil war and revolution was. But what I cannot describe is what the attraction of Spain consists of, the noise, the smell, the clear atmosphere of Barcelona in the early morning, and especially the sight of the milicianos and the comrades, which I could still describe now in the smallest detail. Spain had destroyed our marriage - we could not find any country where we could be together before World War II; afterwards it was too late. Nevertheless, I would not have missed the experience for the world.
and that as they, is that
LS's Tip of the week
ESSENTIAL OILS aren't essential unless you're an engine, a gearbox or a twat
After her escape from Spain, Eva found refuge in Britain. She joined the ILP, which subsequently dissolved into the Labour Party. She worked for the BBC, as a teacher and, in the early 1970s, as a translator for Ian Mikardo MP. At the time the article was written, she was living as a pensioner in London, where she later died.
WE ARRIVED in Perpignan in August 1936, a month after the outbreak of the civil war in Spain. A lorry was to bring us (Hans, myself and a couple of comrades already waiting) to Port Bou. It was a hair-raising journey, sharp bends up in the Pyrenees and just as steep again going down, at a crazy speed. I would have prayed, had I been religious. But we arrived in Port Bou and journeyed on in a car to Barcelona, to the Hotel Falcón on the Rambla Catalunya, the POUM headquarters.
The atmosphere in Barcelona was indescribable. Today one would call it a 'high', as after taking drugs, intoxicating and intoxicated. From early in the morning to late at night, the barrel-organs on the Rambla played revolutionary songs. Of course, that could not continue; but while it lasted it was unrepeatable.
All of Barcelona's 58 churches were burnt down; many still smouldered. Only the large 'Sagrada Familia' cathedral by Gaudi withstood everything - if is made of cement. The militiamen, without uniform but with armbands of the POUM or the CNT (anarchists), rifle over the shoulder, go to the front early on, come home again for dinner, hold their siesta and towards four o'clock in the afternoon go off again.
The Hotel Falcón teemed with foreigners, mostly Americans, French, German and Italian emigrants. Many had been living in Spain for some years and immediately made themselves available. We were organised by Else, a German, who spoke fluent Spanish. Her husband Gerhard was a medical orderly at the front.
The big villas on the hills around Barcelona were abandoned by their owners and occupied. They now served the authorities as an administration centre. We were allowed to go in and readily shown around. The shooting of the priests, big farmers and factory owners was over and the revolution was under way. The anarchists and the POUM were the driving forces. The civil war was no longer regarded as a passing trifle; the militias exercised - though still without uniform - and one had to be very economical with the ammunition. Then a ship arrived from Mexico, the Magallanes, with 20,000 old Mauser rifles and 20,000,000 cartridges. It was not much, but it arrived at the right moment and there were no conditions attached. The celebration was indescribable. The first officers were elected and their orders - after detailed discussion - were followed.
We received some pocket money and made ourselves available. On the second evening we met a former school friend of mine from Berlin who, with her friend, had worked in Catalonia since 1933. Great joy. They invited us in and gave me a pair of shoes for the front. The next day I found a note in the hotel: 'We have gone to Paris.' I was extremely disappointed. Nothing had indicated that they were against the revolution. For us, as German anti-fascists, it was a moral duty to assist the Spanish Republic. And both had left! Perhaps we were naive.
I waited for the next ambulance going to the Aragon front. The first had been full. Ruth, a German nursing sister, had gone with it. We hoped that we would meet up. It never arrived. During the first night on the way to the front it was surprised by Franco's Moors, with bare feet and curled knives, who cut the throats of everyone. I had to write to Ruth's old father and describe her heroic death. We could not tell him the truth.
The first Spanish women with whom I spoke wanted to know how we succeeded in not having a child every year. They saved up money from the household budget to enable their husbands to visit the brothel. And only male children counted. A Spanish comrade told me that he had no children. His comrade laughed and said: he has six daughters.
Another point. They wanted to know why I had come to Spain, and why I was even prepared to separate from my husband in order to go to the front. It was surely not because of politics, it could only mean that I was looking for a man- And detailed propositions rained down upon me. We had hour-long discussions about the role of women in the socialist society. Lenin was right: 'The emancipation of women must begin with the men.'
We were sixteen in the ambulance, which had been donated by the British ILP. We were stationed in Tierz, a village near Huesca, which was in Franco's hands. The Aragonese Pyrenees, blue and covered with snow, stood in the background. The front stagnated. The first casualty I treated as a medical orderly was characteristic of the Spanish mentality The ideal human type would unite Prussian disciple with Spanish individuality. For example, it was not considered 'manly' to use the latrines in the dugout. One did it outside in the fresh air standing up. We lost several good comrades that way The digging of trenches also contradicted masculine dignity
I met Else's husband Gerhard. He had been the manager of the Breslau Theatre, spoke fluent Spanish and could talk for hours about art We read Don Quixote together. The October nights were very cold and we all received long underpants.
I only experienced one real attack. Beforehand we got rum in our coffee and marijuana cigarettes. Neither affected me. Afterwards we had neither advanced nor retreated, but had many wounded and three dead. Gerhard and I were in the line of fire a few times. I was terrified!
As I am blood group '0', I am a universal blood donor. There was no other test at that time, only the four groups. The blood was directly transferred. I lay beside the casualty and my blood flowed into his. It was very satisfying to see how a pale face with blue lips would gradually take on colour. After the attack, every week I gave around 200cc of blood.
