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The Power of Analogies, in the Face of New Revolutions: 1917–23

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The Power of Analogies, in the Face of New Revolutions: 1917–23 chapter 9 The Power of Analogies, in the Face of New Revolutions: 1917–23 The Russian Revolution, and Reinterpreting 1789 Tamara Kondratieva has shown the great influence of analogies between the two great French and Russian Revolutions in the Soviet historiographical and political debates of 1917–18. In the course of the historian’s study, she further- more brilliantly brings into relief how these same analogies recurred also in the German-speaking world.1 Here our intention is to present some such examples. Some of the notes that Kurt Eisner – president of the ephemeral Bavarian Republic of 1919 – wrote on the articles of French historian Albert Mathiez demonstrate the growing interest in the question of the Terror in the wake of the Russian Revolution.2 But it was through the controversy between Karl Kaut- sky and the Bolshevik leaders that the analogies between 1793 and 1917 began to proliferate. This first of all owed to the Soviet leaders, who took the French Revolution – omnipresent in their references – as a primary example from his- tory.3 For Lenin and the Bolsheviks, the Russian Revolution had brought the rule of a new social class, doing for the proletariat what the French Revolution had done for the bourgeoisie. Indeed, the proletariat’s ‘Great October Revolu- tion’ was officially designated as such in the USSR by way of analogy with the ‘Great French Revolution’.4 Certainly, Karl Kautsky’s writings no longer had the standing and influence that they had enjoyed before 1914. Kautsky had been at the heart of a Second International whose unity was now shattered by the emergence of Soviet com- munism, and for the social democrats of 1919 he had in a certain sense become too orthodox (and at this point he was still in the USPD) even as the Com- munists saw him as symbolising the abhorred figure of the ‘renegade’. After a 1 Kondratieva 1989, p. 304. 2 Archives Kurt Eisner NY 4060 (Bundesarchiv, Berlin). A few notes on Albert Mathiez’s art- icles from 1917–18 and on his Études Robespierristes, whose two volumes were published by Armand Colin in Paris in these same two years. 3 As well as Kondratieva’s work, see Narotchnitski (ed.) 1989. 4 On Lenin and the French Revolution, see the summary and the references in Mazauric 2009, pp. 28–30. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004384798_014 the power of analogies, in the face of new revolutions: 1917–23 231 brief spell in the under-secretariat of Foreign Affairs, during which he wrote a book on the causes of World War I,5 he would not again play a political role of any decisive importance. That is not to say that his influence was negli- gible: indeed, we can see as much from his numerous contributions published in SPD organs up till the 1930s, principally concerning the elaboration of its programme. It was thus that he took part in the preparation of the 1925 Heidel- berg Programme, which restored Marxist references to a prominent position. His work as an analyst of Soviet realities was widely recognised. Moreover – signalling the interest for his oeuvre during the early days of theWeimar Repub- lic – many of his writings were now re-published, including his ‘classic’ work on the French Revolution, Die Klassengegensätze im Zeitalter der Französis- che Revolution.6 This book reappeared at least three times, as did Wilhelm Blos’s book on this same subject.7 Their high print-runs – running into the tens of thousands of copies – demonstrated the continuity in the party publisher Dietz’s output.8 Indeed, we could interpret these re-editions as a mark of the renewed interest in the history of revolutions in the wake of 1918–19; Eduard Bernstein’s history of the English Revolution was also republished in 1919 and 1922.9 There are countless references to the French Revolution in Karl Kautsky’s books and articles on Soviet Russia. Just as he had done in 1905 Kautsky imme- diately wrote a history of the 1917 Revolution, looking back to the revolutionary processes of the past in order to understand the present period. He elaborated these analogies in three works: namely (in chronological order) The Dictator- ship of the Proletariat; Terrorism and Communism; and, two years later, From Democracy to State-Slavery. The first of these books was published in Austria, and the two subsequent ones in Germany. Kautsky himself remained in this latter country up till 1924, when he moved to Vienna, before emigrating to Amsterdam after the 1938 Anschluss. It was there that he died a few months later. 5 Kautsky 1919. 6 Kautsky 1919b (republished in 1920 and 1923). 7 Blos 1920 (republished in 1921, 1922, and 1923). 8 Information is available on the print-runs of some of the books Dietz published in the Wei- mar period. Blos’s book was printed three times (more than 40,000 copies), while there were some 30,000 copies of Kautsky’s volume. See Schwarz 1973, pp. 43, 83. 9 Bernstein 1922..
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