Robert Service - Spies and Commissars

Yet she went along with the other Spartacist leaders in their planning of an uprising in Berlin. A gathering was held with other far-left organizations from 30 December 1918 and the Communist Party of Germany was founded. Everyone present agreed with the Bolsheviks that a new era of human history was at hand. They had held this belief since before the Great War and their disgust at the immense loss of life since 1914 had convinced them that only revolution would prevent another such world war from occurring. Imperialism could not be curbed: it had to be eliminated. Capitalism was at the root of the world’s troubles and it too had to be swept away. No country was more advanced than Germany in industrial and educational skills. Marxism taught that the ‘proletariat’ in the factories and the mines would inevitably lead society into a bright future where oppression and exploitation would be no more. What the Russian workers had done in Petrograd was about to be accomplished — and accomplished with greater success — in the German capital; indeed the Bolsheviks agreed with the Spartacists that Germany’s working class was the readiest in the world for socialism. Conditions in the country were ripe for exploitation and the Spartakusbund intended to catch the new German government by surprise. Workers’ councils would seize power before army or police could stop them, and the entire ‘proletariat’ would rally to the cause of revolution.

The leading Spartacists wanted Soviet comradeship, not tutelage, and felt that the sooner the insurrection was under way in Berlin, the easier it would be to avoid that outcome. Radek teased them that Lenin and Trotsky were revolutionaries of greater stature than anybody in the German Communist Party. As he no doubt intended, this only strengthened their resolve. They deputed a single comrade, Hugo Eberlein, to go Moscow for the international conference being organized by the Bolsheviks. Eberlein received strict instructions to prevent Lenin and his associates from taking control. Meanwhile Liebknecht, Luxemburg and Jogiches set about planning how to seize the post and telegraph office, the garrisons, government buildings and big printing presses in Berlin.

The day chosen for a general strike and uprising was 5 January 1919. The proclamations had been written. The message went out early to militants in the metalworking factories to come out on to the streets. Liebknecht and his comrades got ready to talk to the crowds. Luxemburg already had a heavy heart, feeling that a serious revolution required more than high hopes. For their part, Ebert and Scheidemann reacted with vigour and called on the army garrisons, along with the Freikorps, to suppress the revolt. Many ex-soldiers of the western front saw the political far left as traitors to the national cause. The fact that several of them were Jewish intensified the hostility. In the eyes of many who had fought in the trenches, Germany had lost the war because people like Liebknecht and Luxemburg had undermined morale in the rear. Fighting was sporadic on the streets, but the rage to settle accounts was intense and it was quickly obvious that the combined action of army and Freikorps would overwhelm all resistance. The insurrection sputtered out almost before it began.

The Freikorps wreaked a terrible vengeance. Liebknecht, Luxemburg and Jogiches were hunted down and bludgeoned to death. The killers dumped Luxemburg’s body outside the railings of the Zoological Gardens. The symbolism was intentional. The enemies of the Spartacists looked on them as being less than human. Dogs were being given a dog’s death. The Spartacist leaders met their ends with courage and dignity. Of their leaders, only Thalheimer and Levi survived — and it was Levi who delivered the funeral oration for Luxemburg on 2 February. 35Radek went into hiding. On the party’s orders he had spent the year 1917 in Stockholm rather than Petrograd. For all his big talk he had no more experience of organizing a seizure of power than anyone else in Berlin. The German authorities, moreover, were aware of his illicit presence in the country. A search was begun for him, and he was captured on 12 February 1919 and thrown into Moabit prison.

While Ebert and Scheidemann resumed their attempts to bring about political stability and economic recovery, the newly formed German Communist Party sought to rebuild its organizations. It had lost the inspiring leaders who had founded it, but its revolutionary vision remained intact. Others filled the gap left by Liebknecht, Luxemburg and Jogiches. Their spirits stayed high. German communists continued to despise the new socialist government, a government that accepted responsibility for Germany’s humiliation at the hands of the Allies. The communists foresaw abundant chances to undertake revolution. Like the Bolsheviks in Russia, they believed that Berlin was the city where the future of Europe would be settled. The German working class would surely soon see that Scheidemann and his ministers were collaborating with big business. The communist party offered an alternative vision of internal and foreign policy. Thalheimer and Levi preached the coming doom of capitalism — and they intended by political action to bring forward the date when this would occur.

After their triumph on the western front, the Allies could no longer claim that they were intervening in Russia so as to bring its armed forces back into the fight against Germany. In the United Kingdom, Robert Cecil as Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs circulated a memorandum to the King and the War Cabinet spelling out the constraints on British policy. Cecil suggested that a crusade against Bolshevism was impracticable. Allied measures, he argued, should be limited to offering assistance to ‘our Russian friends’ and the Czech Corps. 1

But the survival of the Soviet government meant that the ‘Russian question’ was anything but a historical one. German commanders and diplomats who had cheerfully welcomed their government’s use of the Bolsheviks to ease their tasks in the war now warned against the possibility that Bolshevism might move into the heart of Europe. Until November 1918 Allied politicians had looked on Russians mainly in terms of their potential to restore the eastern front. From being fitfully alarmed by pro-Soviet anti-war propaganda in their own countries, they began to appreciate that the Bolshevik revolutionary example might soon be followed abroad. Talk about the communist ‘contagion’ was growing. It was accentuated by the actions of the Bolsheviks themselves after the German surrender. The borderlands of the old empire underwent revolutions as Moscow supplied personnel to instigate seizures of power in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania and proclaim Soviet republics. Fundamental economic and social reforms followed Russia’s model. Once Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius had fallen under their influence, the Bolsheviks tried to extend the revolutionary order from the capitals to other towns and villages. Stalin drafted decrees in December recognizing the new Soviet republics and providing them with financial assistance. 2If this could happen so quickly, who was to say that Poland or Germany would not soon fall to the communists? And what was to stop communist influence from spreading still further westwards?

In fact the German capitulation occurred just a little too soon for the Bolsheviks, who had not yet secured their hold on Russia. On 18 November 1918 in Ufa, a city in the Urals, Admiral Alexander Kolchak pushed aside the regional administration led by Socialist- Revolutionaries and declared himself Supreme Ruler. Komuch by then was no more and the Red Army had seized control of the Volga towns. Kolchak, assisted by the remaining volunteers of the Czech Corps, despised the Socialist-Revolutionaries as much as he hated the Bolsheviks. His forces dealt savagely with the Reds and their sympathizers as he undertook his advance through the Urals. His was the first of the White armies to make serious progress and in December he occupied Perm, scattering the Bolsheviks to the winds. In the south, where another White force — the Volunteer Army — was still gathering under General Anton Denikin after the deaths of Generals Kornilov and Alexeev, the hope was that the Allied victory in the west would liberate resources to help against the Bolsheviks. Denikin welcomed the existence of the clandestine National Centre with its liberal and socialist members so that he could win friends in London and Paris. 3The British quickly indicated approval and promised their help. The French made similar noises. 4Action followed on 18 December when the French landed troops in Odessa while Britain’s expedition remained in the Russian north. The situation was grim for Bolshevism and getting grimmer.