After six months I received leave. Hans worked in ballistics in Barcelona and awaited his transfer to Lérida. While I was in Barcelona, I met Major Clern Attlee, who would become Labour Prime Minister in 1945, and Fenner Brockway, the Chairman of the ILP. Both wanted to speak with POUM officials and anarchists. I accompanied them everywhere and translated. In the evenings we went together to the café. Fenner wanted to know more than I was able to report to him in my poor English. But it was a very interesting week for me, and I got to know the background which later would lead to the street-fighting in Catalonia.
I was able to get myself transferred to Lérida, and worked in orthopaedics at a hospital for the wounded. We lived in a monastery cell. Hans had a car and chauffeur at his disposal and once took me with him to Manresa, the monastery of the Holy Grail. It was being used by the Catalan War Ministry. A fairy-tale castle.
April 1937 was a good month. We both worked and made plans for our future life in a socialist Spain.
May 1937. The Soviet Union had sent technicians and food. No weapons.1 Condition: restoration of the status quo in Catalonia and Asturias. The factory owners and landlords should have their rights restored; the clergy, insofar as it was not openly fascistic, should also be permitted; and all non-Communists, that is, anarchists and POUM members, should be purged. The Communists occupied the telephone centres in Barcelona and L6rida; street-fighting resulted, and there were dead and wounded. It was the Russian intention to give the Spanish revolution a respectable face, in order to make it acceptable to the western powers, Britain and France. The untrustworthy generals were again called up, resulting later in democratic strongholds such as Malaga being betrayed. The bourgeoisie emerged from its holes. It was like Germany in 1918, when the reaction hid itself behind Noske and Scheidemann. One had the sense of déja vu, only this time the CP was the reactionary factor. Apart from the war industry, all expropriated enterprises were handed back to their previous owners. The POUM's offices were closed, its officials arrested Andrés Nin, the head and heart of the POUM, was shot. Shock troops were sent against the anarchists, in order to smash any resistance. At the time, Bilbao was already threatened, and every man was needed at the front.
Hans was involved in the Lérida street-fighting. They were some of the worst days of my life: to fight against our own side, to have to defend what the revolution had accomplished since July 1936, and perhaps lose everything in this senseless clash. The POUM, as the weakest party, was the obvious sacrificial lamb. All its members - including ourselves - were described as Franco's agents, as traitors to the working class. The same had occurred in Germany before the Nazi take-over: the Stalinists had called the Social Democrats 'social-fascists'. Everything that went on in Spain was logical. The CP sought after 'Trotskyists' and shot them. Of course, they came out on top in the street-fighting and on the 'ideological front'. 'If this and that is not done, we will lose the war.' And who wanted that?
Though we knew in our innermost thoughts that the war was already lost. For ten months a real socialism had existed, a system worth fighting for. Then the arrests of the POUM members and anarchists started. The Stalinists hated nothing so much as the socialist opposition. Their greatest fury was directed at the supposed or genuine Trotskyists.
Hans had to return to Lérida at the end of May I wanted to stay in Barcelona for another fourteen days, and take an intermediate medical exam. He was arrested on a bus with a number of others - mostly foreigners. Among them was Else, Gerhard's wife. He was also in Barcelona, and we regarded ourselves as a 'Gesellschaft mit beschrankter Verhaftung [a play on GmbR Company with Limited Liability, which prefixed with 'ver' becomes 'arrests']. Katia Landau, who had come from Vienna with her husband Kurt, had been arrested together with her.2 Kurt had previously been a private secretary to Trotsky. The CP sought after him. He had enough political experience to know that he would not get out of Spain alive. The anarchists hid him for weeks. Then he changed his accommodation. I brought food and news. He kept stressing something again and again: whom the labour movement has once taken hold of, never gets away again, whether he remains active or not. Two days after my last visit Kurt vanished forever. Then the Stalinists settled their account. After the end of the civil war nobody could prove anything against them.
1 tried to alarm the consulates about the arrested foreigners. Most of them were ready to help, made visits and representations, and succeeded in getting those with valid passports deported to France. The British consul was the only exception: 'Whoever is still in Barcelona is there at his own peril. Anyone with sense has gone long ago.' I was not so easy to get rid of, but asked softly and modestly, who paid him and for what? Then he went red in the face and shouted: 'You Communist, get out of here.'
In the meantime, Barcelona was bombarded from the sea. That was a new experience. It is curious how one can get used to air raids, but get horribly scared when the shooting is lateral and the front walls of the houses vanish.
In August 1937, it was my turn. I was arrested with six Spanish comrades in the home of Andres Nin, where I went to fetch a blanket for Hans.
The first two months I was incommunicado. That is not as bad as it sounds. I would have received no visitors in any case - all my friends were in jail, except Gerhard. I only know that it was a military prison. I was interrogated a few times by a German Stalinist. He screamed that I was an agent of Franco and a German fascist spy. It paid not to reply: I had not known any important POUM officials - once I had sat for three hours on a bus with George Orwell, that was all. Only my connection to Landau could have been dangerous, but they knew nothing about it. At my interrogation, the Stalinist said that a bullet would be too good for me, ammunition was scarce!
