War, Peace and Revolution: International Socialism at the Crossroads, 1914-1918

328 Pages·1986·17.614 MB·English

by  David Kirby

IMP .
i 'EVOLUTION
International Socialism at the
Crossroads 1914-1918
DAVID KIRBY
AND
REVOLUTION
International Socialism at the
Crossroads 1914-1918
The outbreak of war in August 1914, and of
revolution in Russia in 1917, are universally
acknowledged to be major watersheds in the history
of the international socialist movement. This book
deals with the attempts of that movement to come to
terms with the changed situation: to devise a viable
socialist peace program, and to face up to the
challenge thrown down by the revolution in Russia.
It ranges over the entire continent of Europe, paying
due attention to social unrest and the political
conflicts of the individual countries, as well as to the
impact of the Russian revolution on the European
labor movement.
It will be of interest to students of history, politics,
sociology and international relations and to all those
interested in socialism and the labor movement.
HX
40
.K513
1966
2031946
OEMCO
Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2019 with funding from
Kahle/Austin Foundation
https://archive.org/details/warpeacerevolutiOOOOkirb
WAR, PEACE AND REVOLUTION

War, Peace and Revolution
International Socialism at the Crossroads
1914-1918
David Kirby
St. Martin’s Press New York
© David Kirby, 1986
All rights reserved. For information, write:
St. Martin’s Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
Printed in Great Britain
First published in the United States of America in 1986
ISBN: 0-312-85587-7
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Kirby, David, 1942-
War, peace, and revolution.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Socialism—History—20th century. 2 Socialism—Europe—History
20th century. 3. World War, 1914-1918.
I. Title.
HX40.K513 1985 324'.1 85-11895
ISBN 0-312-85587-7
Contents
Introduction vi
Abbreviations x
1 Before the fall 1
2 Social democracy and the war 26
3 The drum’s discordant sound 49
4 The Second International 1914-1917 69
5 The Soviet initiative (March-June 1917) 95
6 The Russian revolution and the European labour movement 130
7 Stockholm in the balance (May-July 1917) 152
8 The Soviet delegation to the west (July-August 1917) 171
9 The Zimmerwald alternative 188
10 Illusions and realities 204
11 Taking stock 230
Notes 249
Bibliography 284
Index 302
Introduction
The history of organised labour movements in Europe has long been
bedevilled by many of the problems inherent within the peculiar fusion
of the ideas of socialism and the organisation of large numbers of workers
which took place during the latter half of the nineteenth century. Many
historians have shared some of the ideological or emotional assumptions
and feelings of those whose actions they are studying, and their parti pris
position has often drawn them into making judgements based more on
polemical or ethical criteria than dispassionate assessment of the
evidence. What the movement ought to have done, rather than what it
actually did, is an underlying theme of such analyses.This is particularly
true of the events of August 1914, over which subsequent events in
Russia in 1917 have cast their own light. Marxist-Leninists see the
history of the European labour movement from the ‘correct’ perspective
arrived at by Lenin in Swiss exile. Reformist social democracy is adjudged
to have ‘betrayed’ the working classes in 1914, and the ‘social pacifist’
groups which sought to bring an end to the war and to rescue the inter¬
nationalist honour of socialism are deemed to be vacillating, weak and
‘pseudo-revolutionary’ will-o’-the-wisps, trying to lure the workers from
the revolutionary path. The evidence of working-class unrest during the
war is paraded as a demonstration of revolutionary spirit, but is rarely
subjected to critical scrutiny. The Bolshevik party is held up as the
epitome of a class-conscious revolutionary organisation, but its peculiarly
Russian characteristics, and its many internal squabbles and divisions, are
not the subject of comment.
This somewhat blinkered approach is not much favoured by historians
outside the Soviet bloc; but they can become snared by the lines laid down
by communist interpreters of the events of 1914-1917. Right-wing
socialists are all too often dismissed as unprincipled opportunists or loyal,
dull bureaucrats who have long since lost or abandoned any ideals they
might once have had. The opprobrium heaped upon the right-wing
German social democrats still clings. Their efforts to grapple with the
problems of government after 1918 have attracted less attention than the
activities of the left-wing socialists and communists during the German
revolution. The Leninist taxonomy of right/prowar-centre/antiwar-
pacifist-left-revolutionary has often been accepted without much
attempt to discern the nuances. Above all, historians have preferred to