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2020 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

The Leninbund: A New Beginning?

Author : Mario Kessler

Published in: A Political Biography of Arkadij Maslow, 1891-1941

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

This chapter covers Fischer’s and Maslow’s ill-fated attempt to constitute a new opposition to Stalin, the Leninbund, as well as their retreat from active politics. While Fischer found employment as a social worker in Berlin, Maslow mainly worked as a translator. Both witnessed the rise of Nazism in Germany without any illusions. Maslow also helped Ruth Fischer with the transcript of her impressive social report Deutsche Kinderfibel (German Children’s Primer) that described the misery of Berlin’s working-class children during the Great Depression. The book showed the devastating effects of steadily rising unemployment on young people. The difficulties of finding work in an overcrowded labor market embittered many young people who subsequently became disillusioned with the political system of the Weimar Republic. Juvenile delinquency increased dramatically, as did political militancy among the youth.

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See Günter Wernicke, “Die Radikallinke der KPD und die russische Opposition: Von der Fischer/Maslow-Gruppe zum Leninbund,” Beiträge zur Geschichte der Arbeiterbewegung, Vol. 42 (2000), No. 3, p. 91. Fischer, Maslow and their followers submitted a statement to the conference. See “Der Kampf um die Kommunistische Partei: Plattform der linken Opposition der KPD” (n. pl., n. d., 4 pp.). This hectographed material is catalogued in the Deutsche Bibliothek Leipzig but no longer available for use because of its poor state of preservation.

For the founding of the organization see Rüdiger Zimmermann, Der Leninbund: Linke Kommunisten in der Weimarer Republik (Düsseldorf: Droste, 1978), pp. 99–103, and Marcel Bois, Kommunisten gegen Hitler und Stalin: Die Linke Opposition der KPD in der Weimarer Republik. Eine Gesamtdarstellung (Essen: Klartext, 2014), pp. 263–265.

See Marcel Bois, “Mit Kirchengeläut aus der Taufe gehoben: Wie es zur Gründung des Leninbundes kam,” Neues Deutschland, April 6, 2013 (Kirchengeläut: church bells).

See Zimmermann, Leninbund, p. 102.

See ibid., pp. 155–157.

See Theodor Bergmann, Gegen den Strom: Die Geschichte der Kommunistischen Partei-Opposition, enlarged ed. (Hamburg: VSA, 2001).

For all these groups see in great detail Bois, Kommunisten gegen Hitler und Stalin, and idem, “Opposing Hitler and Stalin: Left Wing Communists after Expulsion from the KPD,” Ralf Hoffrogge and Norman LaPorte (eds.), Weimar Communism as Mass Movement 1918–1933 (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 2017), pp. 150–169. For the Trotskyites see also Wolfgang Alles, Zur Politik und Geschichte der deutschen Trotzkisten ab 1930 (Frankfurt-Main: ISP, 1987); and Annegret Schüle, Trotzkismus in Deutschland bis 1933 (Cologne: Merheimerstr., 1980), p. 117.

See Zimmermann, Leninbund, pp. 103–104.

See ibid., p. 110.

Die Rote Fahne, May 10, 1928.

The letter requesting readmission can be found in: SAPMO-BArch, RY5/1 6/3/11, p. 11. See also the report in the Leninbund newspaper Die Fahne des Kommunismus, May 11, 1928. Werner Scholem had already left the Leninbund a few days earlier. See ibid., May 7, 1928.

See ibid. Mathilde Montagnon, Ruth Fischer 1895–1961: Itinéraire d’une communiste oppositionnelle, Université Pierre Mendès-France, Institut d’Etudes Politiques (Grenoble, 1998), p. 97, considered Fischer’s and Maslow’s application for readmission as “capitulation”, but may underestimate their communist self-understanding at that time. The Rote Fahne headlined scornfully: “Der Bankrott der Verräterpartei” [The Bankrupty of the Party of Traitors], RF, May 10, 1928. The Leninbund press likewise reported sarcastically about the new “leftist course” of the KPD and its “victims.” See “Der ‘Linkskurs’ und seine Opfer,” Die Fahne des Kommunismus, May 18, 1928.

See SAPMO-Barch, RY 5/I 6/3/11, p. 1: Application for readmission to the KPD, June 23, 1928.