Then I was moved to the official women's prison, which was managed by a POUM comrade. She was the wife of Andrade, a top official. In a country where the women have very few rights, they keep their own name; therefore, nobody knew who she was. She could not grant us any relief, but as political prisoners we were not required to work and through her got to know what was going on outside. We were thirty 'politicals', living in a large hall with a magnificent view. Apart from an unpolitical German, whose husband was an anarchist, and a just as unpolitical French woman, we consisted of Spanish POUM or anarchist comrades. The prison held around six hundred women; the so-called criminals were originally nuns, or wives of small racketeers and war-profiteers.
Every morning we used the showers - never meeting any of the others. I heard that they thought we must have been horribly mucky, because we used so much water. In any case, they exchanged soap for bread. Not that we had plenty - I think it was 300 grams per day, two plates of rice or pea soup, and two cups of a brown, hot fluid. We were very hungry, but the civilian population had to work with the same ration.
The nuns were all middle-aged. Sister Teresa remains in my memory because of her great kindness, She looked after the scantily-supplied chemist's shop. Never was she impatient or did she say a bad word. One would have thought that we socialists would have incarnated the devil on earth to her - on the contrary, she mothered us all and always knew best. I have often thought of her and would like to know how she ended her days.
MY friend was Maria-Teresa Sarda, who had been imprisoned as a POUM member together with her mother. She gave me Spanish lessons and I avenged myself with historical materialism. We attempted to learn an international shorthand, but it was a total failure. For two hours every day we ran round the long dining table and did gymnastics. Our stomachs had shrunk, so that after the first really hungry months we managed on our rations. In any case, it was easier to be hungry than to be without soap. Moreover, we had lice. Very rarely one of the Spanish comrades received a parcel. Everything was shared out. We had a doctor among us, a German, allegedly 'political', older than us. One day she received a parcel and vanished with it; nothing was said, but we never spoke to her again, she was excluded by everyone. She had broken a fundamental rule and had to pay for it.
A certain scene remains in my memory: the wives of about ten men - said to be fascists - had gone to the men's prison early around 5 o'clock to say their goodbyes to them before they were to be shot. After an hour they came back, emitting heart-rending screams, tearing at their hair, tearing their clothes - it was terrible to have to hear it, and we all suffered with them. There was no talking and all activities stopped. Then came the afternoon: around 4 o'clock the same women entered with flowers in their hair. They had castanets in their hands and danced and sang. The dances were joyful. They had earlier manifested their sorrow - and now life carried on. This psychology will for ever remain incomprehensible to us.
Hans was released three weeks after my arrest and returned to France with his customary 'visa sans arrêt'. In the summer of 1937, on the last day of the validity of his passport, he went back to Holland. Without a visa for a final destination one was not permitted to stay in France. My passport had run out. Whoever had arrested us had taken all our papers, which I, of course, have never seen again. The foreigners with valid passports were slowly released; only the German and Italian emigrants remained. The uncertainty over the length of the sentence was the most worrying. Wholly disregarding the gradual advance of Franco's troops, something we of course never mentioned.
I loved Spain, the country, the people, the climate, the food, even the always recurring manana, with which they put off all decisions. But from the beginning of 1938 we all knew that Franco's victory was only a question of time.
One day I was called into the office. An official from the British consulate was there with a parcel wrapped in newspaper. I had to swear to my identity. I took the parcel in my left hand, but he made it clear that it had to be the right hand. So I swore that I indeed was who I was. It was only later that I found out that I had sworn on the bible. He then went with me into the city to get me photographed. No word about what for, why, when, etc. Three impatient weeks elapsed; meanwhile, it was August 1938. Then an old motor car drove up: the consular official. He brought a British travel document, valid for three months. I had to pack my things in all haste - there was not much- I left my Spanish money in the prison; the peseta was not exchanged. A few quick tears were shed - and the thirteen months ended as they had begun, without transition-
At that time there were hardly any foreigners left in Barcelona. The British destroyer Imperial sailed between Barcelona, Valencia and Marseilles, and had evacuated all the British. If one more passenger had now been reported, this had to be an important person. So the crew were drawn up in lines under the leadership of the captain, and I boarded the ship in a thin skirt leather jacket and espadrillas. I was given the cabin of the second in command. After the meal -with knife and fork, after such a long time - I asked to speak to the captain and explained the mistake. He laughed, found it all very funny, and said that if I wanted I could remain aboard and sail round the Mediterranean with them. I politely declined and after seventeen hours I left the ship at Marseilles without a penny and sought out the British consulate.
Who could describe my dread as I was confronted with the horror from Barcelona? He glanced at me and said: 'We already know each other'. And then began a cannonade of insults against all Communists and riffraff such as I. As it had become too dangerous to be in Barcelona, he had removed himself to the safety of Marseilles. I wanted only money enough to telegraph to Amsterdam and somewhere to stay overnight. I promised to pay the money back the next day - he was convinced that he would never see it again. Bu. the money arrived, I repaid it and travelled to Paris.
September 1938 - Munich - the war had been averted once more, the French mobilisation was cancelled. Women cried tears of relief in the streets.
I was received with open arms by the German comrades, especially by Brandler and Thalheimer, for whom I was to give a detailed report. It was, of course, a bit disappointing - after all, I had spent the previous thirteen months in prison.
I could not go to Hans in Holland; the Dutch put Spanish volunteers immediately over the German border.
As soon as the first relief at being in a land at peace was over, I had the feeling that I should go back to Spain; I longed to be there, perhaps I could still help ... It was completely irrational, idiotic.
