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Witness to the German Revolution
Victor Serge
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Witness to the German Revolution
Victor Serge
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About This Book
"Serge searingly evokes the epochal hopes and shattering setbacks of a generation of leftists."â Bookforum
Following in the wake of the carnage reaped across Europe by world war, German workers undertook a struggle that would prove decisive in determining the course of the entire twentieth century. In 1923 the fledgling Comintern dispatched Victor Serge, with his peerless journalistic skills, to Berlin to expedite the German Revolution and write these moving reports from the battlefront.
Victor Serge is best known as a novelist and for his Memoirs of a Revolutionary. Originally a participant in the anarchist movement, Serge became a committed bolshevik upon arrival in Russia in 1919 and lent his considerable talents to the cause of spreading the revolution across Europe. An eloquent critic of tyranny no matter its form, Serge was a leading member of the Left Opposition in its struggle against Stalin, a cause which ultimately resulted in his exile from Russia.
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From July to December 1923 (with the exception of two weeks in August- September) Correspondance internationale carried a weekly column by âR. Albertâ under the heading âReports from Germany.â These columns are all reproduced here, together with a few additional pieces that appeared in the bi- weekly edition. The Ruhr occupation was still continuing, but the French and German ruling classes recognized that they had a common interest in restricting the development of working-class opposition.
A Document on German Patriotism
Correspondance internationale, July 1, 1923
The Communist press in France and Germany has just been enriched by a contribution which was as valuable as it was unexpected. It came from Herr Lutterbeck, deputy to the chief district official of DĂŒsseldorf, the author of a letter to General Denvignes,69 certain passages of which deserve to be preserved in the annals of working-class literature. This official from DĂŒsseldorf is asking for the favor of assistance from the French commander in order to repress the working-class movement. It would be impossible for us to express better than he does the necessities and reasons for international capitalist solidarity. The recall of the events of 187170 takes on a very particular flavor when a senior Prussian civil servant is writing to one of Fochâs officers. We will quote from the text:
Events such as those at Gelsenkirchen are liable to encourage elements hostile to the state. Further disturbances will occur, and order, the necessary basis for civilization and production, risks being shaken for a long time to come.
There would be great risks if France imagined that, in the present circumstances, it could easily re-establish the normal state of affairs. The industrial region is so complex that it is possible for a spark in one city to become a flame in another, and the flame will be such that the force of arms cannot control it, and that neither the Rhine nor the German frontier beyond the Rhine can stop it. This threat hangs over the whole world. And if the French command waits passively until the rising attacks it, then it will appear as if France wishes German authority to be shaken in the Ruhr at any price, even if it be the price of a rising which would threaten European civilization by putting the Ruhr in the hands of the rabble. This is a dangerous game for France itself. The army of occupation is not made up of inanimate material, rifles, machine-guns and tanks. The weapons are borne by men who have eyes and ears. There is a danger that they will carry from the Ruhr a seed destined to take root in French territory. In face of such dangers, may I take the liberty of stressing the heavy responsibility which would be incurred by the French command if it were to show itself as being indulgent in the face of anarchy. If it does not act itself, then at the very least its obligation is to leave the German authorities with their hands free in order to do their duty. Prime Minister Poincaré recently told a Socialist deputy called Auriol that incidents in the occupied territory are not inevitable, citing the precedent of 1871-72. At that time in France there were no conflicts in France between the population and the occupying forces. May I recall in this respect that at the time of the Paris Commune the German command did its best to anticipate the needs of the French authorities as far as repression was concerned. I am under an obligation to request you to observe a similar attitude if, in the future, dangerous clashes cannot be avoided.
This senior Prussian civil servant is not embarrassed by patriotic scruples. The pursuit of revenge against France, which is doubtless dear to him, in no way obscures his clear judgment as a class conscious bourgeois. He is the sort of person who will get on well with those clearsighted French bourgeois who, in 1918-19, when the dead of the Great War had scarcely been buried, bluntly declared that Ludendorff was better than Liebknecht.
dp n="56" folio="49" ?
By July the continuing economic crisis was causing serious political tensions. In the Rhineland demands were growing for independence from the German republic. The government of the shipping magnate Wilhelm Cuno, based on the parties of the center, was increasingly unpopular.
