Witness to the German Revolution

by Victor Serge

  Build the strong revolutionary organization which tomorrow will enable the French proletariat to save the German revolution—that is the urgent great task to which you must contribute with all your strength, if you don’t want to play into the hands of international reaction by your passivity or your incompetence!

  One of Serge’s first journalistic assignments on arriving in Germany was to report on the Conference of the Three Internationals. This was a response to the Genoa Conference of April 1922, the first post-war conference to bring together nations from both sides in World War I. It was part of the Comintern’s strategy of seeking a united front around concrete demands with the various reformist and centrist parties that still had the support of a significant section of the working class. The three internationals were the Comintern (Third International), the Second International, which had failed to oppose the war in 1914, and the International Union of Socialist Parties (known as the Two and a half International), consisting of parties (including the British ILP) to the left of the Second International but which refused to join the Comintern.

  Conference Impressions

  Bulletin communiste, April 29, 1922

  The Social Democrats are still at home in the republic of Stinnes and Noske. Which explains why the Conference of the Three Internationals met in one of the rooms of the Reichstag.

  In the government offices of the Entente,28 the last preparations are being made for Genoa, where the job is to strangle simultaneously victorious red Russia and defeated workers’ Germany. Meanwhile here, meeting around these three tables arranged in the shape of a T, are the representatives of the three socialist internationals, in whom are embodied the consciousness and the will of hundreds of millions of the oppressed.

  Socialism! Marx, his labors, his strong, sure doctrine; the First International and the wave of enthusiasm which passed over the world; the murdered Commune, then the renewal of ideas, the great congresses; 1914, when everything collapsed; 1917—and the revolution… Now there are three internationals. And here they are.

  At the far end of the room a fleshy, bald Vandervelde, cupping his hand to his ear, a small compact face with a beard and pince-nez.—Vandervelde, steeped in ministerial gravity, who just now was talking about democracy and the rights of small nations. —Do you know, minister, what it is they call red rubber? Once upon a time you had a charming visit to the Congo. You were the apostle of democratic colonialism, well fed and covered in honors. And 17 million blacks are still slaving, sweating and bleeding in your immense equatorial jail, minister. So you made war. Do you sometimes think of the number of soldiers executed (by mistake) who are now being rehabilitated? Not many, it’s true, amid the hecatombs you have presided over, with your spine respectfully bent before your king. Then after the war you achieved victory and signed the Treaty of Versailles. What do you think, minister, of the poverty, famine and despair of the workers of Germany? What do you think of the death of Vienna?

  But you can see by the serenity of his short sighted gaze that M. Vandervelde is thinking of less bitter topics. This socialist is thinking about how to judge the instigators of the Russian revolution. That is why he is here.

  His international is that of the ministers. Scheidemann, Ebert and Noske all belong to it. Herr Radbruch, who has just handed over Luis Nicolau Fort and Joaquina Concepcion29 to the inquisitors of Madrid, is also one. And there is, at M. Vandervelde’s table, a former Georgian minister… As for Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, we can have no doubt that he will be a minister.30

  Mr. Chernov31 ought to belong to this international, and it is unforgivable forgetfulness, error or omission if he isn’t a part of it. Was he not more than a minister, almost president of the republic? Mr. Chernov carries with satisfaction, amid the wizened faces of worn out petty bourgeois, a fine head like an old actor’s, crowned with white hair. He is well: terrorism and civil war (after all, it is always other people who die) have not encroached on his robust health. He is still ready to demand penalties against the Bolsheviks. And he is the man of the hour: two internationals are going over and over his list of accusations as though they will never be finished.

  Formerly, Mr. Chernov pronounced sentence on grand dukes, imperial governors—and with them, to the same death, students, workers full of faith, heroes. These are long forgotten stories. From very high up, Mr. Chernov, assisted by an agent provocateur who has remained notorious, directed terrorism; and when, hungry, betrayed, arrested, sold out, hanged, the revolutionaries of his party felt they had been dupes of some sinister manipulator, Mr. Chernov used his high authority to cover for Azev,32 defended him and saved his precious skin. Then he was a minister and, like all ministers, repressed. Then he had Volodarsky33 killed and had the mur- der disowned the very same day. Then he organized civil war… But we can’t mention all the details of such a full career. Besides, it would only produce a futile nausea.

