Witness to the German Revolution

by Victor Serge

  What could a new victory of counterrevolution mean to Germany ? Some reign of white terror, Horthy-style,210 with an endless stream of murders, internments, fraudulent trials, executions and pogroms… Think of von Kahr’s Munich, from where they are driving out the Jews, as they did in the thirteenth century. A complete “Stinnesation” of any surviving intellectual life. The ten-hour day, arms production, the triumph of the desire for military revenge, perhaps a restoration of the monarchy, certainly, in a few years, war. A perfected form of war, aerial, chemical, bacteriological…

  Let us even admit, although it scarcely looks probable, the possibility of a new stabilization of democracy and the return of an economic conjuncture in Germany which is favorable to the bourgeois order. We’ve already been through it. It would merely be a continuation of decadence: and however long it might last, no other great hope than that of revolution could grow up in the population. By defending its class interests, by preparing to take power, the German proletariat today, in its sector of the front, is defending European culture.

  This two part article gave Serge an opportunity to reflect on the failure of the KPD to carry through a revolutionary bid for power in 1923. Obviously for reasons of security he could not tell all he knew, but it was an honest attempt at self-criticism of the sort that would soon be impossible in the Comintern. Lenin had died in January 1924; despite his warnings to the Fourth Congress of the Comintern in 1922, the new leadership under Zinoviev was imposing “Bolshevisation” on the Communist Parties of the world, paving the way for Stalin.

  A 50-Day Armed Vigil

  Clarté, February 1 & 15, 1924

  In September, October and November in Germany, we have just lived through a profound revolutionary experience, which is still little known and often little understood in other countries. We have been at the very heart of a revolution. The armed vigil has been a long one, but zero hour never came… A drama that was almost silent, almost unbelievable. A million revolutionaries, ready, waiting for the signal to go on to the attack; behind them millions of unemployed, hungry, battered, desperate people, a whole suffering population, murmuring: “We too, we too!” The muscles of this crowd were already taut, their fists already gripping the Mausers they were going to use against the armored cars of the Reichswehr… And nothing happened, except the bloody clowning in Dresden, a corporal followed by four armed ruffians driving from their offices the workers’ ministers who had made bourgeois Germany tremble, a few pools of blood—sixty dead in all—on the streets of the industrial cities of Saxony; the jubilation of a bankrupt social democracy, which emerged from the massive but passive adventure dully faithful to its old betrayals. None of those who lived through all the expectations of this fifty-day armed vigil knows all the details, everything that went on behind the scenes: for two whole classes were measuring their strength against each other, embodied in their vanguards, masked, in the shadows that are necessary for conspiracy. Of what everyone knows, not everything can be said; for revolutionary preparation is continuing under a military dictatorship. In this letter I should simply like to give you some impressions, some detailed observations, and suggest a few conclusions to you…

  The march towards civil war

  It was around September 15 that we felt the harsh approach of decisive events. The Great Coalition, including the party of Stinnes and Stresemann as well as the SPD, had taken power on August 12, as a result of the general strike. The blood of seventy workers killed in the strike sealed the pact of collaboration made between Stresemann, former agent of the Saxon industrialists, a monarchist in 1918, and Rudolf Hilferding, formerly a left wing Independent Social Democrat, Marxist author of Finance Capital. Contrary to what was later believed in the International,211 the remarkable August general strike which drove Herr Cuno from power had been only a substantial success for the working class, but not a brilliant victory. The railway workers had scarcely taken part; in Berlin, traffic in the streets and commercial life were scarcely disrupted. Already social democratic passivity obstructed from the outset a powerful spontaneous mass movement. The hasty vote by the Reichstag, on August 10, right in the middle of the strike, for taxes on property, and the pathetic collapse of Herr Cuno bore witness to the anxiety of the bourgeoisie, faced for the first time with the consequences of its looting of the nation, rather than to the vigor of the workers’ offensive, led by a strong minority, but sabotaged by a powerful majority. At this moment, the most perceptive minds in the enemy classes were led into error. The intelligent bourgeois, impressed by the ample spontaneity of the movement, exaggerated the immediate force of the revolutionary wave; they were afraid. Meanwhile, the revolutionary workers were fired with enthusiasm for the popularity of the KPD (to which, in various places, the strikers deliberately offered the leadership of the movement), then for the political success achieved, and thus began to overestimate their own strength and to underestimate the “formidable powerlessness” of the social democracy.

  The bourgeoisie quickly got over its mistake. A month later, in the first week of September, all the concessions it had made to the social democracy in order to form the Great Coalition were seen to be null and void; large-scale industry had begun its campaign against the working class. Every day the question of extending the working day came up. At this moment the derisory but pernicious role of the SPD in the cabinet became obvious. The idea of an inevitable resort to force imposed itself on the masses of workers, just as it did on the big employers, the plutocrats and the old military caste. Two preparations for battle would now develop in parallel until the first week in November, which both camps soon seemed to adopt as a final deadline: for the anniversaries of the German Revolution (November 7 and 9) and of the Russian Revolution (November 7) had profound significance. And then, you can’t make a revolution or a counterrevolution in wintertime.