I have described the external events of this catastrophe, which the Spanish civil war and revolution was. But what I cannot describe is what the attraction of Spain consists of, the noise, the smell, the clear atmosphere of Barcelona in the early morning, and especially the sight of the milicianos and the comrades, which I could still describe now in the smallest detail. Spain had destroyed our marriage - we could not find any country where we could be together before World War II; afterwards it was too late. Nevertheless, I would not have missed the experience for the world.
and that as they, is that
LS's Tip of the week
ESSENTIAL OILS aren't essential unless you're an engine, a gearbox or a twat
It is tempting to explain Sergey Vasil'yevich Rachmaninov's lifelong outward stoicism, the icy demeanor he always exhibited when performing, as a protective mechanism acquired slowly and painfully in his youth, when one difficulty after another presented itself to a sensitive, naturally withdrawn young man who was nevertheless determined to make his way in the world as a musician. He had little help from his parents. His father squandered the famiIy fortune so quickly that Sergey was only nine years old when he saw the estate at Novgorod where they had lived, the last of their property, auctioned off to pay debts.
The family moved to St. Petersburg and Rachmaninov continued his piano studies at the Conservatory. But soon, when a diphtheria epidemic swept the city, his sister Sofiya died. Not long after that his parents separated. Young Sergey reacted by failing all his final examinations at school (he was then twelve). As a consequence the promising pianist was shipped off to Moscow, where he would live and study with the strict disciplinarian Nikolay Zverev. Life with Zverev was no picnic: the day began at 6:00 a.m. and included a stiff regimen of communal practice, group and private instruction and attendance at various concerts in the city. In a while, Rachmaninov was able to transfer to the senior division of the Moscow Conservatory, taking more of his classes outside the Zverev household. But when, in order to compose without the constant distraction of his housemates' practice, he asked for a private room, Zverev obliged by kicking him out. They did not exchange words for three years.
By that time Rachmaninov was studying piano with his cousin Alexander Ziloti and composing prolifically. He would endure further hardships, but at least his genius was also being recognized, and he began to gather champions to his cause. An early convert was the older composer Peter Tchaikovsky, who attended the performance of his graduation piece, the opera Aleko. Tchaikovsky was to have conducted another early Rachmaninov work, the symphonic fantasy The Rock, but he died before being able to do so (Rachmaninov responded by writing an Elegiac Trio in his memory). Another ambitious early work. the Symphony No 1 in D minor, suffered a worse fate. It was premiered during the 1896 Russian Symphony Concert season but the conductor (Alexander Glazunov) was drunk and delivered an incoherent, unfeeling performance. The reviews were uniformly bad. Rachmaninov went into a deep depression and composed almost nothing for another three years.
In the end, the young composer consulted everyone from Leo Tolstoy to a medical hypnotist. The hypnotist proved most successful. After several weeks treatment, Rachmaninov rejoined the community of active creators. Along with his happy marriage to a cousin, Natalya Satina, and the eventual birth of two children, Sergey Rachmaninov began to enjoy international acclaim as a pianist, conductor, and composer. His most popular piano concerto, the Second, was written in 1900 and 1901. The Second Symphony, the symphonic poem The Isle of the Dead, and a number ot other important works followed in the next several years.
The family moved to St. Petersburg and Rachmaninov continued his piano studies at the Conservatory. But soon, when a diphtheria epidemic swept the city, his sister Sofiya died. Not long after that his parents separated. Young Sergey reacted by failing all his final examinations at school (he was then twelve). As a consequence the promising pianist was shipped off to Moscow, where he would live and study with the strict disciplinarian Nikolay Zverev. Life with Zverev was no picnic: the day began at 6:00 a.m. and included a stiff regimen of communal practice, group and private instruction and attendance at various concerts in the city. In a while, Rachmaninov was able to transfer to the senior division of the Moscow Conservatory, taking more of his classes outside the Zverev household. But when, in order to compose without the constant distraction of his housemates' practice, he asked for a private room, Zverev obliged by kicking him out. They did not exchange words for three years.
By that time Rachmaninov was studying piano with his cousin Alexander Ziloti and composing prolifically. He would endure further hardships, but at least his genius was also being recognized, and he began to gather champions to his cause. An early convert was the older composer Peter Tchaikovsky, who attended the performance of his graduation piece, the opera Aleko. Tchaikovsky was to have conducted another early Rachmaninov work, the symphonic fantasy The Rock, but he died before being able to do so (Rachmaninov responded by writing an Elegiac Trio in his memory). Another ambitious early work. the Symphony No 1 in D minor, suffered a worse fate. It was premiered during the 1896 Russian Symphony Concert season but the conductor (Alexander Glazunov) was drunk and delivered an incoherent, unfeeling performance. The reviews were uniformly bad. Rachmaninov went into a deep depression and composed almost nothing for another three years.
In the end, the young composer consulted everyone from Leo Tolstoy to a medical hypnotist. The hypnotist proved most successful. After several weeks treatment, Rachmaninov rejoined the community of active creators. Along with his happy marriage to a cousin, Natalya Satina, and the eventual birth of two children, Sergey Rachmaninov began to enjoy international acclaim as a pianist, conductor, and composer. His most popular piano concerto, the Second, was written in 1900 and 1901. The Second Symphony, the symphonic poem The Isle of the Dead, and a number ot other important works followed in the next several years.