  In fact the other socialist international, the one based in Vienna, is rather better! Adler,34 round shouldered, rests his wearied intellectual’s moustached head on the table. Wretchedness of Vienna where they weren’t able to make the revolution, where the socialism of the waverers was not even able to defend the worker’s last piece of bread, wretchedness of weak-willed socialism which does not dare to will either the revolution or the re-establishment of capitalism. It is a heavy burden to bear when one has weak shoulders and fumbling hands.

  So if the London international is that of ministers and bourgeois repression, the Vienna international is that of weaklings. To be convinced of this you only need to see at the same table Adler—so old, so tired, alongside Clara Zetkin,35 brave and vigorous—Longuet,36 Martov,37 and not far from them, Serrati38… They have all had, they still have vague revolutionary desires, but when it comes to breaking with Renaudel, whom he despises, Longuet cannot bring himself to do it; when he has to break with Turati, Serrati can’t do it; and when he should break with the counter-revolution whose infamous deeds he is aware of, Martov cannot do it… So what will they be able to do today?

  Speeches and statements. What is at stake? Is it the united front? In England two million unemployed and a million locked-out workers are waiting for socialism to defend them.

  Throughout central Europe, people who have been methodically starved are in despair. In a few days from now the victorious powers are going to meet at Genoa to try to impose on red Russia the law of the strongest bourgeois… And 30 million people are dying of hunger from the Volga to the Black Sea. What concerns can socialists have at such times, if not to finally confront the aggressions of the enemy class with all the strength of labor? The war for justice has borne fruit; it seems that the most ministerial of socialist ministers can no longer evade their elementary duty…

  Nonetheless! Speeches and statements: in all this the united front, the defence of the proletariat, the strangling of workers’ Germany, the ambush against red Russia, don’t have much of a place. These socialists, of whom not one lacks comfort and security in bourgeois society, are at this moment in history imposing conditions on the Russian Revolution.

  Journalists, lawyers and members of parliament from London, Vienna, Paris and Brussels seem to have assembled here with the sole aim of judging a guilty party. And this guilty party is the Russian Revolution. It’s Lenin, whose crime is to have made the imperialist democracies tremble on their foundations and to have survived the bullets of the Social Revolutionaries.39 It’s you, peasant from the Volga, whose land has been devastated by the Czechoslovaks and Mr Chernov’s party, you who, under the five pointed red star and with your rifle in your hand, drove the British out of Baku and Tbilisi!40 It’s you, workers and peasants of Russia, who, by defending for five years your revolution and your right to life against war, blockades, cold, hunger, ignorance, sabotage and conspiracies, have infringed so many sacred principles! Vandervelde accuses and MacDonald repeats. Almost universal approval.

  The crucial question, you see, is not the fate of the Russian Revolution, nor that of the
employers’ offensive in every country, nor even reparations: it is knowing whether Mr Chernov’s friends, all of whose base deeds will be unveiled in Moscow, quite openly before a revolutionary court,41 will be judged with all the desirable guarantees!

  But someone has stood up, at the Communists’ table. Here the delegates are younger, more vigorous, they don’t have the prosperous appearance of long-serving parliamentarians, nor the pampered appearance of socialists with ministerial office who are used to living in armchairs. These are revolutionaries and you can see it. Someone has stood up: a hard bony figure, with a face that jars, a grey complexion, vehement gestures and a biting voice: Radek.42

  Radek replies to Vandervelde. And the whole meeting is immediately turned round. You don’t accuse the revolution, he declares, when you have been a minister of war, when you signed the Treaty of Versailles, when you are the political friend of Scheidemann and Chernov! That is pushing irresponsibility beyond the limits of demagogy. In five minutes Radek has shown what terrible accounts the revolution has to settle with the socialists who are there. But the time for that debate has not yet come. Today:

  “Do you or do you not want to defend wages, fight unemployment and obstruct the criminal intentions of imperialism?”