Amid the Collapse of Bourgeois Germany
Correspondance internationale, July 14, 1923
The revolutionary situation is ripening in Germany. The remarkable and rapid growth of Communist influence is perhaps the best indication of it. After having remained for several months with an average print run of 25,000 copies, Die Rote Fahne of Berlin is now printing 60,000, more than VorwĂ€rts. And it is, after all, only one of the KPDâs 30 daily papers. The growth in the partyâs membership is also noticeable, as is the extension of its trade union influence, its moral leadership within the factory committee movementâthe most active current in Germanyâs proletariatâits key role in the political life of Saxony and Thuringia, and its striking electoral successes in such a backward area as Mecklenburg-Strelitz. All these facts are evidence that the massesâ will for action is awakening. When a Communist Party develops in this way, it is because it is approaching a historical turning point. The German revolutionaries are well aware of this.
dp n="57" folio="50" ?On July 12 Die Rote Fahne published a document whose style and tone take us back to just before the great days of 1919. It is an appeal from the KPD central committee to the party members. The gravity of the political situation is set out in precise termsâbluntly and with no bombast. The conclusions are formulated with the sober energy of a challenge issued after mature consideration to the reactionary elements which are biding their time just outside the frontiers of legality. The KPD central committee mentions the preparations being made in the Rhine region to proclaim a Rhineland republic, under the aegis of the occupation authorities and with their financial assistance. The Bavarian fascists used to get French money; some Rhineland fascists are still getting it. The government, and the social democrats who are members of it, are quite well aware of the preparations for a reactionary violent coup and for foreign intervention. Fascist action could also begin as a result of measures by the Reich against red Saxony and Thuringia; or else it could be the unexpected result of a simple wage struggle. To quote the document itself:
Our party must raise the combativity of its organizations to such a level that they will not be surprised by civil war wherever it may be launched.
[âŠ] If legal communications are interrupted by a general strike in the railways and postal services, or by military operations, we must make sure of all our lines of communication in advance.
[âŠ] The fascists count on winning in civil war by the most resolute use of violence and of crushing brutality. Any workers who resist them and are then taken prisoner will be executed. To break strikes, they will go so far as to shoot every tenth striker. Their violent coup can only be stopped by meeting white terror with red terror. If the fascists, armed to the teeth, shoot our proletarian fighters, they will find us implacable and determined to destroy them. If they put every tenth striker up against the wall, the revolutionary workers will kill one fascist in five.
The fascist associations have arms and military equipment. Those workers who are not yet in possession of arms must know where and when they can obtain them if they are needed.
It is in the Ruhr and the occupied region that the working-class faces the greatest threat. The KPD considers armed struggle against French imperialism to be impossible, and envisages a general strike there if necessary.
Why?
German corn is more expensive inside Germany than American and Argentinean corn. At Hamburg at the beginning of July 100 kilograms of cereals cost (including freight for foreign corn):
| La Plata wheat | 11.5 guilders71 or 730,000 marks |
| American wheat | 11.7 guilders or 737,000 marks |
| Russian rye | 8.35 guilders or 530,000 marks |
| German rye | 610,000 marks |
| German wheat | 850,000 marks |
Â
The consequence is that within one week the price of a loaf has risen from 7,000 to 20,000 marks on the free market, and from 4,200 to 10,000 (from July 23) on ration cards for the poor. From June 29 to July 5, the minimum subsistence level for a household with two children has risen by 147,000 marks a week, to a total of 919,668 according to the official index. Between July 10 and 11 in Berlin, the cost of living rose by 22 percent in 24 hours. A pound of margarine went from 34,000 to 38,000 marks, an egg from 3,400 to 4,400, a pound of bacon from 35,000 to 48,000 (that is, 37 percent increase). It is true that there is talk of raising wagesâevery ten days.
Such are the results of the combined efforts of a government in the service of big capital, the landowners and French imperialism.
In working-class Germany, statistics reveal that since the new falls in value of the mark, unemployment has gone down slightly. In May there were only 6.2 percent unemployed among trade unionists as against 7 percent in April. In the tobacco industry, the worst affected, there were only 21.5 percent as against 32.3 percent. The number of unemployed receiving assistance from various organizations (far from all of them) has fallen, in the same period of time, from 279,135 to 244,742. Industries affected by limitations on the number of hours worked employ 5,400,000 workers of whom 1,159,963 (21.7 percent) are only working shortened weeks (shoemakers, metalworkers, textiles, clothing, tobacco).