See Fischer, “Autobiographical Notes,” p. 464. She mentioned G. L. Shklovsky as a main contact person. See ibid., p. 499. Shklovsky was killed in the Stalinist ‘purges’ in 1937.

See Bulletin Communiste, No. 9 (1928), as quoted in: Pierre Broué, “The German Left and the Russian Opposition, 1926–28,” Revolutionary History, 2 (1989), No. 3, p. 21.

In October 1928 Thälmann, who had concealed an intra-party embezzlement affair, was removed from his position as KPD leader by a Central Committee decision but reinstated on Stalin’s order. Since March of the same year Stalin and Thälmann had closely cooperated on the basis of a secret agreement that was then discovered by the Leninbund. For context see Elke Reuter et al. (eds.), Luxemburg oder Stalin: Schaltjahr 1928. Die KPD am Scheideweg (Berlin: Karl Dietz, 2003); Hermann Weber and Bernhard H. Bayerlein (eds.), Der Thälmann-Skandal: Geheime Korrespondenzen mit Stalin (Berlin: Aufbau, 2003).

The best historical overview of the genesis of the term in English is still Theodore Draper, “The Ghost of Social Fascism,” Commentary, Vol. 25 (1969), No. 2, pp. 29–42. See also Kermit E. McKenzie, Comintern and World Revolution 1928–1934: The Shaping of a Doctrine (London and New York: Columbia University Press, 1964), esp. pp. 122–123; Siegfried Bahne, “‘Sozialfaschismus’ in Deutschland: Zur Geschichte eines politischen Begriffs,” International Review of Social History, Vol. 10 (1965), No. 2, pp. 211–245; Heinrich August Winkler Der Schein der Normalität: Arbeiter und Arbeiterbewegung in der Weimarer Republik 1924–1930 (Bonn: J. H. W. Dietz, 1985), esp. pp. 681–685; Nicholas N. Kozlov and Eric D. Weitz, “Reflections on the Origins of the ‘Third Period’: Bukharin, the Comintern, and the Political Economy of Weimar Germany,” Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 24 (1989), No. 3, esp. pp. 388–389; and Andreas Wirsching, Vom Weltkrieg zum Bürgerkrieg? Politischer Extremismus in Deutschland und Frankreich: Berlin und Paris im Vergleich 1918–1933/39 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1999), esp. pp. 557–561.

Felix Gilbert, The End of the European Era: 1890 to the Present (New York: W. W. Norton, 1970), p. 215.

See Thomas Kurz, “Blutmai”: Sozialdemokraten und Kommunisten im Brennpunkt der Berliner Ereignisse von 1929 (Bonn: J. H. W. Dietz, 1988); Eve Rosenhaft, “Working-Class Life and Working-Class Politics: Communists, Nazis, and the State in the Battle for the Streets, Berlin 1928–1932,” Richard Bessel and E. J. Feuchtwanger (eds.), Social Change and Political Development in the Weimar Republic (London: Croom Helm, 1981), pp. 207–240; Idem, Beating the Fascists? The German Communists and Political Violence, 1929–1933 (Cambridge [UK] and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 28–56; Chris Bowlby, “Blutmai 1929: Police, Parties and Proletarians in a Berlin Confrontation,” The Historical Journal, Vol. 29 (1986), No. 1, pp. 137–158. See also Evelyn Anderson, Hammer or Anvil: The Story of the German Working-Class Movement (New York: Oriole Editions, 1973), pp. 130–135 (First edition 1945).

“Gewaltiger Wahlsieg der KPD,” RF, September 15, 1930.

For SPD policy see, e.g., Heinrich August Winkler, Der Weg in die Katastrophe: Arbeiter und Arbeiterbewegung in der Weimarer Republik 1930–1933 (Bonn: J. H. W. Dietz, 1987); and Bernd Rabehl, “Auf dem Wege in die nationalsozialistische Diktatur: Die deutsche Sozialdemokratie zwischen ‘Grosser Koalition’ und der legalen ‘Machtübernahme’ Hitlers,” Manfred Scharrer (ed.), Kampflose Kapitulation: Arbeiterbewegung 1933 (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1984), pp. 18–72.