  In this New Year article Serge reviewed the situation at the start of 1923. Reactionary forces were advancing in Europe, notably in Italy, where Mussolini was strengthening his position. In Germany inflation was already a major problem, though it had not yet reached the disastrous level it was to attain later in the year. Meanwhile in Russia the New Economic Policy was beginning to show results.

  Balance Sheet of a Year

  Correspondance internationale, January 3, 1923

  It is a good thing that, from time to time, a person concerned about the future should turn round and look critically at the road already traveled. Shall we take a retrospective look at 1922, the fourth year of peace since the unatonable slaughter of peoples? Does the experience of this year condemn our hopes to frustration and legitimize the old society which we are fighting to overthrow? So many people whom up to yesterday we still thought of as comrades are going round saying with a knowing smile, “It’s still intact, this old building which the prophets from Moscow have so often predicted was about to collapse!”

  And perhaps they believe it, for there are none so deaf…

  Nineteen twenty-two also dawned with fields of corpses. If humanity in our time had really had a social conscience, it would have been enough to damn the social order. Nineteen twenty-two dawned on the great famine in Russia, on millions of men, women and children dying amid the snows of the Volga, while maize was being burnt in Argentina, while wheat was being piled up—“It can’t be sold, you understand, because of the low prices”—in America, and the excessive number of boats available in Britain and America was causing a grave shipping crisis. Christian bourgeois humanity, enlightened with science and philosophy, looked on dispassionately as Russian mujhiks died, while calculating that these piles of corpses would allow them to extort profitable concessions from the soviets…

  The statesmen of the victorious powers meanwhile devoted all their ingenuity to rationally imposing starvation on Austria and then on Germany. With the assistance of the obliging German-speaking bourgeoisie, who for the time being look on the end of Europe as being good for business, remarkable results have been achieved in this direction. Austria is no more than a diplomatic fiction. A hundred thousand unemployed are quietly rotting of hunger there. And 500,000 workers are waiting for their turn to die under the care of Friedrich Adler.43 In Germany the cost of living has increased fortyfold; unemployment looms; black bread is getting blacker; there are hordes of tubercular children, and of mutilated beggars, thieves, prostitutes, state officials who have been bought by Schieber (racketeers), or are simply on sale to whoever wants to buy… The Social Democratic Party (SPD) has dropped the defense of the eight-hour day; strikes begun in desperation are ending in defeat: for the big companies are growing rich from the appalling poverty of nearly fifty million people. And every day you can feel it getting closer, like a shadow already looming over everything, the catastrophe of tomorrow.

  The German mark has joined the Austrian crown. The French franc and the Italian lira, whose artificial stability is to a great extent based on gold marks,44 which, it is true, are ever more hypothetical, have shown worrying fluctuations in value.

  Financial crash, selling off by auction, undernourishment, excessive exploitation, massive financial inflation in Germany. The strangling of Vienna. Unemployment and industrial slump in Czechoslovakia. Stagnation and poverty in Poland (whose mark is worth three times as much as the German mark) and in Horthy’s45 Hungary. So much for the economy.

  In internal politics, it’s the rule of the man with a truncheon and the executioner. The year started with massacres of miners in Johannesburg. Childers46—and a good many others—were hanged in Ireland. The Communist Kingissep was shot in Tallinn, the Communist Purin in Riga, and there are still hangings (after seven years of repression!) in the Rand.47 There is legal terror established in “independent” Egypt on behalf of a British governor. Repressive laws in Yugoslavia. Terror in Hungary and Romania. In Poland and Estonia, Communist members of parliament are wearing convicts’ uniform. In Italy, Benito Mussolini, a renegade from socialism, is being borne towards dictatorship with no difficulty by those who burn down trade union buildings; their so called “revolution” has mainly consisted of hunting down the disarmed and decimated class enemy and of administering castor oil to prisoners, doubtless in order to emphasize the depraved aspect of things.