When we remember that German workers long ago exhausted their savings and any money put aside, and that they earn a pittance even when they work full weeks, we can image the sum of wretchedness embodied in these figures. It is easy to understand the disturbances in the Rhineland and Saxony, in the course of which a certain number of unemployed have been killed by the police force of the democratic order.
The dollar continues its dance. The Reich is devoting millions of gold marks to âstabilize the mark,â that is, to prevent it from vanishing into thin air too rapidly, and thus to favor the stock exchange speculations of the baronsâor banditsâof finance. On this point, the Communist fraction in the Reichstag are asking Herr Cuno the following tricky questions: âHas the Hugo Stinnes steamer company (shipping line) been exempted from the compulsory surrender of foreign currency? Why? Is it the only one?â
It isnât the only one. And who can fail to understand why?
But on the evening of July 10, the dollar, quoted at 256,000 or 266,000 marks at Gdansk, and at 276,000 marks at New York, was, thanks to government action, only at 187,000 marks at Berlin. The difference between the official and the real rate of exchange is paid by the people on small fixed incomesâthe only ones affectedâto the big financial establishments. Thatâs what they call âstabilization.â
dp n="60" folio="53" ?The Reichâs floating debt doubled in June, reaching the splendid figure of 24.9 billion marks. On June 30, there was paper money in circulation to the value of 17,291.1 billion marks.
But if the Reichâs finances are expressed by such fabulousânegative!âfigures, if the bankruptcy of the state becomes a little clearer every day, then the big financial establishments for their part seem prosperous enough. Take a look. The Diskontoge-sellschaft , the third largest bank in Germany, has published its accounts. Itâs ending up with a net profit of 4.8 billion marks, that is to say, 24 times higher than last year. It is paying 250 percent dividends to its fortunate shareholders. And all these figures are doctored so as not to be too startling to people with no bread and no shirts, but who nonetheless read the papers.
For its part the Dresdner Bank is only paying 200 percent dividends for 1922. Its profit and loss account is closed with a net profit of 18,227,522,795 marks.
Inflation caused by lack of confidence in paper money has obviously swollen all these figures, which, if they were reduced to 1914 proportions, would still be very respectable. Above all, in a land with tubercular children, with the most wretched wages, and where begging and prostitution are very widespread.
Here we have merely set out figures, well known facts that have been published and are unquestioned. They will show you, comrade, what a capitalist society looks like when it is breaking down on the eve of some formidable crisis⊠They explain why the German Communists, the only ones to look reality in the face amid the shipwreck, are using the determined language quoted above while demanding the seizure of the real values 72 of the bourgeoisie.
dp n="61" folio="54" ?
By mid-July the crisis was leading to polarization of left and right. Hermann Ehrhardt, one of the leaders of the Kapp putsch and involved in the murder of moderate Jewish cabinet minister Rathenau in 1922, had escaped from jail with official complicity. The KPD moved onto the offensive with the call for a national Anti-Fascist Day on July 29.
Reports from Germany
Disturbances at Wroclaw and Frankfurt Correspondance internationale, July 28, 1923
In the course of the last month, the situation in Germany has become more tense to an unimaginable degree. And for a very simple reason: no wage any longer enables you to stay alive. You know in the morning that the dollar will certainly be worth 50,000 marks more by the evening. There is now no brake or limitation on rising prices; the cost of living goes up by the hour, and often by 20 to 30 percent in the course of 24 hours, while the slightest increases in wages and salaries must be negotiated over a week. Housewives are driven crazy and retailers are beginning to be afraid. The population is trying to lay in stocks, foreseeing that âsomethingâ is coming; the shopkeepers are rationing them. Sometimes the insane rise in prices prevents them from restocking their shops. Others, knowing very well that one day they will be looted and strung up, are hiding their stocks and fitting iron bars on their doors.
dp n="62" folio="55" ?Eight days ago hunger riots suddenly broke out in Wroclaw,73 sparked off, it seems, by young fascists who called on the crowd to loot Jewish shops. The police intervened brutally, supported by the reformist trade union leaders.âOrder must come first!âThe result: six dead, 15 wounded, 150 proletarians in jail, 750 billion marks of material damage. Fo...