From 1904-6 he conducted the Bolshoi. In 1902 he married his cousin Natalia Satin and from 1909- 12, as vice-president of the Imperial Russian Music Society, worked to improove standards in the music schools of the smaller Russian cities. The greater part of his opus was written by the time of the Russian revolution in 1917. In December of the same year, he used the oppurtunity of a Scandinavian concert-tour to escape from Russia. He never returned, starting a new career in the West as a touring piano virtuoso. In 1921 he settled in NY city, which was to be his base for the next 20 years. From 1922-39 he devided each year into 2 seasons of concert touring, one in the USA and another in Europe. The summers of 1929-31 were spent at Clairefontaine near Paris and those thereafter at his villa on Lake Lucerne. From 1931, his music was boycotted in the Soviet Union, though this atitude changed during the second world war. In 1942 Rachmaninov moved to Beverly Hills in California, becoming an American citizen in February 1943 and dying of cancer the following month.
Opus
1. Scherzo. for orchestra, 5-12.02.1887
2. 3 nocturnes. for piano, 1887-8
3. 4 pieces. for piano, 1887
4. Piano piece, 1887
5. Esmeralda. opera (fragm.) 17.10.1889
6. Piano concerto (fragm.), 1889
7. String quartet no.1, 1889
8. Deus Meus. motet for 6-part mixed chorus, 1890
9. At the gate of the Holy Abode. for voice and piano, 29.4.1890
10. I'll tell you nothing. for voice and piano, 1.5.1890
11. Romance. for cello and piano, 1890
12. Manfred. for orchestra (lost), 1890
13. Russian Rhapsody. for two pianos, 12-14.1.1891
14. C'etait en avril for voice and piano, 1.4.1891
15. Dusk has fallen for voice and piano, 22.4.1891
16. Piano concerto no.1 in F sharp minor, op.1 6.6.1891
17. Prelude in F major. for piano, 20.7.1891
18. Valse and romance. for piano six hands, 1890-1
19. Symhony in D minor. (first movement only), 28.9.1891
20. Prince Rostislav. poem for orchestra, 9-15.12.1891
21. Again you leapt, my heart. for voice and piano, 1891
22. You recall that evening? for voice and piano, 1891
23. Boris Godunov. (two fragments), 1891
24. Masquerade. (fragm. for voice and piano), 1891
25. Mazeppa. Fragm. for vocal quartet, 1891
26. String quintet lost, 1891
27. Grainem-ukhnem. for voice and piano, 1891
28. Romance. for piano and violin, 1891
29. Piece for cello and piano, 1891
30. Trio elegiaque in G minor. for violin, cello and piano, 18-21.1.1892
31. Two pieces op.2 for cello and piano, 1892
32. The Sleeping Beauty. (Tchaikovski) arr. for piano duet, 1892
33. Aleko, opera in one act, 13.4.1892
34. Five pieces op.3 for piano, autmn 1892
1. Elegia
2. Prelude
3. Melody
4. Polichinelle
5. Serenade
35. Six songs op.4 for voice and piano, 1890-3
1. Oh no! I beg you not forsake me!
2. Morning
3. In the silence of the secret night
4. Sing not, beauty, in my presence
5. O thou, my field
6. How long, my friend?
36. Suite no.1 op.5 "Fantasia" for two pianos, summer 1893
37. O Mother of God, perpetually praying. for mixed 3-part choir, summer 1893
38. Two pieces op.6 for violin and piano, summer 1893
39. The Rock, op.7 Fantasia for orchestra, summer 1893
40. Six songs op.8 for voice and piano, autmn 1893
1. The water lily
2. Child, thou art as beautiful as flower
3. Meditation
4. My love has brought me sorrow
5. A dream
6. A prayer
41. Trio elegiaque in D minor, op.9 for violin, cello and piano, 25.10.1893
42. Romance in G major. for piano duet, 1893
43. Song of the disillusioned. for voice and piano, 1893
44. The flower had faded. for voice and piano, 1893
45. 7 pieces op.10 for piano, jan.1894
46. 6 duets op.11 for piano duet, apr.1894
47. Capriccio bohemien, op.12 for orchestra, summer 1894
48. Two episodes a la Liszt, 1894
49. Chorus of spirits from Don Juan. for mixed chorus a capella, 1894
50. Symphony no.1 in D minor, op.13, aug.1895
51. 12 songs op.14 for voice and piano, 1896
1. Be praised!
2. The night
3. The pine tree
4. The waves slumbered
5. Bondage
6. The angel
52. 6 choruses op.15 for women or children voices and piano, 1895
53. 6 Moments Musicaux, op.16 for piano, dec.1896
54. String quartet no.2, 1896
55. Improvisations. for piano, 1896
56. Symhony (sketches), 5.4.1897
57. Glazunov's symphony no.6 arr. for piano duet, 1897
58. Fantasy pieces. for piano, jan.1899
59. Fughetta in F major. for piano, 4.2.1899
60. 2 Russian and Ukrainian songs. arr. for chorus, 1899
1. At the gate
2. Shoes
61. Were you hiccuping. song, 17.5.1899
62. Pantelei, the healer. for mixed chorus a capella, jul.1900
63. Suite no.2, op.17 for 2 pianos, apr. 1901
64. Piano concerto no.2, C minor, op.18, apr.1901
65. Cello sonata, G minor, op.19
66. Spring op.20 Cantata for baritone, mixed chorus and orchestra, feb.1902
67. 12 songs op.21 for voice and piano, apr.1902
1. Fate
2. By the new grave
3. Twilight
4. They answered
5. Lilacs
6. Fragment from Musset
7. How nice it is here
8. On the death of a linnet
9. Melody
10.Before the ikon
11.No prophet I!