See Christian Striefler, Kampf um die Macht: Kommunisten und Nationalsozialisten am Ende der Weimarer Republik (Berlin: Propyläen, 1993), pp. 177–186 (detailed but partly biased). For the disastrous KPD policy vis-à-vis Hitler in the last years of the Weimar Republic see the cited works of Fowkes, Kinner, Weber, Weitz and Winkler. See in particular Leon Trotsky, The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany, ed. and introduced by Ernest Mandel (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1975). See also the more recent overview by Florian Wilde, “Divided They Fell: The German Left and the Rise of Hitler,” International Socialism, No. 137 (January 9, 2013), http://isj.org.uk/divided-they-fell-the-german-left-and-the-rise-of-hitler/.

The abundant literature on Trotsky and Thalheimer on the subject cannot be discussed here in detail. For over views of their analyses in English see Trotsky, The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany; Martin Kitchen, “August Thalheimer’s Theory of Fascism,” Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 34 (1974), No. 1, pp. 67–78. See also David Beetham (ed.), Marxists in Face of Fascism: Writings on Fascism from the Inter-War Period (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1983), pp. 187–210 (texts by Thalheimer and Trotsky); and Derek S. Linton, “Bonapartism, Fascism, and the Collapse of the Weimar Republic,” Michael N. Dobkowski and Isidor Wallimann (eds.), Radical Perspectives on the Rise of Fascism in Germany (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1989), pp. 100–127.

Die Fahne des Kommunismus, August 8, 1931, as quoted from: Zimmermann, Leninbund, p. 200.

A. Maslow, “Zur Lage in der Partei,” RF, April 19, 1923, Beilage.

Henry Pachter, Weimar Etudes, ed. and introduced by Stephen Eric Bronner (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), pp. 54–55. Pachter’s original name was Heinz Pächter.

Sidney Hook, Out of Step: An Unquiet Life in the 20th Century (New York: Harper & Row, 1987), p. 111.

Fischer, “Autobiographical Notes,” pp. 464–465. Fischer’s remark on the “national liberation struggle” referred to the KPD’s ‘Program Declaration on the National and Social Liberation of the German People’ that appeared on August 24, 1930 in Rote Fahne and whose vocabulary borrowed heavily from right-wing populist agitation.

Ruth Fischer, Autobiographical Article for Frankfurter Hefte [not published], in: Ruth Fischer Papers, File 2682, published under the title: “Erinnerungen an die Jahre 1932–1933 (1960),” in: Abtrünnig wider Willen, here p. 526.

See the documents on the confiscation of their assets, September–October 1933 at Brandenburgisches Landeshauptarchiv, Potsdam: Rep. 36A: Oberfinanzpräsident, Berlin-Brandenburg (II), Nr. 41581 (Gohlke [recte: Golke], Elfriede).

See Fiedlander, Memoirs, p. 71.

See Ruth Fischer and Franz Heimann, Deutsche Kinderfibel (Berlin: Rowohlt, 1933), pp. 93–96. Heimann was a socialist pediatrician and a friend of Fischer und Maslow. Fischer mentioned Maslow’s de facto co-authorship of the book in her autobiographical notes. See Fischer, “Autobiographical Notes,” pp. 545–546.

See Detlef Briesen, Das gesunde Leben: Ernährung und Gesundheit seit dem 18. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt-Main: Campus, 2010), pp. 187–188.

See Fischer and Heimann, Deutsche Kinderfibel, p. 100.

See ibid., p. 150.

Ibid., p. 308.

Most recently the film was discussed in English by Christoph Schaub, “Labor Movement Modernism: Proletarian Collectives between Kuhle Wampe and Working-Class Performance Culture,” Modernism/Modernity, Vol. 25 (2018), No. 2, pp. 327–348. See also Stephen Parker, Bertolt Brecht: A Literary Life (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), pp. 291–303.

Friedlander, “Interview,” Hering and Schilde (eds.), Kampfname Ruth Fischer, p. 79.

See Friedlander, Memoirs, p. 96. The quotation is from Kurt Pinthus’s critique (Das Tagebuch, No. 14, April 5, 1930), as quoted from: Laurence Kardish (ed.), Weimar Cinema, 1919–1933: Daydreams and Nightmares (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2010), p. 158.

Title: The Leninbund: A New Beginning?
Author: Mario Kessler
Publisher: Springer International Publishing
Book: A Political Biography of Arkadij Maslow, 1891-1941
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-43256-0

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-030-43257-7

Copyright Year: 2020
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43257-7_12