  In international politics, it is the comic aspect that is dominant. Endless discussion and more discussion! The diplomats carry their anxious bald heads from one conference to another. Washington, Cannes, Genoa, the Hague, Paris, London, London again, Lausanne—long journeys, long discussions, long machinations, leading to fiascos and more fiascos. In a whole year the question of the Interallied debt has not come a millimeter closer to a solution. As for disarmament, better not to speak of it. The question of reparations has got so much worse that nobody can try to conceal the latent state of war in capitalist Europe. Sometimes the results obtained by statesmen are exactly the opposite of what they were trying to achieve. At Genoa, the aim was to subjugate the Soviet Republic: but the sole result was the Rapallo Treaty48 which re-established the USSR’s relations with Germany. At the Paris conference the aim was to patch up the Sèvres treaty, which the new Turkish regime chopped to pieces the very next day—irrecoverably—with a hefty bayonet blow.49 At Lausanne, the object was to put a noose around the neck of the new Turkish regime which would resist any challenge. Nothing was achieved. Fire is smoldering in the East. Every day the financiers in the City of London assess the growing danger facing Mosul50 oil and the route to India…

  —Yes, but there is still socialism!

  Socialism, alas, is also continuing down the same path that it took on August 2, 1914. There are hangings in the Rand, shootings in Ireland, massacres in India: the Labour Party keeps silent. M. Vandervelde, signatory of the Versailles Treaty, blusters against the soviets. When fascism triumphs, Jules Destrée,51 another former minister, and one of the king of Belgium’s socialists, expresses his great pleasure at the fact. Paul Levi, formerly a Communist and one of the first rebels against the “tyranny of Moscow,” has completed his unplanned evolution by falling into the arms of Scheidemann and Noske. The Independent Social Democrats,52 unable to pay their full-timers, have fused with the SPD which is ready for anything—and old Ledebour has departed… After proletarian Italy has shed its blood every day for 18 months, defeated because it was divided and betrayed, Serrati has made due apology and is seeking readmission into the Communist International. Democratic socialism, for so long bound to the fortunes of bourgeois society, seems to be decaying along with it. In 1922 it waged only one major campaign, against the Russian Revolution, and in support of the counter-revolutionary Soci
alist Revolutionaries. It rejected the Communist proposal for a united front. Now, at the Hamburg conference, it is preparing to solemnly reconstruct the socialism of ministers and dilettantes, by uniting the internationals of London and Vienna.53

  In all the social battles of the year, its complicity has secured victory for the employers’ offensive. Over the railway workers and the miners in the USA—thanks to Mr. Gompers54 and the reformists who allowed the export of European coal—over the Rand miners, the German railway workers and, very recently, over the Ludwigshafen strikers.

  Thus goes the old world, thus goes “socialism,” a living insult to true socialism! This is the sphere of what is dying and rotting in a society whose decline, even if it has slowed down, is nonetheless still undeniable. Now we should look at what is being born, amid the pain, toil, effort and uncertainty that accompanies every birth.

  Despite the immense sufferings caused by famine and the aftermath of civil war, despite the crushing ills of a period of transition to socialism in a backward country, which is bankrupt, decaying and encircled by the capitalist powers, nonetheless Soviet Russia ends the years with the following balance sheet:

  Nationalized production, which in 1919-20 fell to 6 percent of normal production, has risen in 1921-22 to around 25 percent. During the same year, the real wages of Russian workers, although their privations are still great, more than doubled. The countryside is at peace, and the tax in kind has been collected in full. At the cost of admittedly heart rending sacrifices, the famine has been almost overcome. At Genoa, at the Hague, at Lausanne, the red republic has conceded nothing of its dignity or of its legitimate entitlements. In the face of the world powers, it has proclaimed the right to revolutionary expropriation. A striking victory, moral much more than military, enabled it to regain the whole of the Siberian far east, obliging Japanese imperialism to end its grip on Vladivostok. And the year’s end found it still at work, with the Tenth Congress of Soviets completing its internal unification…