12.How painful for me
68. Lilacs op.21,no.5, arr. for piano solo, 1913
69. Variations on a theme by Chopin op.22 for piano solo, feb. 1903
70. 10 Preludes op.23 for piano, 1903
71. Night. for voice and piano, 1904
72. The Miserly Knight op.24 opera in 3 sceenes, 1905
73. Francesca da Rimini, op.25 opera in 2 sceenes, jul.1905
74. 15 songs op.26 for voice and piano, 1906
1. There are many sounds
2. He took all from me
3. Let us rest
4. Two paintings, dialogue
5. Let us leave, my dear
6. Christ is risen
7. To the children
8. I implore pitty!
9. Again I am alone
10.Before my window
11.The fountain
12.The night is mornful
13.When yesterday we met
14.The ring
15.All things pass
75.Symphony no.2, E minor, op.27, apr 1907
76. Polka italienne. for piano duet, 1906
77. Piano sonata no.1, D minor, op.28, 14.5.1907
78. Monna Vanna. unfinished opera, 15.4.1907
79. Letter to K.S. Stanislavsky. for voice and piano, oct. 1908
80. The isle of the Dead, op.29 symphonic poem, after a painting by A.Boecklin, 17.4.1909
81. Piano concerto no.3, D minor, op.30, summer 1909
82. Liturgy of St.John Chrysostom op.31 for mixed choir, 30.6.1910
83. 13 preludes op.32 for piano, 1910
84. Polka de W.R. for piano, 11.3.1911
85. Etudes-Tableaux, op.33 (6+2 op.posth.) for piano, aug.1911
86. 14 songs op.34 for voice and piano, jun.1912
1. The Muse
2. In the soul of each of us
3. The storm
4. The migrant wind
5. Arion
6. The raising Lazarus
7. It cannot be
8. Music
9. You knew him well
10.I remember that day
11.With holy banner firmly held
12.What happiness
13.Dissonance
14.Vocalise
87. The bells, op.35 poem for orchestra, chorus and soloists, apr.1913
88. Piano sonata no.2, H flat minor, op.36, sept.1913
89. From the Gospel of St.John. for voice and piano, autmn 1914
90. Night Virgil (Vespers) op.37 for mixed choir, feb. 1915
91. The Scythians. Ballet (lost), 1915
92. 6 songs op.38 for soprano and piano, 1916
1. In my garden at night
2. To her
3. Dasies
4. The rat-catcher
5. The dream
6. A-oo
93. Two songs. for voice and piano, 1916
1. Prayer
2. All wish to sing
94. Etudes-tableaux, op.39 (9) for piano, feb.1917
95. Oriental sketch. for piano, 14.11.1917
96. Fragments. for piano, 15.11.1917
97. The Star Spangled Banner. arr. for piano, 1918
98. Cadenza for Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody no.2, 1919
99. Luchinushka. Russian song arr. for tenor and piano, 3.6.1920
100.Apple tree, o apple tree Russian song arr., 1920
101.Along the street. Russian song arr., 1920
102.Liebeslied. Kreisler, arr. Rachm. for piano solo, 1921
103.Minuetto from L'Arleisenne Suite no.1 Bizet, arr. Rachm. for piano solo, 1903
104.Gopak from Sorochnitzi fair Mussorgsky, arr. Rachm. for piano solo, 1924
105.Liebesfreud. Kreisler, arr. Rachm. for piano solo, 1925
106.Quickly, quickly, from my cheeks. Russian song arr. for voice and piano, 1925
107.Wohin? Schubert arr. Rachm. for piano solo, 1925
108.Piano concerto no.4, G minor, op.40, aug.1926
109.Three Russian songs op.41 for chorus and orchestra, 1926
1. Over the little river
2. Oh, Vanka, you bold fellow
3. Quickly, quickly, from my cheeks
110.Variations on a theme of Corelli, op.42 for piano, 19.6.1931
111.Flight of the bumble bee Rimsky-Korsakov, arr. Rachm. for piano solo, 1931
112.Songs, settings of verses by composers granddughter lost, 1933
113.Scherzo from A Midsummer Night's dream Mendelssohn, arr. Rachmainov for piano solo, 6.3.1933
114.Prelude, Gavotte and Gigue from violin partita in E major Bach, arr. Rachm. for piano solo, 9.9.1933
115.Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini op.43 for piano and orchestra, 18.8.1934
116.Symphony no.3 in A minor, op.44, 1935-6
117.Symphonic dances op.45 for orchestra, 1940
118.Symphonic dances op.45 arr. by the composer for 2 pianos, 1940
119.Lullaby Tchaikovsky, arr. Rachm. for piano solo, 14.10.1941
Opus
1. Scherzo. for orchestra, 5-12.02.1887