  Germany was evolving towards civil war. A race for power. Reaction and revolution both needed strategic bases. Reaction had Bavaria: on September 16, Herr von Knilling made threatening remarks. There Hitler’s gangs were arming feverishly, financed by the very rich industrialist Hugenberg, and, it is said, by Mr. Ford, a citizen of the United States.212 The Communists tried to give the proletariat governmental positions in Saxony and Thuringia, where on their initiative “workers’ governments” under Zeigner and Frölich were formed. In this use of governmental power for civil war almost all the advantages went to the bourgeoisie. The people in Munich were supported by Berlin. The workers’ ministers in Dresden were under constant threat of action by the Reich. The people in Munich—though divided between separatists and Pan-Germanists, monarchists and popular nationalists, between Wittelsbach and Hohenzollern, between big industrialists and manufacturers, between advocates of an offensive and of delay—were unanimous on one point: that an end must be put, by force, to the red danger. At Dresden and Gotha, only the Communists were determined, knew what they wanted; the left social democrats hesitated ; the leadership of the SPD plotted against them; the unemployed, the workers on short time, were burning with desire to act; but a number of social democrats still nourished the sweet dream of a revival of parliamentary democracy. In short, neither in Saxony nor in Thuringia did the Communists succeed in making the left social democrats adopt a really revolutionary attitude. Were they, as certain Communists claim (the left of the party213) wrong not to foresee this situation? It is easy to “have predicted” after the event. One way or another, I think an experience was necessary to show what a destructive influence social democratic inertia had even on the healthiest elements in the social democracy.

  In October, the two permanent conspiracies came face to face. On the one side, the Reichswehr, and behind it the “black Reichswehr,” organized at great expense with the support of Herr Cuno and the “Aid to the Ruhr” funds, Hitler’s gangs, plus a hundred thousand men, massed in Bavaria, the Stahlhelm in Central Germany, the ex-servicemen’s leagues in Mecklenburg and Pomerania, the disciplined organizations of Ehrhardt and Rossbach.
On the other side, the Communist Party, feverishly pursuing its technical preparations. Who would take the decision? The most powerful social group on the enemy side, which felt itself being pushed towards dictatorship: heavy industry. In the first crisis of the Stresemann cabinet, Herr Stinnes simply wanted to measure his own strength and the weakness of the legal government. What would the decision be? If it were necessary to fight, and it would be necessary if the working class resisted the systematic encroachments of reaction on the streets, then heavy industry would only in the last resort use the murky fascist elements, whose arms cost it dear, and whose demagogy was displeasing. The centralization of power in Bavaria, in the hands of Herr von Kahr, partly had the aim of forestalling an untimely initiative by the demagogues, impatient elements and mercenaries mobilized by Hitler. The Küstrin incident (October 1) showed how overheated minds had become in the vanguards of the enemy. Major Buchrucker hoped to give the signal for a nationalist rising. The Reichswehr remained faithful to its leaders who, for their part, were faithful to the very judicious masters of heavy industry.

  On the threshold...

  Losschlagen!

  Losschlagen means: strike the blow you had been holding back, trigger off action. This word is on everyone’s lips, on this side of the barricade. On the other side, too, I think. In Thuringia, outside semi-clandestine meetings where a Communist is due to speak, workers—whom he doesn’t know—plant themselves in front of him. A railwayman asks, coming straight to the point: “When shall we strike? When?”

  This worker, who has traveled fifty miles by night to ask this question, understands little about matters of tactics and timing: “My people,” he says, “have had enough. Be quick about it!”

  The young Communist you meet on the street tells you in a confidential tone: “I think it will be next week,” and looks at you with his square forehead, his tough gaze, to which any lie is alien.

  October is cold. Drizzle, rain, grey streets where we hang about for a long time, in the working-class districts. Drivers, housewives, those without work—who are also without shirts and overcoats—are discussing. They shout abuse at the nationalist student. In these nervous groups, huddled together at gloomy crossroads, far from the well-lit squares where the police look after the well-being of the profiteers who are engrossed in schemes for currency exchange, I often hear people insistently talking about Russia…“Over there!” he says, “over there…” And while he takes breath, I think that in the dark sky of these poor people, at least one star has risen. Women often speak in these improvised little meetings. I heard one of them upbraiding a National Socialist student: “Ah! You want to march on Berlin, do you, patriots! It’s easier, isn’t it, than driving the French out of the Ruhr!… Will you bring me some bread?” The man in his helmet encircled with the green and white ribbon of his scholarly guild, vainly tried to explain: “We’ll throw all the tiles from the rooftops onto you!” they shouted.