2. 3 nocturnes. for piano, 1887-8
3. 4 pieces. for piano, 1887
4. Piano piece, 1887
5. Esmeralda. opera (fragm.) 17.10.1889
6. Piano concerto (fragm.), 1889
7. String quartet no.1, 1889
8. Deus Meus. motet for 6-part mixed chorus, 1890
9. At the gate of the Holy Abode. for voice and piano, 29.4.1890
10. I'll tell you nothing. for voice and piano, 1.5.1890
11. Romance. for cello and piano, 1890
12. Manfred. for orchestra (lost), 1890
13. Russian Rhapsody. for two pianos, 12-14.1.1891
14. C'etait en avril for voice and piano, 1.4.1891
15. Dusk has fallen for voice and piano, 22.4.1891
16. Piano concerto no.1 in F sharp minor, op.1 6.6.1891
17. Prelude in F major. for piano, 20.7.1891
18. Valse and romance. for piano six hands, 1890-1
19. Symhony in D minor. (first movement only), 28.9.1891
20. Prince Rostislav. poem for orchestra, 9-15.12.1891
21. Again you leapt, my heart. for voice and piano, 1891
22. You recall that evening? for voice and piano, 1891
23. Boris Godunov. (two fragments), 1891
24. Masquerade. (fragm. for voice and piano), 1891
25. Mazeppa. Fragm. for vocal quartet, 1891
26. String quintet lost, 1891
27. Grainem-ukhnem. for voice and piano, 1891
28. Romance. for piano and violin, 1891
29. Piece for cello and piano, 1891
30. Trio elegiaque in G minor. for violin, cello and piano, 18-21.1.1892
31. Two pieces op.2 for cello and piano, 1892
32. The Sleeping Beauty. (Tchaikovski) arr. for piano duet, 1892
33. Aleko, opera in one act, 13.4.1892
34. Five pieces op.3 for piano, autmn 1892
1. Elegia
2. Prelude
3. Melody
4. Polichinelle
5. Serenade
35. Six songs op.4 for voice and piano, 1890-3
1. Oh no! I beg you not forsake me!
2. Morning
3. In the silence of the secret night
4. Sing not, beauty, in my presence
5. O thou, my field
6. How long, my friend?
36. Suite no.1 op.5 "Fantasia" for two pianos, summer 1893
37. O Mother of God, perpetually praying. for mixed 3-part choir, summer 1893
38. Two pieces op.6 for violin and piano, summer 1893
39. The Rock, op.7 Fantasia for orchestra, summer 1893
40. Six songs op.8 for voice and piano, autmn 1893
1. The water lily
2. Child, thou art as beautiful as flower
3. Meditation
4. My love has brought me sorrow
5. A dream
6. A prayer
41. Trio elegiaque in D minor, op.9 for violin, cello and piano, 25.10.1893
42. Romance in G major. for piano duet, 1893
43. Song of the disillusioned. for voice and piano, 1893
44. The flower had faded. for voice and piano, 1893
45. 7 pieces op.10 for piano, jan.1894
46. 6 duets op.11 for piano duet, apr.1894
47. Capriccio bohemien, op.12 for orchestra, summer 1894
48. Two episodes a la Liszt, 1894
49. Chorus of spirits from Don Juan. for mixed chorus a capella, 1894
50. Symphony no.1 in D minor, op.13, aug.1895
51. 12 songs op.14 for voice and piano, 1896
1. Be praised!
2. The night
3. The pine tree
4. The waves slumbered
5. Bondage
6. The angel
52. 6 choruses op.15 for women or children voices and piano, 1895
53. 6 Moments Musicaux, op.16 for piano, dec.1896
54. String quartet no.2, 1896
55. Improvisations. for piano, 1896
56. Symhony (sketches), 5.4.1897
57. Glazunov's symphony no.6 arr. for piano duet, 1897
58. Fantasy pieces. for piano, jan.1899
59. Fughetta in F major. for piano, 4.2.1899
60. 2 Russian and Ukrainian songs. arr. for chorus, 1899
1. At the gate
2. Shoes
61. Were you hiccuping. song, 17.5.1899
62. Pantelei, the healer. for mixed chorus a capella, jul.1900
63. Suite no.2, op.17 for 2 pianos, apr. 1901
64. Piano concerto no.2, C minor, op.18, apr.1901
65. Cello sonata, G minor, op.19
66. Spring op.20 Cantata for baritone, mixed chorus and orchestra, feb.1902
67. 12 songs op.21 for voice and piano, apr.1902
1. Fate
2. By the new grave
3. Twilight
4. They answered
5. Lilacs
6. Fragment from Musset
7. How nice it is here
8. On the death of a linnet
9. Melody
10.Before the ikon
11.No prophet I!
12.How painful for me
68. Lilacs op.21,no.5, arr. for piano solo, 1913
69. Variations on a theme by Chopin op.22 for piano solo, feb. 1903
70. 10 Preludes op.23 for piano, 1903
71. Night. for voice and piano, 1904
72. The Miserly Knight op.24 opera in 3 sceenes, 1905
73. Francesca da Rimini, op.25 opera in 2 sceenes, jul.1905
74. 15 songs op.26 for voice and piano, 1906
1. There are many sounds
2. He took all from me
3. Let us rest
4. Two paintings, dialogue
5. Let us leave, my dear
6. Christ is risen
7. To the children
8. I implore pitty!
9. Again I am alone
10.Before my window
11.The fountain
12.The night is mornful
13.When yesterday we met
14.The ring
15.All things pass
75.Symphony no.2, E minor, op.27, apr 1907
76. Polka italienne. for piano duet, 1906
77. Piano sonata no.1, D minor, op.28, 14.5.1907
78. Monna Vanna. unfinished opera, 15.4.1907
79. Letter to K.S. Stanislavsky. for voice and piano, oct. 1908
80. The isle of the Dead, op.29 symphonic poem, after a painting by A.Boecklin, 17.4.1909
81. Piano concerto no.3, D minor, op.30, summer 1909
82. Liturgy of St.John Chrysostom op.31 for mixed choir, 30.6.1910
83. 13 preludes op.32 for piano, 1910
84. Polka de W.R. for piano, 11.3.1911
85. Etudes-Tableaux, op.33 (6+2 op.posth.) for piano, aug.1911
86. 14 songs op.34 for voice and piano, jun.1912
1. The Muse
2. In the soul of each of us
3. The storm
4. The migrant wind
5. Arion
6. The raising Lazarus
7. It cannot be
8. Music
9. You knew him well
10.I remember that day
11.With holy banner firmly held
12.What happiness
13.Dissonance
14.Vocalise
87. The bells, op.35 poem for orchestra, chorus and soloists, apr.1913
88. Piano sonata no.2, H flat minor, op.36, sept.1913
89. From the Gospel of St.John. for voice and piano, autmn 1914
90. Night Virgil (Vespers) op.37 for mixed choir, feb. 1915
91. The Scythians. Ballet (lost), 1915
92. 6 songs op.38 for soprano and piano, 1916
1. In my garden at night
2. To her
3. Dasies
4. The rat-catcher
5. The dream
6. A-oo
93. Two songs. for voice and piano, 1916
1. Prayer
2. All wish to sing
94. Etudes-tableaux, op.39 (9) for piano, feb.1917
95. Oriental sketch. for piano, 14.11.1917
96. Fragments. for piano, 15.11.1917
97. The Star Spangled Banner. arr. for piano, 1918
98. Cadenza for Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody no.2, 1919
99. Luchinushka. Russian song arr. for tenor and piano, 3.6.1920
100.Apple tree, o apple tree Russian song arr., 1920
101.Along the street. Russian song arr., 1920
102.Liebeslied. Kreisler, arr. Rachm. for piano solo, 1921
103.Minuetto from L'Arleisenne Suite no.1 Bizet, arr. Rachm. for piano solo, 1903
104.Gopak from Sorochnitzi fair Mussorgsky, arr. Rachm. for piano solo, 1924
105.Liebesfreud. Kreisler, arr. Rachm. for piano solo, 1925
106.Quickly, quickly, from my cheeks. Russian song arr. for voice and piano, 1925
107.Wohin? Schubert arr. Rachm. for piano solo, 1925
108.Piano concerto no.4, G minor, op.40, aug.1926
109.Three Russian songs op.41 for chorus and orchestra, 1926
1. Over the little river
2. Oh, Vanka, you bold fellow
3. Quickly, quickly, from my cheeks
110.Variations on a theme of Corelli, op.42 for piano, 19.6.1931
111.Flight of the bumble bee Rimsky-Korsakov, arr. Rachm. for piano solo, 1931
112.Songs, settings of verses by composers granddughter lost, 1933
113.Scherzo from A Midsummer Night's dream Mendelssohn, arr. Rachmainov for piano solo, 6.3.1933
114.Prelude, Gavotte and Gigue from violin partita in E major Bach, arr. Rachm. for piano solo, 9.9.1933
115.Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini op.43 for piano and orchestra, 18.8.1934
116.Symphony no.3 in A minor, op.44, 1935-6
117.Symphonic dances op.45 for orchestra, 1940
118.Symphonic dances op.45 arr. by the composer for 2 pianos, 1940
119.Lullaby Tchaikovsky, arr. Rachm. for piano solo, 14.10.1941
No nee to use offensive language in here, Larry. 
LOOOL
LS, need a new keyboard?
REHAB IS FOR QUITTERS
LOOOL
LS, need a new keyboard?
REHAB IS FOR QUITTERS
G'day all..
Vader, "The platypus is only found in Australia and its island state, Tasmania." Never EVER say that to a Tasmanian. Any mention of Tasmania being a seperate part of Australia and they'll bite ur head off. Sure, it physically is an Island of the coast of mainland Australia, but when they are segregated, it really @#$%& them.
Where as us New South Welshmen simply laugh at the Tasmanians. And tell the Victorians their code of football sucks. And that Sydney is better than Melbourne.
Yeah, that's right Rupert
Vader, "The platypus is only found in Australia and its island state, Tasmania." Never EVER say that to a Tasmanian. Any mention of Tasmania being a seperate part of Australia and they'll bite ur head off. Sure, it physically is an Island of the coast of mainland Australia, but when they are segregated, it really @#$%& them.
Where as us New South Welshmen simply laugh at the Tasmanians. And tell the Victorians their code of football sucks. And that Sydney is better than Melbourne.
Yeah, that's right Rupert
damn.....I've created a monster......lick lick......oh give up, it's impossible 
[www.mediafire.com] Some say you should click it, you know you want to. [www.gp4central.com] <----GP4 Central
[www.mediafire.com] Some say you should click it, you know you want to.
[www.gp4central.com] <----GP4 Central
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