  Mist, drizzle, rain, first cold of October. Homes with no bread and no fire. Shops guarded by the green police, besieged, from dawn to nightfall, by cheerless crowds of women; the police go rushing, their short rifles slung crosswise, through the thoroughfares in working-class districts; suddenly trucks go by, bristling with guns and shining peaked military hats; thin, surly faces at every door in the feverish evening; reports in the newspapers: “Seven dead at Beuthen… twelve dead at Sorau… fifteen dead at Düsseldorf… six dead at Cologne…”

  What is to be done when hunger drives crowds to lose their respect for the law? The police are afraid. They are hungry too. But they weren’t made to provide bread. To resolve the social problems posed in the streets, they have only bayonets, bullets and handcuffs…

  As you read the paper, it’s no longer possible to add up those murdered during the day. There are too many, and information is confused. The comrade I’ve met tells me: “I’ve just seen a bakery looted…” “At the X factory, the wages haven’t been paid, and vanloads of police have arrived.” “It seems there has just been shooting in Neukölln…” The bakers pull down their iron shutters. Others, hypocritically calculating, put up notices in their windows saying: “Here you can make donations for the unemployed!” The customer’s philanthropy is invited to pay for the bread they give: insurance against looting, at the neighbors’ expense. Just about every day, prices double. The week’s wage is fixed on Tuesday after the official inflation index is published; it is paid in two installments; interim payment on Tuesday and the balance every Friday. From Tuesday to Friday, it loses two-thirds of its value.

  After this anger, this desperation, this tenseness in the street and the home, it is good to find oneself from time to time gathered round the same table with some men whose brows show that they know what lies behind these things and who reinforce their will by contact with unlimited hope. One evening there were half a dozen of us, but one had returned from a long journey: a few hours earlier, he had been in the hands of the green police in the Ruhr. A young voice, calm and restrained: “We already have whole divisions…” Arms, it is true, are in short supply; we shall go and get them from the barracks. The map of Germany is present in all our minds: “Saxony, Thuringia, Berlin, Hamburg will hold… Russia!” “Radek has written…” I’ve noticed that the intellectuals—I’m one of them—are the most suspicious about how things will turn out. They weigh and weigh again the difficulties at length with overintellectual arguments that sometimes have a very debilitating effect. A friend cuts our commentaries short, saying: “I believe in the revolution, because I want it; because I live among people who want it.” He is a district organizer; he works night and day.

  Losschlagen! Losschlagen!

  Chemnitz, Munich

  The blow has not been struck.

  The raised fist of the German proletariat has been slowly and peacefully lowered. All those who have lived through the events know that from many points of view it would have been much easier to act than not to act. We didn’t act.

  The decisive turning point for us was between October 15 and 21. The Reichswehr had entered Saxony. The right to strike had been abolished there. Military law was ruling this red state shamelessly. Nothing was left to the Saxon proletariat except a general strike—illegal—with the immediate aim of paralyzing, and then driving out, the Reichswehr; hence it would become an insurrection. The rest of Germany must support it. The signal was awaited from one hour to the next. Zeigner was governing in Dresden, with three Communists: Brandler, Heckert, Böttcher. Each day General Müller progressed further into the working-class centers. In reality the defeat, our defeat, occurred suddenly on October 21, at the Chemnitz conference. Left social democrats, Communists, non-party delegates from the factory committees were discussing action there, despite the military dictator, under the protection of the workers’ hundreds whose heavy step hammered through the silence in the corridors. Losschlagen! The Communists proposed immediate action. “Everything is at stake,” Brandler had just written. The—left—social democrats, who had followed them up to this point, replied, after many evasions: “No!”

  They weren’t ready. It wouldn’t be legal. The conference was not formally authorized to decide. Wait. Set up a committee. What is it?

  It was the failure, at the crucial moment, of the leaders of half the forces of the revolution, the workers’ front broken in the face of the Reichswehr, disarray in minds, distrust returning among the proletarians who had already come to feel that they were brothers in arms. The precious moment, the one moment, wasted. After this, reassured, Herr Stresemann could act, had to act, and act quickly to take advantage of the situation. On October 28, the Berlin government addressed its ultimatum to Zeigner. (In short, it demanded the exclusion of the Communists from the government). Zeigner who, personally, wanted to get rid of our comrades, resisted out of a sense of dignity. The troops turned him out of his office. The initiative for operations passed to the enemy class.

  Up to this moment, everything had depended on the attitude of the wo
rking class. It was in an attacking position. After the Chemnitz failure, the worker’s fist was lowered, giving up the chance to strike; the fist of reaction was raised.

  Losschlagen. Reaction also wants to losschlagen!

  The Munich tragicomedy resolved all the internal difficulties of the reactionaries. On November 7, Ludendorff and the demagogue Hitler made their coup, and took on the dictatorship of the Reich in a Munich beer hall. For a moment we were carried away by hope. They were going to oblige the proletariat, which was incapable of taking the offensive, to engage in a counterattack which, with the aid of Communist will, could go a long way. Such was not the intention of heavy industry, led by far-sighted people who were rather more serious than the Kaiser’s former chief of staff.214 Heavy industry didn’t need a civil war. Even less did it need complications with foreign governments. Since Chemnitz, it was more confident about the combativity of the working class. Nothing was now opposed to its legal dictatorship. Henceforth it wouldn’t give a halfpenny to Hitler’s gangs, who in fact were quite dangerous. For the moment Hitler has come to the end of his career in a comfortable prison where he has been placed by his accomplice von Kahr.